Ricky Booth exploring run for redrawn CD 9, setting potential challenge to Darren Soto

Osceola County Commissioner Ricky Booth confirmed to Florida Politics that he may run in Florida’s 9th Congressional District. That could set up a high-profile challenge against Democratic U.S. Rep. Darren Soto.

“I am exploring,” Booth, an Osceola Republican, told Florida Politics.

CD 9 under a redistricted map just proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and passed by Florida’s Legislature, makes the Soto-represented seat ripe for a flip from Democratic to Republican control.

Under the current makeup of CD 9, almost 53% of voters supported President Donald Trump for President compared to 46% who supported Democrat Kamala Harris, but Soto won more than 55% of the vote there over Republican Thomas Chalifoux.

But under the proposed map, more than 58% of voters picked Trump and under 41% backed Harris. Perhaps more significant, a Hispanic population of voters in the current CD 9 gets scattered across several neighboring districts under the new map.

Soto has said he intends to support a legal challenge of the map.

Booth, part of a major ranching family based in Osceola County, graduated from St. Cloud High School. He is married to state Rep. Erika Booth, a St. Cloud Republican who won a seat in 2024 by unseating Democratic incumbent Tom Keen.

Both Booths previously served on the Osceola County School Board. Ricky Booth won election to the Osceola County Commission in 2020 and won a second term four years later.

Under the new map, the CD 9 has a large geographic footprint, including Orlando International Airport and most of Kissimmee in the north and spanning south to Moore Haven in Glades County. It stretches south to Okeechobee. An eastward branch of the district includes all of Indian River County.

Booth is reportedly one of several Republicans considering a run in the seat. Chalifoux, before the new map passed, had already filed, as had Gregory Carter, Jorge Malavet, Howard Rance and Justin Story. Soto was being targeted by the National Republican Congressional Committee.