This Palm Beach County Florida House seat held by a Republican may be a 'coin toss' in 2024

The legislative supermajority that allowed Florida Republicans to steamroll Democrats in Tallahassee was partly achieved by flipping districts from blue to red last year.

One of those was Florida House District 91, which includes Boca Raton and Highland Beach. But is this district now a lock for the GOP, or will a Democratic candidate who has entered the race be able to win it back?

A Palm Beach County Republican, incumbent state Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman, currently holds the longtime Democratic seat she won in a GOP red wave in November that also claimed county commission seats. Gossett-Seidman has said she will be running for re-election.

But a Democratic challenger, consumer protection lawyer Jay Shooster, has said he will run as well. Shooster said he will focus on abortion rights, gun violence prevention and property insurance in challenging for the House post.

Boca Raton area Florida House District won by GOP in 2022 a must for state Democrats in 2024

Democratic political strategist Eric Johnson said the district's boundaries were redrawn after the decennial U.S. Census in 2020 and the seat is a competitive one. A strong Democratic candidate would "absolutely make this a coin toss," he said.

Johnson added that District 91 is one of a number of others across the state that are on the front lines of his party's efforts to narrow what is now an overwhelming 84- to 35-seat GOP majority in the Florida House.

"It's critical for the state Legislature," Johnson said. "Democrats need to pick some seats back up, and this is one of the best opportunities."

Gossett-Seidman successfully beat Democratic rival Andy Thomson in what was an open seat last year with nearly 52% of the vote as she rode Gov. Ron DeSantis' coattails in the county. Despite the Democrats' sizeable advantage in voter registrations, the governor won Palm Beach County with 51.2% of the vote as he cruised to a nearly 20-point statewide win in last year's election.

Reddened county: A political shift in blue Palm Beach County? A historic reddening is taking place

Before the boundary changes, the district previously included central and western areas of Boca Raton, Boynton Beach and Delray Beach. It is now encompassing Boca Raton and Highland Beach.

A breakdown on the district from the Palm Beach County supervisor of elections from early June shows that Democrats outnumber Republican voters only by 768 registered voters, and nearly 40,000 people are registered without an affiliated party. Before redistricting, former Democratic Rep. Emily Slosberg-King won her elections in this district by more than 60% of the vote — assuming she even had a Republican opponent.

Election data from 2022 shows that independent voters casting ballots tilted toward Republicans, a marked change from 2020 when they broke for Democrats, said Richard Pinsky, an environmental public policy manager with Akerman law firm and a former GOP consultant.

Republican incumbent, Democratic rival seeking votes in evenly split Florida House district

Gossett-Seidman, a freshman Republican, says she plans on keeping the seat, period. She spent her first legislative session in Tallahassee this spring championing environmental reforms, including pushing for clean water bills, flooding regulations and infrastructure improvements.

Gossett-Seidman points out she successfully steered money for mental health initiatives, education, environmental programs and flood control into the fiscal year 2023-2024 state budget. The reason she put such an emphasis on these issues, she said, was that she heard constituents mostly talk to her about roadways, flooding, prices and property insurance while she was campaigning a year ago.

"I think people are looking at Republicans to be fiscally sound and take care of the things to keep the very basics of life, and that's what the focus is in Boca," Gossett-Seidman said. "There's more conservativism here than people believe that people understand."

Budget wins in Palm Beach County: DeSantis wields budget veto pen, but funding for Palm Beach County projects mostly safe

Gossett-Seidman leads in elections: House District 91: Peggy Gossett-Seidman takes slight lead over Andy Thomson

Contrary to most Republican House members, Gossett-Seidman voted against this year’s controversial six-week abortion ban, alongside other Republicans in South Florida. When asked, she said it was not “the right vote” and said her focus was on issues she heard from voters when knocking on doors: clean water, taxes and insurance.

Shooster has never served in state office, but his resume does include legal cases challenging misleading marketing claims by food companies and his advocacy for environmental and animal rights.

Locally, Shooster was an artificial intelligence policy fellow at Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Future Mind, and he’s involved in Moms Demand Action, which advocates for gun violence prevention. He also was the leader for the Florida chapter of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, and he continues to help organize events with them.

Since his campaign launch earlier in June, Shooster has acquired endorsements from Palm Beach County Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, state Sens. Tina Polsky and Lori Berman and state Reps. Joe Casello and Kelly Skidmore.

Shooster said the District 91 seat is very competitive, but he believes that voters are "energized by the other radical policies that the Republicans has advanced this past cycle" and that next year's elections will produce a "backlash" against Republicans in flipping the seat back to blue.

More: The majority of Florida Democrats stayed home from the polls in 2022. What happens now?

He said that voter motivation will also be higher in 2024 because it is a presidential election year, which generates more turnout, and that Democratic voters might also be energized by a constitutional amendment on the ballot to protect abortion.

"I also think that the Republican Party has gone from one extreme abortion measure to an even more extreme measure that has woken up a lot of people," Shooster said. "I think it is absolutely going to be a motivating force, and I think people are waking up to this reality here and I see it every day."

Stephany Matat is a politics reporter for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY-Florida network. Reach her at smatat@pbpost.com. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida Democrats seek rebound by eroding GOP legislative supermajority