Could Tampa Bay’s Congressional District 15 race be competitive this fall?

Few national political analysts believe that any of Florida’s 28 congressional seats are in serious jeopardy of flipping this fall, but Pat Kemp, the Hillsborough County Democrat running against Republican Laurel Lee in Florida’s 15th Congressional District, says an internal poll shows she has a credible shot.

District 15 consists of portions of Hillsborough, Pasco, and Polk counties and is the state’s freshest congressional district, carved out after Florida received an additional seat following the 2020 federal U.S. Census. In its first election in 2022, Lee defeated by Democrat Alan Cohn by 17%.

A poll conducted for the Kemp campaign by Change Research of 511 likely voters between July 17 to July 19 showed Kemp within striking distance, trailing Lee 44%-41%, with 14% undecided. The survey found that, after voters were provided biographic information about both candidates, the race is a statistical tie, with Lee up over Kemp by just one point, 48%-47%, with 4% undecided. The margin of error was listed at +/- 4.9%.

The Lee campaign mocked the results of the survey.

“It’s laughable that a campaign would try pass off a month-old internal poll as credible, one that shows she is actually losing, and then say, ‘… after biographical statements’ it’s much closer,” said Lee spokesperson Sarah Bascom in a statement sent to the Phoenix on Friday.

“Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about campaigns knows how to slant the biographical information to give them the result they want. Like most well-run, credible campaigns, we don’t release internal polling, but we can say Congresswoman Lee is in a strong position to be reelected in the 15th Congressional District of Florida.”

The poll didn’t include the biographical details it provided about the two candidates.

Two veteran politicians

Kemp, 67, has served on the Hillsborough County Commission since 2016. She will be term-limited out of office in November. She’s a former Hillsborough County Democratic Party chair who served as a political aide to U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor when Castor herself served on the county commission. She has worked as a family law attorney and as news director at WUSF, the NPR affiliate in Tampa.

Lee, 50, served as Florida Secretary of State from 2019 to 2022 before being elected to Congress. Before that, she served as a trial judge in Florida’s 13th Judicial Circuit in Hillsborough County. She was a prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Florida. She serves on the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees and the Bipartisan Task Force to Investigate the Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump in the U.S. House.

Kemp notes that her poll was conducted just days before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and was replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris, who accepted her party’s nomination last week and has certainly added excitement to the presidential race in Florida.

The abortion factor

Kemp says that her poll was of “likely” voters, meaning those who regularly cast ballots. The district includes the University of South Florida’s large student body, who might not have been old enough to vote or simply didn’t vote in the past, but who may be more motivated to vote this year because of the proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot this fall regarding cannabis and abortion rights, she added.

“These kinds of polls, they don’t take in voters who have never voted before,” she said on WMNF radio on Friday.

Like many Democrats, Kemp will run hard on abortion rights. Her internal poll shows that Amendment 4, the constitutional amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot that would restore the right to abortion in Florida to the point of viability (considered to be 24 weeks) getting 60% of the vote in the district, which is the statewide  threshold required for passage.

“Laurel Lee celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade up until a couple of months ago,” Kemp said.

Lee did applaud the overturning of the Roe decision, saying she supported the court’s ruling to let the states decide. But she has been silent about Florida’s recently enacted six-week abortion ban, declining to comment when asked where she stands on the law when asked by the Tampa Bay Times about the issue in April.

Congressional District 15 is a red district, with nearly 38% of the electorate registered as Republican vs. 32% Democrats. The remaining 30% is registered as either Non-Party-Affiliated or with a third party.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and X.

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This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2024.