The Democrat who flipped Mar-a-Lago blue said she would be happy to hear from her most famous constituent, President Donald Trump.
“I would love to have a conversation,” Emily Gregory told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “He’s welcome to call me, as I am his new state representative.”
Gregory, 40, stunned the nation on Tuesday with her defeat of Republican Jon Maples in a special election for the State House 87 seat. She won the seat by more than two points, with 51 percent over Maples’s just under 49 percent.
Her predecessor, Republican Mike Caruso, won by a 19-point margin in 2024 before leaving the role to fulfill his appointment as the state’s circuit court clerk and comptroller.
The formerly deep red district encompasses parts of West Palm Beach, including Mar-a-Lago, where Trump, 79, has been registered to vote since 2019. The Republican president had won the district by 11 points in 2024.
Gregory told the outlet that she was a “proud Florida Democrat,” but didn’t include her opposition to Trump as a focus of her campaign.
“I just see myself as very embedded in my community, very representative of District 87,” she said. “And I’m so humbled and proud to be their representative.”
Gregory chose not to center her campaign around Trump, instead focusing on “what everybody needs,” she said on MS NOW on Tuesday, including affordability, strong public schools, and expanded health care.
“He was not a part of my campaign, whereas my opponent put him at the forefront of his campaign,” she told the Daily Beast on Wednesday.
“It was on all of his literature and he touted the (president’s) endorsement at every turn, so that was a big part of his race. But I think the results show that the real issues for voters are more important, rather than what the president’s personal opinion is.”
Trump had previously endorsed Gregory’s opponent, Maples, and voted for him by mail, despite his public stance against the practice as part of his campaign to pass the SAVE America Act. On Monday, the president referred to mail-in voting as “mail-in cheating.”
“The erosion of trust in our election systems is all manipulation by those who want to stay in power,” she told the Daily Beast.
Trump has yet to comment on the outcome of the race, as of Wednesday evening.
The shocking victory, along with Brian Nathan’s Democratic win in Tampa for Senate District 14, bodes well for a greater blue wave nationwide in spite of the Republican administration’s unpopular policies and Trump’s war in Iran.
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House for comment.
