WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (FNN) – Now that Florida governor Ron DeSantis has announced a date to fill the late Alcee Hasting’s seat in the United States House, there are already several hopefuls ready to represent Florida’s 20th District.
The primary to fill Congressman Hastings’s seat will be on November 2nd, with the election itself to be held on January 11.
Two of the main candidates to replace Hastings show two sides of the Democratic party and aim to keep their majority in Congress: established State senator Perry Thurston, Jr., and young progressive Omari Hardy.
Thurston announced some two weeks ago his intention for running and formally applied for the seat on April 26th. He released an ad announcing his aspirations the same day Governor DeSantis set the date for the special election.
In a written statement announcing his candidacy, he considers that “the residents of District 20 deserve to have a proven Democrat in Congress that will continue the fight for social and racial justice, income inequality, safer neighborhoods, strong public schools and access to healthcare.”
Thurston does not come into the Congressional race without controversy. In 2019, he voted against removing Broward county sheriff Scott Israel, which prompted Max Schachter, the father of one of the children killed in the Marjorie Stoneman High School shootings, to call him “an unmitigated disaster” and “a pathetic voice that divided Broward” on Twitter.
Thurston’s family is well known in the politics of Broward county. His uncle is the mayor of Lauderhill, Ken Thurston, who was in his nephew’s campaign announcement event.
Mayor Thurston considers Congressman Thurston “the best candidate — and I have seen the list of those who are running.”
That list also includes Hardy, who many are calling South Florida’s equivalent to New York representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. He also arrives in the race with a bit of notoriety.
Hardy was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, and before that, he served as a commissioner in Lake Worth City, where he famously got into a heated argument with former Mayor Pam Triolo about shutting off electricity for those who were behind on their bills early on during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hardy actually used part of the footage of the exchange in his candidacy ad, and he also addressed the comparisons to Ocasio-Cortez.
“If you [lived here] you’d know that fighting for housing as a right, for basic income as a right, health care as a right, the Green New Deal, and racial justice, isn’t imitating AOC. It’s responding to what I see and honoring the legacy of Alcee,” he says in the video.
Hardy, who has managed to raise $17,000 so far, adds that “we have a once in a generation opportunity to end establishment incremental politics and be the bold progressive voice that working-class people in this country need.”
Hardy and Thurston are part of a long list of Democratic candidates seeking to fill Hasting’s seat, especially since the date for the election means that the 20th will go nine months without representation and their majority in Congress, already narrow, is even smaller.
Other candidates include Florida House minority leader Bobby DuBose, who happens to be Thurston’s best friend.
The list includes former Palm Beach County commissioner and former legislator Priscilla Taylor; reverend Elvin Downing, a former aide and mentee of Hastings; and Broward County Commissioner Barbara Sharief, the county’s first Black mayor.
On the Republican side, Greg Musselwhite announced his intention to fill Hasting’s seat the day the Congressman died. He was Hasting’s main opponent in November 2020.
Other Republicans include Vic DeGrammont, a real estate agent and first-generation American son of Caribbean immigrants, activist Lateresa Jones, and chiropractor doctor Joe Smith.
District 20 includes both Broward and West Palm Beach, and has voted blue in the last six presidential elections. President Joe Biden received 77% of the vote here in 2020.
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