NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, November 6th, 2018

Democrat Donna Shalala pulls it out, picking up Florida’s 27th Congressional District

Demo­c­rat Don­na Sha­lala has flipped Flori­da’s 27th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict seat, beat­ing Repub­li­can con­tender Maria Elvi­ra Salazar. Both women were com­pet­ing for the seat after it was announced in April 2017 that Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ileana Ros-Lehti­nen would not be seek­ing re-elec­tion. She had held the posi­tion since 1989.

Sha­lala, sev­en­ty-sev­en, pre­vi­ous­ly served in the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion as the US Sec­re­tary of Health and Human Services.

Ear­li­er in her career, she served as pres­i­dent of Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi and most recent­ly was Pres­i­dent of the Clin­ton Foun­da­tion from 2015 — 2017.

Sha­lala is win­ning with 51.7% of the vote. This is a key pick­up for Democ­rats, with ear­ly polling show­ing a shift in the dis­trict; the 27th had pre­vi­ous­ly been con­sid­ered a “toss-up” before shift­ing to “lean Democrat.”

After court-ordered redis­trict­ing in 2015, Hillary Clin­ton won the dis­trict in the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion by about nine­teen points.

Sha­lala took to Twit­ter to thank vot­ers saying:

We did it.

It’s all thanks to you. Thou­sands of Florid­i­ans from across the dis­trict stood up, and decid­ed to fight for a brighter future for all.

Togeth­er, we mobi­lized — to stand up for a plat­form of com­mon sense gun reform, sup­port for high­er edu­ca­tion, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, and afford­able health­care. To every­one who put their faith in me, I won’t let you down.

Mia­mi is my home — it is the rea­son why we fought so hard dur­ing every day of this cam­paign, and why we’ll take that resolve to Washington.

Until every child has a fair shot at a high­er edu­ca­tion, we’re not done.

Until Medicare and Social Secu­ri­ty are secure for every senior, we will not rest. Until this heart­less admin­is­tra­tion is held account­able for their numer­ous injus­tices, we will not stop. I’m proud to know you had my back. Now, it’s time to ful­fill my end of the bargain.

Flori­da Democ­rats are still hop­ing for vic­to­ries in the hot­ly con­test­ed, high pro­file guber­na­to­r­i­al race between Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSan­tis and the U.S. Sen­ate race between Bill Nel­son and Rick Scott .

Written by Caitlin Harrington :: 6:12 PM

Categories: Elections

Tags: , ,

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