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December 24th, 2024 Len’s Political Note #694 Gay Valimont Florida 06
2025 Special Election
You may get fund raising letters reminding you that the House of Representatives of the 119th Congress will have a 220-215 Republican majority that will be reduced to 2017 to 215 because three Republicans have been nominated for positions in the Executive Branch by Donald Trump. Those pitches will tell you that if Democrats carry all three of the special elections, control of Congress would shift to the Democrats by a 2018 to 2017 margin.
Do not expect Democrats to carry those districts. All three districts are heavily Republican. Republicans carried those districts in November, 2024. They are likely to carry those districts in special elections in 2025. Look at the 2024 results.
New York 21 in 2024: Republican Elise Stefanic 62.2% Democrat Paula Collins 37.8. Elise Stefanic has not yet resigned from Congress. The special election date has not yet been set.
Florida 06 in 2024: Republican Michael Waltz 66.5%. Democrat James Stockton 33.5%. Michael Waltz has resigned. Republicans and Democrats will have a primary to select their nominee on January 28. The special election will be on April 1.
Florida 01 in 2024: Republican Matt Gaetz 66%. Democrat Gay Valimont 34%. Matt Gaetz has resigned. Republicans and Democrats each have only one candidate running in the special election which will be on April 1.
Gay Valimont will try again. She has nothing to lose in making this effort. She has already lost everything that most of us would value. She had a career in Atlanta. After getting a BA in health and exercise science from Georgia Southern and a MEd from Troy State, she found work in sports medicine. She worked in predominantly Black secondary schools in Atlanta and for the Atlanta Falcons football team.
Gay met her husband, Brian and moved with him to Gulf Breeze, Florida where he worked in aerospace and she was a stay-at-home mom. Gay Valimont was particularly moved by the Sandy Hook children’s massacre in 2012 and joined Mom’s Demand Action. By 2016, she had become the head of the Florida chapter of the organization.
Living in Naples, Florida in 2019, tragedy struck. Twice. Her husband was diagnosed with ALS. In the fall of 2021, her nine year old son fell at school and could not regain his balance. He was diagnosed with a rare and terminal brain tumor. He died that fall. Her husband, after three years of ALS-related deterioration died in 2022. Gay Valimont sold her house in Naples and moved back to Gulf Breeze – a city of fewer than 7,000 people at the end of a spit of land that extends west into the Gulf of Mexico immediately south of Pensacola. She took some time to recover. She took some additional time to think about what she would do for the rest of her life.
Gay Valimont was not naïve about where she lived. But when Matt Gaetz proposed a Stand Your Ground bill in the US House of Representatives, intending to make shooting someone you are afraid of legitimate throughout the entire country, she decided to oppose him. Gay Valimont knows that Florida 01 is at the westernmost part of Florida’s panhandle. Alabama is on the Western border of the district. Alabama is on the northern border of the district. The rest of Florida in east and south of Florida 01. Florida 01 is generally considered Florida’s most Republican district. Running against Matt Gaetz, Gay Valimont spent the 2024 election cycle explaining that she was not “some gun-grabbing, Bloomberg-funded, crazy, tree-hugging liberal…”.
If she can raise enough resources, she just might keep her opponent under 60%. If she can raise enough resources from you, she could pull off a miracle and win. If she can raise enough resources from you, she might be fight her campaign on what she is for rather than how Republicans might perceive a Democrat.
- Healthcare access, something about which she has far more knowledge than she would like to have. She would expand Medicaid, Protect Medicare, Defend the ACA, and Reduce prescription drug costs. She might go on the offensive and propose expanding Medicare to people in their fifties.
- Serving the military is a big deal in Florida 01. There has been a large presence in the area since the United States purchased Florida in 1819. Though Pensacola’s deep water port was and still is vital, the Eglin Air Force Base employs 14,000 people. An auxiliary field is the home of the Air Force Special Ops Command. The Naval Air Station is the home of the Blue Angels. Gay Valimont promises health care for veterans, too. The veterans of the District, she says, deserve a full VA hospital, easily available medical care, and support for veterans’ transition to civilian life. The entire district needs help for veterans who become homeless.
- She has proposals for supporting education, for ensuring affordable housing, for protection against environmental disasters.
We don’t know who will be the Republican nominee for Florida 01. The primary is January 28. Eight Republicans are running. One of them, Jimmy Petronis, Florida’s elected Chief Financial Officer, had been endorsed by Donald Trump.
Jimmy Petronis might have stayed in the family business. He earned an Associates Degree from Gulf Coast CC in restaurant management and remains a partner in the family business, the Captain Anderson Restaurant.
