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Ashley Brundage will run in a battleground seat in November against a Republican incumbent.
A transgender woman won the Democratic nomination for a Florida House seat on Tuesday night.
Ashley Brundage, the founder and president of Empowering Differences. She won more than 81 percent of the vote in Florida House District 65’s Democratic Primary, which means she will now advance to face incumbent Republican Florida Rep. Karen Gonzalez Pittman in November. There, she will have a fighting chance in a district where a majority of voters favored President Joe Biden in 2020 over Republican former President Donald Trump. The district swung red in 2022 as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won a landslide re-election and enacted an anti-LGBTQ agenda.
“I am incredibly honored and humbled to announce that we’ve won the Democratic primary election with a resounding victory over 80% for Florida State House District 65!” Brundage posted on X.
If elected, Brundage would be the first transgender member of the Florida Legislature in state history. She will be one of three Democratic LGBTQ candidates looking to flip Florida House seats, along with Nate Douglas and Joe Saunders. Agenda PAC recently announced they will support both Saunders and Douglas as priority races nationwide. Both of those candidates won Democratic nominations without opposition, and support may soon now flood to Brundage.
But the election results were not as positive on Tuesday for another out Democrat running for a seat in the Florida Legislature.
Chad Klitzman ultimately won just 35 percent of the vote in the open Florida Senate District 35 Primary, losing to former Broward County Commissioner Barbara Sharief. Klitzman had the endorsement of Equality Florida but Sharief had run for the seat just two years prior.
Of note, Sharief promised to be a supporter of LGBTQ rights and job protections in Florida, and to advocate for trans people under fire in the state. The district leans heavily Democratic.
