Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
It didn’t take long on Election Night before Sen. Marco Rubio could breathe easy. After months of focusing on his stance as a national security hawk and riding high on MAGA support from former President Donald Trump, Rubio coasted to victory in Florida on Tuesday. ABC, NBC, and CNN had all declared Rubio the winner just a little after 8 p.m. EST.
He beat Rep. Val Demings (D-FL), a former Orlando police chief, who has now lost her seat in Congress.
Demings outraised and outspent Rubio by a long shot, burning through $68 million of the $72 million she pulled together. She focused on the GOP’s threat to women’s abortion rights, its anti-democratic fealty to Trump, and Rubio’s failure to fulfill his promises to Parkland shooting victims by not seeking to raise the age limit to buy an AR-15 rifle.