[ad_1]
Sunday's results in the agriculture commissioners' competition showed Nikki Fried, a Democrat, ahead of Matt Caldwell, a Republican, with 6,753 votes, or 0.08%. In a statement on Sunday, Fried, who will become the only Democrat elected to a government job in Florida, thanked Caldwell, who has yet to step down.
"Now is the time for us to get together and work as a union to govern for the people of Florida," Fried said. She campaigned on a non-traditional platform to make marijuana for medical purposes more accessible and to tighten procedures for obtaining concealed weapons licenses.
The Senate race has been hotly contested since the beginning. Although Mr. Nelson, 76, holds three terms, he was less known than Mr. Scott, 65, a former senior executive of a multi-million dollar hospital that was completing his second term as governor. A center, Mr. Nelson, who was first elected to the State House in 1972, was not particularly thrilling for the younger and more progressive Democratic base, and he had never seemed to comfortable taking the limelight.
Mr. Scott, for his part, has carefully distanced himself from Trump in an election that has been highly disgusted by voters for the current government. During his eight years as governor, he has also somewhat tempered his conservatism of the Tea Party, preferring now to adopt more moderate measures regarding guns and immigration. But he adopted Mr. Trump's eloquent style after polling day, when he had to claim an unrestrained fraud that no one could prove.
Several Florida Republicans, allied with Mr. Scott, worried about the former health sector's proven ability to adapt to become a junior member of a legislative body where he would have no power executive. Mr. Scott is still deeply involved in the details of Florida's governance – and has been particularly involved in the process of creating a list of conservative judges for three vacant positions in the highest court of the state, which his successor, Mr. DeSantis, will select.
Source link
