Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy is seriously considering a bid to unseat Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2022 reelection, announcing Wednesday that she’s launching a statewide listening tour and has hired a top Democratic operative to manage the effort.
Murphy, 42, has been elected three times to one of Florida’s most competitive congressional districts in Orlando, and first won the seat by knocking out 12-term incumbent GOP Rep. John Mica when few thought she could. It was a giant-killer act that Democrats hope she can repeat if she takes on Rubio, widely seen as a hard-to-beat incumbent.
“I know what it takes to defeat a powerful incumbent because I’ve done it. I know what it takes to develop the fundraising and grassroots operation — that machine to win in a swing district — because I’ve done it three times,” Murphy told POLITICO in announcing her new initiative, called “Cast Forward with Stephanie Murphy.”
The announcement was paired with an introductory biographical ad on YouTube where Murphy describes herself as “a patriot, not a politician.”
Murphy, acknowledging she’s “seriously considering” a senate bid in either 2022 or 2024 when GOP Sen. Rick Scott is up for reelection, said her initiative is designed to “regroup, refocus, and reenergize Florida Democrats” who have watched Republicans out-organize, out-message and out-vote them, turning the once-purple swing state into a reddish battleground.
The initiative, which will at first be a series of virtual conversations with party leaders and activists across the state, will be managed for Murphy by the Florida Democratic Party’s former political director, Lauren Calmet, who was just hired by the congresswoman. The conversations, Murphy said, will revolve around five pillars: the Covid-19 pandemic, managing misinformation, combating climate change, advancing social justice and fighting voter suppression.
Murphy said she wanted to start as soon as possible in a non-election year based on the advice she received last week from Stacey Abrams, the Georgia Democrat who helped organize her party and register so many new voters that it helped the once-red state defeat Donald Trump and elect two Democrats to the U.S. Senate. Murphy said she wants her effort to build the “right money, message, and machine” to make Democrats competitive in the state, which would include ramping up voter-registration efforts after Republicans wiped out this once-potent advantage of Democrats last year.
