Florida House Races 2026: FL-13 Luna Toss-up, FL-27 Salazar Lean D, DeSantis Gerrymander

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FL-13: Luna in the Toss-up Zone

Anna Paulina Luna represents FL-13, covering St. Petersburg and the coastal communities of Pinellas County in the Tampa Bay area. Luna is a first-term Republican who won in 2022 and narrowly survived 2024, with Biden having carried the district by approximately 2 points in 2020. Luna's high-profile presence on conservative media and her willingness to engage in partisan confrontations have made her a national figure within the MAGA caucus but have also made her a target for Democrats who see the district's demographics as fundamentally competitive. The St. Petersburg area has a significant college-educated professional population, substantial LGBTQ+ community, and a growing Hispanic voting bloc. Democrats have recruited a well-funded challenger. Rated Toss-up.

FL-13 is made more competitive by broader shifts in the Tampa Bay region. The area has significant federal contractor employment; DOGE cuts and federal workforce reductions are felt locally. The healthcare sector is large and politically mobilized, particularly around Medicaid cuts that would affect Florida's large elderly population. Luna's personal vote ceiling among moderate Republicans in the area is tested every cycle, and she has no margin for error in a district where the structural lean is against her party.

FL-27: Salazar and the Miami-Dade Latino Shift

FL-27, covering southern Miami-Dade County and portions of Doral and Kendall, is the most demographically interesting competitive seat in Florida. The district is majority-Hispanic — specifically heavily Cuban-American and Venezuelan-American — and it reflects the complicated relationship between Florida's Latin communities and both parties. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Cuban-American journalist and politician, has held the seat since 2020 by mastering the particular politics of Miami's anti-communist, socially conservative Cuban-American community while occasionally breaking with the Republican mainstream on immigration-related issues. Her D+5 district is structurally challenging, but she has consistently overperformed the Republican baseline. Democrats have come close in FL-27 every cycle and will again in 2026. Rated Lean D.

The DeSantis Gerrymander: What It Did and What Courts Said

DeSantis's personal redrawing of the 2022 Florida congressional map was one of the most dramatic gubernatorial interventions in redistricting in modern American history. When the Republican-controlled Florida legislature drew a map, DeSantis rejected it as insufficiently partisan and submitted his own. His map eliminated the districts held by Alcee Hastings (who had died in office) and Al Lawson, both Black Democrats whose districts had been drawn to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The Florida Supreme Court, which had previously blocked a similar map, later allowed the DeSantis map to proceed after his appointments changed the court's composition. The reduced number of competitive seats is a direct consequence: pre-2022, Florida had approximately 6 competitive congressional seats; today it has 2-3.

FL-6: The Waltz Vacancy

Michael Waltz, the Republican congressman who held FL-6 (Jacksonville to Daytona area, R+12), was appointed National Security Advisor by Trump and resigned his House seat. The resulting special election in a Safe R district is not expected to be competitive — Republicans will hold the seat easily. However, it does briefly reduce the Republican House majority's already-razor-thin margin during the period before a successor is seated. Special elections in safe districts have occasionally produced protest results in environments as negative as the current one, but R+12 is far outside the range of even the most optimistic Democratic scenario. The special election is primarily of operational significance, not competitive significance.