Does Petronis have views? He certainly does. Follow Trump. If he has more views that that, he is not talking. Are there scandals. There certainly are. In 2020, a regulator’s lawsuit claimed Petronis worked to get a lobbyist a job for a fund raiser, then forced the lobbyist out of the job when he refused to hire Petronis’s preferred lawyer.
The tension between the two regulatory agencies appears to have begun with claims of sexual harassment that were never found to have risen to a level that warranted either arrest or disciplinary action. Officials from both agencies may have done too much drinking.
Petronis may be Trump’s favorite. If he is the Republican favorite, Gay Valimont has a target to aim at. Help her hit her target. I’m sure her goal is to win. She will do Democrats around the country a service if she can hold the Republican to below 60% of the vote. Help her do that. While you are at it, she might pull off a miracle. DONATE.
Special Elections in Virginia. Elections are on January 7. The Senate District 32 vacancy exists because the State Senator was elected to represent Virginia in Congress on November 5. Before he resigned, Democrats had a 21-19 majority in the State Senate. Kannan Srinivasan represented District 26 in the House of Delegates. Before he resigned to run for the State Senate, Democrats had a 51-49 majority in the House of Delegates. Each of these races affect whether Democrats can keep their majority and can continue to minimize the damage that Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor can do.
Virginia State Senate District 32. Ex Delegate Kannan Srinivasan DONATE See Len’s Political Note #686. The Democrat carried this district in November 2022 by a 61.1% to 38% margin.
Virginia State Senate District 10 Academic Jack Trammel. DONATE. The Republican carried this district in November 2022 by a 65.7% to 34.1% margin.
Virginia State Delegate District 26 Hotelier JJ Singh DONATE. Singh is running to replace Kannan Srinivasan. The Democrat carried this district in November 2022 by a 62.2% to 37.6% margin.
In the two Democratic districts, help Kannan Srinivasan and JJ Singh stay well above 60%. Help Jack Trammel hold his Republican opponent to below 60%.
The Other Special Election in Florida. Both elections are on April 1. But we do not know who the candidates will be. The primary is on January 28. While the Republicans have a front runner, we need to wait until the end of January to see who the Democrats will nominate.
FL 06. Three Democrats are running; the primary is on January 28.
Non Partisan General Elections in Wisconsin are on April 1
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Jill Underly DONATE. See Len’s Political Note #693.
Wisconsin Supreme Court: Susan M. Crawford. DONATE See Len’s Political Note #684
OPPOSE TRUMP NOMINEES. Not all of them. Call your Senator. Call a Republican Senator. You could explain (if you agree with what I am suggesting) you expect Trump to nominate Republicans; that you have no objection to Marco Rubio for Secretary of state or his former attorneys Todd Blanche and Emile Bove in the Justice Department (after all he has relied on them). But you to object to:
Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense – because he has a reputation for drinking and financial mismanagement and bad treatment of women and because he opposes women in combat
Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence – because she seems to support Russian positions more than American positions and because she is entirely inexperienced in the area of intelligence.
Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education – because, opposite of what good education should be, she made her fortune with a fake sport that encourages violence and because she winked at the sexual exploitation of boys by a senior figure in the organization.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr for Secretary of Health and Human Services – despite his support for choice on abortion, because he has strange views about the value of vaccination and other health issues such as fluoride in the water and because he gets so intense on a topic he can destroy an organization
Kash Patel for Director of the FBI – because he has announced his intention to use the FBI as an instrument of vengeance. It should be a law enforcement agency.
Billy Long for Commissioner of the IRS – because he opposes the income tax and would replace it with a sales tax. It would take a sales tax in the 23 to 30% range to raise the money we currently raise with income taxes,
Contact: Your senators. (google them, find their Washington office telephone number)
Contact the four Republican Senators who were willing to publicly oppose Matthew Gaetz
Mitch McConnell KY (202-224-2541) (A polio survivor, McConnell is critical of Kennedy for his opposition to vaccines)
Lisa Murkowski AK (202-224-6665),
Susan Collins ME ((202-224-2523, and
Congressman John Curtis who was is the Senator-elect from Utah (202-225-7751)
Contact other Republican Senators who have become wary of Trump
Thom Tillis NC. (202-225-6342)
Todd Young IN. (202-225-5623)
Joni Ernst IA (202-225-3254)
Lindsey Graham SC (202-225-5972)
Jim Justice WV (Elected in November, currently Governor, try that office (304-558-2000}
