Could abortion flip a red Senate seat blue in Florida? [View all]

[In It to Win It]

POLITICO

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell was brutally ousted from her seat representing Florida in the U.S. House in 2020. She’s plotting her revenge — in the form of a Senate bid.

Mucarsel-Powell, a native of Ecuador who migrated to the U.S. when she was 14, thinks she can oust the former two-term Florida governor, Republican Sen. Rick Scott.

Why? She says Floridians are fed up with abortion restrictions, and she’s aiming to tie her campaign to a ballot initiative to enshrine a right to abortion into the state constitution — though it still needs to hold up against the Florida Supreme Court to appear on the ballot in November.

“That ballot initiative has over 150,000 signatures from Republican voters here in the state of Florida,” she tells Women Rule in an interview. “This is a purple state.”

If Florida is purple, it’s certainly been taking on a more maroon hue in the recent elections.

In 2020, Florida was one of two states where Donald Trump performed better than he did in 2016. And in 2022, Democrat Val Demings challenged incumbent Marco Rubio for his Senate seat, losing by a whopping 16 points. Gov. Ron DeSantis also won reelection by a 20-point landslide against Democratic challenger and former Gov. Charlie Crist.

But she is the first Democrat to run for Senate in Florida since DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban — and Floridians have a complex relationship with reproductive rights.