Democratic state Rep. Joy Goff-Marcil is running for state Senate this year, with the goal of unseating Republican Sen. Jason Brodeur.
Goff-Marcil, 53, of Maitland, revealed Friday she will file to run in the new Senate District 10, which includes Maitland and Winter Park as well as all of Seminole County.
Brodeur, R-Sanford, also has filed to run in the new seat, which resembles much of his current district.
A former Maitland city councilwoman and vice mayor, Goff-Marcil had been representing a state House district that included her hometown as well as parts of southern Seminole County since 2018.
But the new House map approved in the redistricting process combined Maitland with a new seat that included much of Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani’s current district. Eskamani filed to run in that district this week, telling the Orlando Sentinel that “everything will work out in a positive and exciting way” for her colleague.
Unlike federal offices such as Congress, state legislators are required by law to live in their district.
“I was drawn into Rep. Eskamani’s district, and I would not run against someone who’s doing a really good job,” Goff-Marcil said. “That doesn’t make sense. And this newly drawn Senate district is actually what I consider my [current] district, but they just added more of Seminole County, and I love Seminole County.”
Both the new District 10 and Brodeur’s current seat include all of Seminole County. But the new lines include Winter Park and Maitland instead of southern Volusia County.
The two Orange County cities have been trending Democratic, voting for President Biden in 2020, while the parts of Volusia no longer in the district voted for former President Trump.
Goff-Marcil said she decided to make the jump to the state Senate “to continue fighting for clean water and small businesses, expanding Medicaid, public education. … And the seat opened up where I can continue doing what I’ve been doing. Four years, to me, it’s really just gone by very quickly and there’s still a lot to do.”
Brodeur defeated attorney Patricia Sigman in 2020 with 50.3% of the vote to Sigman’s 47.6%, a 7,644-vote margin. But 5,787 votes went to independent candidate Jestine Iannotti, one of the “ghost candidates” backed by Republican strategists that affected three key races statewide.
Iannotti, a white woman who was planning to move to Sweden, was boosted as a left-leaning independent on mailers featuring a stock photo of a Black woman. The dark money that financed the ad campaign was controlled by consultants working closely with utility giant Florida Power & Light, the Orlando Sentinel has reported.
The musical chairs caused by the new maps have led to some other odd quirks while candidates sort themselves out.
As of Thursday, Republican state Reps. Blaise Ingoglia of Hernando County and Ralph Massullo of Citrus County remained listed as having filed for Senate District 10 despite the new map rearranging that district away from the Gulf Coast. The two would be expected to refile for the new District 11.
