Politics
Jared Moskowitz wins Primary for new CD 25, will take on Scott Singer in November
U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz survived a challenge from his left Tuesday night, winning the Democratic Primary in Florida’s 25th Congressional District with more than 66% of the vote to defeat Democratic Socialist Oliver Larkin.
Moskowitz now faces Republican Scott Singer, a former Boca Raton Mayor who emerged from a five-way GOP field with 33% of the vote. Former state Rep. George Moraitis finished second at 26% and Dan Franzese third at 24.3%, outpacing Raven Harrison and Joe Kaufman.
The November contest will test whether the incumbent can hold a seat redrawn to favor Republicans and targeted by both national parties.
Once a Broward County district represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, CD 25 now runs as a narrow coastal strip down the Atlantic, from Delray Beach in Palm Beach County, through Broward and into Miami-Dade’s barrier island communities, including Sunny Isles Beach, Bal Harbour and Miami Beach.
President Donald Trump carried the redrawn District by about 9 percentage points in 2024. Joe Biden won the same territory by 3 points four years earlier.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved CD 25’s rating from “Safe Democratic” to “Toss-up” after the map passed. Cook Political Report agreed.
Voters with no party affiliation form the district’s largest bloc at 35.9%, ahead of Republicans at 32.9% and Democrats at 31.2%. Roughly a quarter of voters are Jewish — likely the highest concentration of such voters in the state under the new map’s district lines, an MCI Maps analysis found.
That second detail shaped both Primaries, driving a Democratic fight over Israel and competition on the GOP side over who could claim the strongest pro-Israel credentials. And while Moskowitz largely ignored Larkin heading into Election Day, the Republican contest turned into an ugly intraparty fight.
Democratic Primary
Moskowitz, a two-term Parkland incumbent, is a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High alum who helped pass the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act as a state Representative.
He then served as DeSantis’ Emergency Management Director and, under another DeSantis appointment, as a Broward County Commissioner before winning his prior CD 23 seat in 2022.
He is now Vice Chair of the Congressional Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and has been a standout voice on Capitol Hill in criticizing Trump and House Republicans, speaking out against rising antisemitism and calling for Federal Emergency Management Agency funding to be fully replenished.
Moskowitz, 45, held a strong funding lead in the Primary, with $2.66 million raised and $1.89 million still banked as of the last quarterly reporting period. Endorsers of his campaign included AFSCME Florida, Giffords, Stop Gun Violence, the Broward AFL-CIO and the Miami Herald.
His vulnerabilities were primarily from the left. He was the first Democrat to join the Republican-led DOGE Caucus after the 2024 election — he says the group met three times and accomplished nothing — and the Florida AFL-CIO endorsed every House Democrat from Florida except him.
He drew criticism for stock trading and for accepting money from Alligator Alcatraz contractors, whom he says he’s known since his emergency management days.
He also declined to appear at forums alongside his opponent, prompting the South Florida Sun-Sentinel to withhold an endorsement in the Democratic Primary.
Larkin, 34, is a Fort Lauderdale native, digital marketing consultant and former union organizer who got his start as a New Hampshire organizer for Bernie Sanders‘ 2016 presidential campaign.
He ran on a platform prioritizing a $25 minimum wage, Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, lifting the U.S. embargo on Cuba and ending military aid to Israel.
The Democratic Socialists of America poured resources into Larkin’s campaign, and supporters included state Rep. Angie Nixon, Dream Defenders co-founder Phillip Agnew, Progressive Democrats of America and Peace Action.
He raised $542,000 and closed June with $193,000 on hand.
Larkin had a bumpy final month. A virtual fundraiser headlined by socialist influencer Hasan Piker, whom the Anti-Defamation League has criticized over anti-Jewish rhetoric — Moskowitz is Jewish; Larkin is Catholic, according to Ballotpedia — became a central line of attack against him.
In late July, Larkin falsely claimed Moskowitz backed out of a debate the incumbent never agreed to attend.
But Larkin’s outspokenness won him ample fans. Fox News abruptly ended an interview with him after he brought up Trump’s presence in the Jeffrey Epstein files, prompting headlines about the incident.
He also won plaudits from anti-Israel voters by agreeing with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s assertion that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested and referring to the world’s only Jewish nation as a “religious supremacist regime.”
Polling heavily favored Moskowitz. A recent Beacon Insights survey found him with a nearly 36-percentage-point lead over Larkin — up about 4 points from the month prior.
