In a state where legislative district lines have for decades been drawn to favor Republican dominance, Florida's state House District 68 is the rare swing seat.
At a Suncoast Tiger Bay Club forum in St. Pete Wednesday, moderator Peter Schorsch noted how the St. Pete-centered district has flipped more times than any other House district in recent years, and that political parties and PACs have been known to spend the amount of money reserved for a competitive Congressional race to get their candidate elected there.
Democratic State Rep. Dwight Dudley currently holds the seat, but he's running for judge this year, which leaves the seat open and thus a draw for both mjor parties.
Ahead of the August 30 primary, there are three candidates in the race: Republican J.B. Bensmihen and Democrats Ben Diamond and Eric Lynn.
Bensmihen has been running for months (he moved to the area in April), Diamond jumped in hours after Dudley announced he won't seek reelection and Lynn dropped his Congressional bid, which involved a tough, uphill climb against former governor Charlie Crist in the primary, to run against Diamond for the Democratic nomination.
While he didn't offer any specifics to the audience on why he chose to jump into H.D. 68 when there was already a viable candidate there, he did say that he left the Congressional District 13 race not because Crist was unbeatable and because of what it would have taken to beat Crist.
After all, Lynn said, he had jumped into the race in the first place to challenge Republican incumbent David Jolly, not another Democrat. The landscape changed, obviously, when Jolly dropped out (temporarily) to run for U.S. Senate.
“As the race moved on, as many people know, I was then challenged in the Dem primary by former governor Charlie Crist," he said. "And in that race, there were many people who told me that I could win. But the way that I could win that race…was to spend all the money that we were limited to that we had raised in negative attack ads[…].”
Over his roughly yearlong run, Lynn amassed about $775,000 in campaign contributions, an amount observers at the time found impressive.
Asked if it was fair to use that money, which supporters donated with the expectation he was aiming for the Congressional seat, for a state-level campaign, Lynn said no, but yes.
“I have always said that I believe we need changes in campaign finance reform," he said. "I think that it is wrong for anyone in the state of Florida to set up a political committee to take unlimited funds. Those funds should be limited in the same way that funds from a federal candidate should be limited.”
Yet…
“But currently, the law states that a political committee can accept unlimited funds,” Lynn said, so “transferring funds from a Congressional account into a state account is fully within the letter of the law.”
Moments later, Diamond criticized the move and suggested he walk the walk — an easy way to attack a candidate with whom he appeared during the forum to agree on nearly everything.
"I do not have a Washington war chest to use in the campaign," Diamond said. "And just because something may be legal doesn't mean it's right. And if my opponent has a concern about using the money the way he says he does, perhaps he and I could [have] a discussion about not doing that."
For Democratic voters in the district, which includes much of St. Petersburg as well as Lealman and Pinellas Park, the primary may be a tough choice.
The two share similarities on issues like health care, transit, the environment and a woman's right to choose. Lynn is a St. Petersburg-born former advisor to the Obama administration and Diamond, also Pinellas-born, is a lawyer who has long been active in the state and local Democratic party.
The winner of the primary will face newcomer J.B. Bensmihen, a seemingly moderate Republican who moved to the area from Palm Beach County, he said, in April.
This article appears in Jun 23-30, 2016.