National GOP sets sights on beating US Rep. Soto next year

On paper, U.S. Rep. Darren Soto’s reelection in 2022 was supposed to be easier than in the past. It turned out to be his closest contest ever.

Now, the national GOP thinks they can finally win the seat in a largely Hispanic area in Osceola and south Orange counties that has been trending rightward since 2018. And they’ve recruited a familiar name in former state Rep. John Quiñones, the first Republican of Puerto Rican descent to serve in Tallahassee.

“John Quiñones has dedicated his career to fighting for a strong economy, safe communities and quality education for the people of Florida,” said Quiñones spokesman Chris Duffy. “… He truly fits this diverse community that is aggressively trending away from the extreme Democratic agenda towards the GOP.”

Quiñones did not respond to a request for an interview.

Soto, however, told the Orlando Sentinel he has “a strong record of delivering for the district that we’ll be running on through reelection.”

“We brought billions back to the district from the infrastructure law,” Soto said. “We saw the biggest increase in veterans benefits in the last 50 years through the PACT Act, and we’re also going to see a new [Veterans Administration] tower” in Lake Nona.

“Couple that with environmental issues we’re working on, from getting additional money for the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes and improving water quality in Orange County, we have a lot to run on.”

Soto was one of 75 Democrats on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s target list for 2022, despite new maps imposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and approved by the GOP Legislature that shored up Republican seats elsewhere by making Soto’s district more Democratic.

Amid a red wave in Florida aided by plummeting turnout from Democratic Hispanics, Soto ended up winning reelection over Republican Scotty Moore by just 7 points.

Republicans have placed Soto on an even shorter list of targets for 2024, with potentially more money and support making its way to the GOP candidate this time around.

The party has pointed to its gains in Osceola County, the traditionally Democratic heart of the Puerto Rican community in Florida. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott got almost 42% of the vote there in 2018, and the county also saw a 10-point boost for Trump in 2020 compared with 2016, one of the largest swings in the country.

The bottom dropped out for Democrats in the 2022 election, in which Gov. Ron DeSantis won the Osceola by 7 points after losing to Democrat Andrew Gillum by nearly 19 points there four years earlier.

Republican turnout in congressional District 9 was also 17 points higher than Democrats in 2022, said Matt Isbell, a Democratic analyst who runs the MCIMaps site. Isbell said the issue was less about Hispanic votes shifting to Republicans than Democratic voters simply not turning out.

“The electorate that showed up was much whiter and Republican than normal,” Isbell said. “So my take is that as long as Democrats can just not do that badly again, Soto should be pretty favored. It’s a much more Democratic seat on paper.”

Soto echoed that assessment, saying the 2022 election in Florida will end up looking more like the 2010 “Tea Party” election, a red wave in a midterm year followed by a solid turnout for Democrats in a presidential year.

“There’ll be a lot more money this time statewide for Democrats,” Soto said. “… This time around the president will have a billion dollars-plus to spend on his campaign and we should get a decent amount in Florida. And that’s going to definitely make a huge difference in turnout.”

Under the new district lines, Biden would have won it by 18 points in 2020, Soto said. “And we feel like we could turn out that kind of vote and potentially then some, especially if a several-times convicted former President Donald Trump is the nominee.”

Republicans, though, think they have a solid potential nominee in Quiñones, whose sole opponent so far in the GOP primary is Kissimmee real estate agent Angel Luis Coba.

Quiñones, 58, served more than four years in the state House and more than seven years on the Osceola County Commission, including a stretch as chair. But he came up short in his last two races, including a failed bid for Congress in 2012 and a narrow defeat for reelection to the commission in 2014.

In his 2012 GOP congressional primary race, Quiñones was attacked by then-Democratic U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson in mailers as “John Quiñones: The Tax Man” for his past support of a $2 daily tax on rental car customers. The bill had been widely supported in Republican circles but ultimately vetoed by Gov. Jeb Bush.

If Grayson was trying to wound Quiñones to draw a more conservative, less-threatening general election opponent, it worked. Quiñones came in third in the primary to attorney Todd Long, who Grayson defeated in a landslide.

“Granted, he has to get through the primary, but he would definitely be one of your stronger candidates,” Isbell said of Quiñones. “Obviously, there was a reason Alan Grayson basically [interfered in] his primary back in 2012.”

Quiñones leaving Tallahassee for the Osceola Commission back in 2007 had an unplanned side effect. Soto, 45, of Kissimmee, started his political career by winning the special election for that seat.

Soto served in both the state House and Senate before he was first elected to Congress in 2016 along with fellow Democrats Stephanie Murphy and Val Demings. Both left the House last year, leaving Soto the dean of a depleted Central Florida Democratic delegation that only includes himself and freshman U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Orlando.

His slightly Democratic-leaning seat in Osceola and parts of Orange and Polk counties was more contested in the Democratic primary than in the general election, with Soto fighting off a heated challenge from Grayson in 2018.

Meanwhile, his first two GOP opponents for reelection, Wayne Liebnitsky and Bill Olsen, got relatively little support from the national party and lost to Soto by double digits.

Delanie Bomar, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, previewed the 2024 strategy against Soto.

“Darren Soto is extreme and out of touch with Floridians: voting against funding the military, ignoring parents’ rights and embracing an anti-law enforcement agenda,” Bomar said in a statement.

Soto defended his record, saying House Republicans “cut Veterans Housing in that [military] budget, which is why most Democrats voted no and a few Republicans voted no. … These are partisan bills, and they continue to try to politicize the veterans budget with culture wars.”

He also said millions of dollars flowed into Central Florida to fund law enforcement through COPS Office grants and anti-terrorism funding.

One development that could threaten Soto would be if voting rights lawsuits against DeSantis’ map are successful and the district is redrawn to something closer to the old lines, which included much more of Polk County.

Under the old map, Isbell said, “it could have been a shock loss for Soto [last year]. So I think the redistricting saved him in a lot of ways.”

____