President Donald Trump suffered a humiliating wakeup call on Tuesday when a Democratic candidate won the election for the Florida House district that includes Mar-a-Lago.
Democrat Emily Gregory won the State House 87 seat in a special election against Republican Jon Maples.
The South Florida district includes parts of West Palm Beach, including Trump’s private club where he continues to spend many of his weekends.
Palm Beach County election records show the president even voted by mail in the special election, despite raging against vote-by-mail and trying to largely kill the option across the country.
Gregory won by more than two points, 51 percent to just under 49 percent, or just over 750 votes.
The double-digit blue shift comes after Trump won the district in 2024 by 11 points.
The blue wave was also felt in Tampa Bay, where Democrat Brian Nathan defeated Republican state Rep. Josie Tomkow, flipping the red seat in the special election for Senate District 14.
Gregory’s victory in flipping the district is the latest in a series of special election upsets at the state level, including in a number of red states, since Trump returned to office last year.
“Mar-a-Lago just flipped red to blue, which should have Republicans sweating the midterms,” said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) in a statement. “If Mar-a-Lago is vulnerable, imagine what’s possible this November.”
Gregory is a small business owner, military spouse, and mother of three boys who launched a campaign to flip the district from red to blue as Democrats look to chip away at the Republican supermajority in the state.
Republicans first flipped the district back in 2022, and Trump and Republicans won the district again in 2024, but Democrats have been seeing a shift at the state level, where a series of districts have since gone blue since the president returned to power.
Gregory ran largely on affordability, an issue the president has repeatedly decried as a hoax by Democrats. She also focused on health care and supporting public schools.
Maples is a businessman who ran as an America First conservative candidate and outsider. He focused on cutting taxes, spending, and insurance premiums in his state.
The seat became vacant last August when state Rep. Mike Caruso resigned to become county clerk and comptroller. Caruso won the district in 2024 by 19 points over his Democratic opponents.
The president on Monday put his followers on blast with a Truth Social post urging Floridians to get out and vote for Maples. He praised him as a “very successful Businessman and Civic Leader, who is known and loved,” and argued he would be a “terrific Legislator!”
But the results show the president’s posted endorsements for elections where he is not also on the ballot only go so far, and could prove problematic for Republicans in the midterms.
“I think it’s really telling that the president’s home district is competitive in the environment that we are in right now,” Williams told Daily Beast ahead of the election.
Democrats have now flipped 29 state seats since Trump’s election, including the Florida seat in Tuesday’s special election. Republicans have flipped zero.
Earlier this month, Democrats also flipped a New Hampshire seat that Trump won easily in both 2020 and 2024, as well as an Arkansas one, where the Democrat won by double digits.
