Democrats are looking to take down a Donald Trump loyalist as part of a nationwide effort targeting right-wing MAGA conservatives.
Welcome PAC is backing select swing-district Democrats – including Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), Jared Golden (D-ME) and Mary Peltola (D-AK) – and endorsing challenger Whitney Fox against GOP incumbent Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), reported NOTUS.
“Not only is Whitney a candidate committed to bridging divides and welcoming conservatives into her coalition," said the PAC's co-founder Lauren Harper Pope, "but she’s running against an extremist who’s been stumping for an increasingly unpopular J.D. Vance."
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The PAC is specifically aimed at boosting centrist Democrats running against hard-line House conservatives who are closely aligned with Donald Trump, including Reps. Scott Perry (R-PA) and Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), and they're betting that anti-MAGA Republicans may come out in force to vote out extremists like them and Luna.
“These candidates who are more performative than substantive really serve more as a justification for the base, as opposed to a persuasive tool to bring more people into the fold,” said GOP consultant Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project. “[Luna's] chief characteristic is not her substantive understanding of policy, it’s her fealty to Donald Trump, and that’s what they’re looking for.”
Democrats believe Florida may be back in play due to voter concerns about property insurance and abortion, but Luna has significantly outraised Fox at $2.3 million to $845,000, and Republicans have a 10-point registration advantage in Florida’s 13th District, which Trump won by 7 points in 2020.
“I’m not here to be the loudest voice in the room but the most effective one,” Fox said. “With Welcome PAC’s support, we’re building a coalition of problem-solvers, not polarizers.”
Luna, a first-term Republican with a questionable background, has floated conspiracy theories, called for the arrest of attorney general Merrick Garland, and recently went viral for posing years ago in a MAGA swimsuit, flipped a district that's much white, older, and wealthier than most of Florida after Rep Charlie Crist (D-FL) declined to run for re-election to launch an ultimately unsuccessful gubernatorial bid.
“I think her main demographic is older white men,” said one Republican political consultant who compared her to Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). “To her credit, she has gotten as close to the line, I think, as you can to being super-MAGA without turning into a joke. Boebert has become a caricature, Anna Paulina is super-MAGA, I don’t think she has become a caricature.”
