Orange County gets more blue after midterm elections

Dems flip 3 House seats with districts partially in Orange as GOP makes gains in other areas

TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s Legislature remains solidly Republican red after the midterm results, but Orange County got decidedly bluer, a bright spot in an otherwise bad night for Democrats in the Sunshine State.

Democrats flipped three state House seats with districts at least partially in Orange, making up for Republican gains in other parts of the state.

Anna Eskamani won House District 47, a seat centered in downtown Orlando that Republicans held with narrow victories the previous two elections. It was an open seat since Mike Miller opted to run for Congress, and she defeated Republican Stockton Reeves 57 to 43 percent.

She pointed to two main factors for Democrats’ success in Orange: demographics and Donald Trump.

“The branding of a moderate Republican — it doesn’t translate to anything for a voter because at the end of the day you supported this individual to become president,” Eskamani said. “We don’t see you standing up when he attacks communities of color or immigrants or pushes for policies that are homophobic.”

Democratic challenger Joy Goff-Marcil knocked off incumbent Rep. Bob Cortes, R-Altamonte Springs, to take House District 30, which straddles Orange and Seminole counties, covering Maitland and Eatonville.

Cortes said his six-point loss was due to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum’s push to get his base of voters out.

“The tough part that I had to deal with was the top of the ticket,” Cortes said. “The campaign strategy of Gillum was to win in the urban areas, and they did.”

Cortes, though, held his seat before even as Hillary Clinton won the district in 2016. Yet he doesn’t think Orange is lost to Republicans for the foreseeable future. They’ll have a chance to take back the seat in 2020, he believes, although he didn’t say whether he’d run again.

“I don’t think that’s the way things are going,” Cortes said. “This was a unique situation because even statewide you saw the number of Republicans that came out.”

Some of the Democratic success in Orange, though, may have come in spite of the party’s efforts.

Geraldine Thompson says she won a two-point victory over incumbent Rep. Bobby Olszewski, R-Winter Garden, to take the District 44 seat without the help of significant resources from the county or state party. She was outraised by Olszewski $260,000 to $68,000, according to campaign reports.

“It was surprising to me,” said Thompson, who previously served in the House and Senate from 2006 to 2016. “That was a seat the Democratic Party was looking to flip from red to blue,