Republican Primary
On the GOP side, the contest was colored less by policy than by opposition research. All five candidates ran as Trump-aligned conservatives on the same core platform — border security, tax cuts, federal spending reductions and unequivocal support for Israel — leaving the field competing over authenticity rather than agenda.
Two candidates built websites attacking each other, while a third had the most institutional backing and the least ability to broadcast it.
Absent from the race was an actual Trump endorsement, which everyone involved treated as a game-changer.
Leading the money race was Singer, a Georgetown-trained lawyer and three-time Boca Raton Mayor who reached term limits in March. He continues to serve as Chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Mayor’s Council.
Since filing to run for Congress last year, when he vowed to bring “accountability” to Washington, Singer amassed roughly $2 million and had just under half that sum heading into the third quarter.
His endorsers included U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez, Attorney General James Uthmeier, former Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and a dozen-plus municipal officials.
He took a lot of incoming fire. A website funded by Primary foe Franzese cast him as “Biden’s Boca Boy” and a “fake Republican” who gave preferential treatment to developers while trying to quadruple his government pay as Mayor.
Rivals also hit Singer’s 2022 proclamation of a Muslim-American Heritage Month in Boca Raton and his backing of a downtown redevelopment project that fueled the successful “Save Boca” backlash movement this year.
Franzese, a Wharton MBA recipient and former National Bank of Canada Managing Director who recently turned 64, made another run at Congress after falling short against Democratic U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel in 2022 and 2024 — the latter of which with Trump’s endorsement.
U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, political operative Roger Stone, commentator Dick Morris and the Second Amendment Constitutionalists of Florida backed Franzese’s campaign, which raised about $1.48 million and spent $1.02 million by July 1.
Singer’s campaign branded Franzese “Shady Dan” over a since-paid New York tax warrant and his former employer’s environmental and social governance (ESG) policies. In turn, Franzese’s lawyers sent a cease and desist letter.
Moraitis, 55, was the only candidate in the field who has held legislative office. A Fort Lauderdale native and 1992 Naval Academy graduate, he spent eight years as a submarine officer and retired from the Navy Reserve as a lieutenant commander in 2012.
He now practices real estate law in Fort Lauderdale.
Moraitis served four terms in the House representing northeast Broward and southeast Palm Beach counties until term limits ended his run in 2018. He chaired the Broward Republican Party from 2017 to 2020.
He raised $839,000 and had $532,000 on hand by Q3 — third in money, but second in a newly released McLaughlin & Associates poll, which showed Franzese leading with 28% support, followed by Moraitis at 23% and Singer at 19%.
Notably, Franzese’s campaign commissioned the survey.
U.S. Reps. Gus Bilirakis, Jake Ellzey, Scott Franklin, Mike Haridopolos and Greg Steube backed Moraitis, along with some 20 local officials. The Sun-Sentinel’s editorial board, in its endorsement of Moraitis, described him as “less strident” than his rivals, citing his 2018 vote to raise the long gun purchase age to 21 — a position Moraitis still defends, but Singer rejects.
Rounding out the Republican Primary ticket in CD 25 were Harrison and Kaufman.
Harrison, a 52-year-old author, conservative media commentator and former marketing executive who ran in Texas’ 26th Congressional District in 2022, raised $778,000 — most of it her money — and spent all but $112,000 of it.
Kaufman, 56, took about 48% of the vote against Moskowitz in 2024, despite running at a significant funding disadvantage.
He raised much more this cycle, $631,500, and spent sparingly, leaving $527,500 in his coffers by the close of Q2.
Kaufman, a counterterrorism expert, is the founder of Americans Against Hate — now the Joe Kaufman Security Initiative — and is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has characterized as a platform for anti-Muslim voices.
In 2024, the South Florida Muslim Federation sued Kaufman and others over the cancellation of its annual conference at a Coral Springs Marriott, which Kaufman had urged the hotel to drop. A Judge first dismissed the case in 2025, then reinstated it on reconsideration, and it remains pending as of this writing.
The McLaughlin poll found Kaufman with 7% Primary voter support and Harrison with 2%.
Libertarian Peter Jassenoff will appear on the Nov. 3 General Election ballot with the winners of the Democratic and Republican Primaries.
Also running: write-in candidate Michaelangelo Hamilton, whom Florida Politics first covered in 2022 for being too young to run for Congress but doing so anyway.
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