Burgess, Maggard and Simpson claim victories
The “Red Wave” swept through the Florida mid-term elections today with Republicans scoring major victories in key races with incumbent Republican Governor Ron DeSantis winning handily over Charlie Crist and Republican Marco Rubio winning decisively over Democrat challenger Val Demings.
DeSantis won by 19 percentage points over Crist with over 4.1 million votes. The incumbent governor won by one of the biggest margins of victory in recent history. Rubio won the senate race that was supposed to be close by more than one million votes over Demings.
“We not only won the election, we rewrote the political map,” DeSantis said in his victory speech in Tampa.
Locally, Pasco turned a brighter red than ever with all races going to Republicans including local candidates Danny Burgess retaining his State Senate seat, Randy Maggard winning his seat in the State House and Wilton Simpson taking a statewide win to become Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture.
“The takeaway from this election is the people literally have spoken,” Burgess said. “Tonight was bigger than any person or party. We have heard what they want and what they don’t want.
“Whether it’s the sexualization of kids, mandated Covid shots, requiring a mask, another lockdown, and people went to the polls and spoke louder than ever before that they don’t want these things.”
Burgess, who took 65 percent of the vote in Pasco to Mike Harvey’s 34 percent in the District 23 Senate race, said the people of Florida wanted their choices to go to a back to basics approach to the issues. Overall, Burgess won the seat by more than 50,000 votes.
“There were principals everybody agreed upon, Democrat and Republican,” Burgess said. “Everybody had an understanding of the baseline standard and lately there has been an erosion. That backfired on the people who tried to sow those seeds.”
Burgess said the DeSantis led state government attracted people to Florida and to the polls to retain leadership of the Republican governor.
“The people coming to Florida aren’t just coming for the sunshine,” Burgess said. “They are coming for the freedom and to have a piece of what we have. We lead the country.
Maggard cruised to a 62 percent to 36 percent win in Pasco over Democrat Brian Stover to keep the State House seat 54. Maggard earned 41,321 votes to Stover’s 12,888 votes.
Simpson’s bid for state Commissioner of Agriculture was strong for the hometown boy in Pasco County. The former Florida State Senate President took 67 percent of the vote or 145,440 votes compared to 71,485 or 33 percent of the vote. Statewide, Simpson claimed more 4.1 million votes and his challenger Naomi Esther Blemur’s 2.9 million votes.