After a long campaign for a rare open seat in Florida’s 23rd Congressional District, Jared Moskowitz won the primary election for the Democratic nomination Tuesday night.
Winning against other primary candidates Ben Sorensen and Hava Holzhauer, Moskowitz won with a little over 60% of the vote.
The seat for the 23rd congressional district, which covers northern Broward County, parts of Southern Palm Beach County and most of Fort Lauderdale, became open after U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, who has served the district since 2010, decided to leave the seat to become the CEO of the American Jewish Committee.
Moskowitz, as the winner of the Democratic primary, now emerges as the likely favorite to win the general election in November, as the district leans primarily Democrat.
Much of the campaign was about name recognition and experience as Moskowitz was the most well-known among the candidates, having served as a former state representative from northwest Broward, the former city commissioner in Parkland and worked as the former state emergency management director under Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In terms of endorsements, Moskowitz had the most with over 130 from groups such as the Florida State Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, family members of those who were killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 3080.
Sorensen had about 30 endorsements from groups such as the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida and highlighted his experience with working on issues at the federal level, as well as his work with bettering infrastructure, and preventing a gun show at a city building in Holiday Park.
Holzhauer, a former leader of the ADL regional office in Florida, positioned herself as a champion for justice issues such as abortion rights, voting rights and marriage equality. She garnered some endorsements from the LGBTQ+ group Palm Beach County Human Rights Council and Joanne Goodwin, past president of the North Broward Democratic Club.
During the campaign season, Holzhauer and Sorensen’s campaigns focused on what they called Moskowitz’s ties to DeSantis, pointing out that the governor had nominated him to two key positions: emergency management director where he oversaw the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to Broward County commissioner.
This, they said, suggested that Moskowitz didn’t uphold Democratic principles, a theme that Sorensen hit repeatedly while campaigning.
“I’m proud as a lifelong Democrat to stand up to Ron DeSantis. One of our opponents Jared Moskowitz has worked for Ron DeSantis, enabled his COVID policies. That is not what we need in our member of Congress,” Sorensen said previously at a candidate forum.
Moskowitz repeatedly said that he fought for Democratic values while working under DeSantis, saying that while he did his best to fight against some of the policies in the administration, he wasn’t always successful.
There were a handful of other less well-known candidates in the Democratic primary election: Allen Ellison, Michaelangelo Collins Hamilton and W. Michael “Mike” Trout. They didn’t raise as much money as the three other candidates and they were not included by the Broward Democratic Party on the list it made of primary candidates.
Staff writer Anthony Man contributed to this report.
