Democratic Congressman Patrick Murphy will go head-to-head with U.S. Senator Marco Rubio in November.
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In March, Trump ended Rubio’s presidential run by trouncing him in the Florida primary to cap a race in which the NY businessman taunted the first-term senator as “little Marco”.
John McCain and Marco Rubio have sealed a night of comebacks for the political establishment with the senators seeing off primary challenges to secure the Republican nominations for crucial senate races in Arizona and Florida.
Murphy also immediately attacked Rubio after his victory.
Embattled incumbent Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL) lost her primary in the solidly Democratic Florida’s 5th congressional district to former Florida State Sen. Rubio will face U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy in November’s general election after Murphy won his Democratic Party primary on Tuesday.
Democrats hope to gain seats in Florida’s heavily Republican House delegation after court-mandated redistricting chipped away the advantages of some incumbents.
The 58-year-old homebuilder resigned from the board of the Southwest Florida Water Management District on the same day that he voted to approve his friend and fellow developer’s plan to destroy an acre of high-quality wetlands for a development. “He told us he doesn’t like the job and just yesterday he told us he said he won’t commit to a six-year term”, Murphy said.
Rubio’s victory comes after a last-minute decision to seek a second term after a failed presidential bid and a decision not to run for re-election.
Murphy, a former Republican, quickly earned party support and raised significantly more money. However, polls have also shown that many Florida voters have not yet formed an opinion of Murphy, giving the challenger room to close the race in the remaining nine weeks of the campaign.
Rubio will start the contest with the advantage of already having won a statewide election in a state with more than 12 million voters.
It’s somewhat surprising to see Rubio running at all since he said he would put his political career on hiatus after losing the Republican presidential primary to Donald Trump. If Clinton wins by a large margin, it could hurt Rubio in the state Obama carried in 2008 and 2012.
Trump, who faces Clinton in the November 8 presidential election, has endorsed both McCain and Rubio in their re-election bids even though he has rocky relations with both.
Republicans now outnumber Democrats 17-10 in the state’s congressional delegation.
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One of those is now held by U.S. Rep. David Jolly, a Republican who was expected to win Tuesday, but who would then have to beat former Gov. Charlie Crist, who used to be a Republican but is now a Democrat.
