Cory Mills Wins GOP Primary in Florida District 7

Establishment candidate Cory Mills on Tuesday won the Republican primary in the open Florida Congressional District 7 that Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) vacated in the spring.

The primary became a tossup in the last two week of the race after $1.2 million was spent on negative advertising against front runner State Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R). Polling had shown Sabatini leading by 7 points, but with the massive ad buys flooding the zone days before the election, the race was called for Mills with 19,000 votes at 68 percent of the vote reporting.

Nearly $6 million dollars was spent on the race. Sabatini’s campaign raised just over $1.2 million from more than 8,200 individual donors. Mills’ campaign raised more than $1.8 million, which does not including outside PACs funded by the establishment. Brady Duke raised more than $2.87 million throughout the campaign.

Florida district 7, newly shaped by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), is a strong Republican district. It covers Seminole and Volusia counties in east Central Florida.

DeSantis’s map created 20 red-leaning and eight blue-leaning congressional districts. The district lines will serve the state for the next ten years, shaping national politics. The map single-handedly wiped out the Democrats’ national gerrymandering advantage as it is a map that eliminated constitutional infirmities.

Before the map was passed by the House and sent to DeSantis for signature, radical Democrats took to the floor, throwing a “temper tantrum” in protest of the map’s likely passage. The radical and rowdy lawmakers stood in the middle of the House floor and sang, “We shall overcome.” They also chanted slogans like “we will occupy this floor” to prevent the map from passing in the House.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.