Two Trump-backed candidates lose, Debbie Wasserman Schultz wins in Tuesday’s House primaries in Florida

Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has won her party’s nomination for re-election, NBC News projects, while two Republican House candidates backed by President Donald Trump lost their primary bids in Florida on Tuesday.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and other party leaders redrew Wasserman Schultz’s current district and three other Democratic seats into four new GOP-leaning districts the party hopes to flip in November.

The move prompted Wasserman Schultz, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, to run in the 20th District, which has long been represented by Black Democrats and is vacant because Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned after being indicted and accused of stealing millions in Covid relief. She has denied wrongdoing.

Wasserman Schultz’s decision sparked some frustration among Black Democrats. Cherfilus-McCormick ran again for the seat, and the other candidates were all Black Democrats: activist Elijah Manley, who was backed by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.; former Broward County Mayor Dale Holness; and Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell, the hip-hop star and former 2 Live Crew band member.

But ultimately, Wasserman Schultz bested the crowded field and avoided adding her name to the list of incumbents who have lost their re-elections this year. Her Democratic colleague Rep. Jared Moskowitz also won his primary in the battleground 25th District, brushing aside a challenge from the left by Oliver Larkin, a democratic socialist former union organizer.

But Republican Rep. Cory Mills fell short.

Former television journalist Ryan Elijah defeated Mills in the 7th District, as Mills came into the race wounded by a slew of controversies, including a House Ethics Committee probe into allegations of sexual misconduct and campaign finance violations and a Justice Department investigation, NBC News has reported. Mills has denied wrongdoing.

Mills lost despite getting Trump’s support in his campaign. Meanwhile, Republican Catalina Lauf was the other Trump-backed candidate to lose a primary bid Tuesday.

She got Trump’s blessing late last week but fell short to Jim Schwartzel, a businessman and conservative talk radio station owner, in the Naples-area 19th District. The crowded primary included two former members of Congress who left Washington amid ethics concerns and subsequently moved to the Florida district to restart their careers: Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Chris Collins of New York.

The field also included former Illinois state Sen. Jim Oberweis, against whom Lauf ran in a 2020 Illinois congressional primary before both decamped for Florida. Schwartzel is now the favorite in the race to replace Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, who is running for governor.

The 16th District, which includes St. Petersburg and Bradenton, featured far less drama, with Sydney Gruters, a former nonprofit executive and the wife of Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters, clinching the Republican nod in the red district. She’s the heavy favorite to replace the retiring Rep. Vern Buchanan.

Austin Rogers, who worked for Sen. Rick Scott, won the Republican nomination in the open, heavily Republican 2nd District.

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On the Democratic side, Oliver Gilbert, the former Miami Gardens mayor and Miami-Dade County Commission member, narrowly bested state Sen. Shevrin Jones in the Democratic-leaning North Miami district where Rep. Frederica Wilson is retiring.

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While the most immediate implications from Tuesday’s elections are that these primaries were in largely safe seats, where the winners are the heavy favorites to join Congress next year, a handful of important matchups were set in potential battleground races.

Moskowitz is set to face former Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer in one of four Democratic-held districts that Republicans are seriously contesting in November.

In the Orlando-area 9th District, Democratic Rep. Darren Soto’s Republican opponent has yet to be decided, with the top two candidates separated by less than a thousand votes.

Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor will face former Republican state Rep. Mike Beltran in a redrawn Tampa Bay-area 14th District.

And Democrat Pia Dandiya, a former educator, will run against Republican Marine veteran Casey Askar in the Palm Beach County-area 22nd District. All four seats were redrawn as ones that Trump would have won by at least 9 percentage points in the 2024 election.

There are also a small handful of Republican-held seats Democrats are looking to contest. In the South Florida 27th District, Democratic former Miami TV personality Elliot Rodriguez will try to defeat Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar.

And Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna will face off against Democratic Army veteran Leela Gray in the Tampa Bay-area 13th District.