Mucarsel-Powell will have to overcome Scott’s large fundraising apparatus to unseat an incumbent Republican senator in a GOP haven.
Former Democrat Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell has announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2024 in a direct challenge to sitting U.S. Senator Rick Scott.
Murcarsel-Powell lost her congressional post during the 2020 election, when Republican Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez defeated her by approximately three percentage points.
Her candidacy comes at a time when the Republican Party has a stranglehold on statewide elected offices. Every cabinet position and both U.S. Senate seats are controlled by the GOP, along with holding a supermajority in the Florida Legislature.
Murcarsel-Powell’s track record is also to the Left of many Florida voters. She will likely have to explain why she voted to impeach former President Donald Trump while she was a member of the Judiciary Committee.
Scott’s communications team referred to Murcarsel-Powell as a “socialist” and a “failed candidate.”
“We’d like to welcome yet another failed congressional candidate to the crowded Democrat primary,” Scott’s Communications Director Priscilla Ivasco said in a statement on Tuesday. “Former Congresswoman Mucarsel-Powell is a radical socialist who voted 100% of the time with Nancy Pelosi during her short tenure in Congress, which is why the voters of South Florida booted her out of office the first chance they got. Floridians already rejected her once and they will reject her again.”
Since her time in Congress, she has worked as a Senior Advisor for Giffords, a gun control advocacy group founded by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
