Race to succeed Vern Buchanan in CD 16 is getting increasingly interesting

Sydney Gruters, wife of RNC Chair Joe Gruters, is running as the Republican in Florida's newly redrawn 16th Congressional District against Democrat Kelly Kirschner and NPA candidate Mark Davis. The district, once centered on Manatee County, now stretches across six counties after Republicans redrew it earlier this year in a push for additional GOP seats statewide.

Gruters, a former USDA rural development official and New College Foundation executive, has embraced Trump's endorsement even as some Florida Republicans distance themselves amid his sliding poll numbers. Kirschner, a former Sarasota mayor, has released an internal poll showing him ahead by a point in a district that leans 13 points Republican, and has attacked the Gruters family's political ties as old-fashioned machine politics.

Davis, a progressive NPA candidate and self-described ‘regular dude,’ says he entered the race out of frustration with the Trump administration. On healthcare, Kirschner wants to restore expired ACA subsidies that removed roughly 440,000 Floridians from coverage, while Gruters questions government's role in healthcare and touts rural clinic access she saw through her USDA work.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.