The fight for Florida's 13th Congressional District between incumbent Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and Democratic challenger Whitney Fox has taken a quick turn and are now in a dead heat, with the state of the race even surprising Republicans who thought they had the seat secured ahead of Election Day.
A survey released last week by St. Pete polls and commissioned by Voting Trend and The Florida Squeeze showed both candidates tied, standing at 46% support among likely voters. The remaining 8% of the electorate is still undecided. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
That is a huge surprise for Republicans, who had held a more than 8-percentage-point voter registration advantage, according to Florida Politics. Nevertheless, The Cook Political Report still rates the race as "Likely Republican."
The recent trend is also remarkable, considering Luna's performance two years ago: she first flipped the district to GOP control, defeating Democrat Eric Lynn by more than 8 percentage points.
Luna was elected to Congress during the 2022 midterm elections. She served in the U.S. Air Force from 2009 to 2018 and later worked as an entrepreneur, a director of Hispanic engagement for Turning Point USA, and chairwoman of Hispanic initiative for PragerU. Luna is a staunch Trump advocate, attending Trump's Manhattan criminal trial and appearing in his V.I.P. box at the Republican National Convention in July.
Fox, on the other hand, has far less name recognition. She is a mother of two and previously worked as the Communications Director for the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority, spearheading the SunRunner Bus Rapid Transit System. She is running on reproductive health protections, particularly for women seeking access to in-vitro fertilization.
The two are vying to win the seat for Florida's 13th District, which comprises Florida's Gulf Coast, assigned to Pinellas County, and includes cities like Largo, Clearwater, and Palm Harbor. 38% of voters in the district are registered Republicans, while 29% are Democrats.
Democrats are largely supporting Fox. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has placed Fox in its "Red to Blue" program, which aims to support candidates running to unseat incumbent Republicans in races the party sees as winnable. Fox is the only Democrat in Florida to make the program, and is one of only 33 candidates nationwide named to it, Florida Politics reports.
The GOP, in contrast, is seemingly taking the challenge to heart, continuing to invest cash into the incumbent's reelection bid. For instance, the Win It Back PAC, which is affiliated with the conservative Club for Growth, over the weekend dropped nearly $150,000 on television and digital advertising attacking Fox.
Nevertheless, with less than a week to go until Election Day, Democrats remain hopeful of their chances in the district, despite being considered the underdogs.
"What [Win It Back's spending] tells me is that Whitney Fox is going to win on Tuesday night," Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried told Florida Politics reporter Jacob Ogles this week. "Whitney Fox has been a stellar candidate, showing the people of her community exactly what they should expect in a member of Congress after not one, after two hurricanes, she was out there fighting for her constituents before they were even her constituents."
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