Politics
Secretary of State disqualifies Debbie Mayfield from running for her old SD 19 seat
The qualification deadline was Tuesday at noon.
The Florida Department of State has notified Rep. Debbie Mayfield that the state will not permit her to run as a candidate for Senate.
The Brevard Republican announced in November that she would run in a Special Election for her old seat in Senate District 19, shortly after Sen. Randy Fine announced he would resign to run for Congress.
Mayfield previously served in the Senate from 2016 to 2024 and could not run for re-election in November because of term limits. A constitutional amendment passed by Florida voters in 1992 prohibits incumbents who have held office for “the preceding eight years” from running for re-election.
But it doesn’t forbid officials from running for the same office again after a period out of office.
Republican consultants have said case law shows even a short break from office resets the clock as far as term limits are concerned. When an election challenge delayed the seating of former Rep. Jamie Grant following his 2014 re-election, he was eventually seated without his prior service being counted against his time.
But Florida’s State Department is taking a different position. Of note, Mayfield previously endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis for President, but changed her endorsement ahead of the Iowa caucuses to support President Donald Trump instead. Trump in turn endorsed her run for House last year.
Mayfield was running for her old Senate seat less than a year after leaving it. She won election in House District 32 last year, but already submitted her resignation to run for the Senate seat, as required by state law. DeSantis already called a Special Election for Mayfield’s House seat to unfold concurrently with the election for the SD 19 seat.
The qualification deadline for SD 19 passed at noon on Tuesday, but the Division of Elections took an unusually long time in updating its website to say if candidates qualified. This sparked speculation among consultants about whether the state was intentionally slowing the qualification process down.
That’s especially consequential as the qualification deadline for the Special Election to fill Mayfield’s HD 32 seat is at noon on Wednesday, just 24 hours after the deadline for SD 19. The notification means Mayfield can potentially file in the Special Election for the seat from which she has resigned.
The Division of Elections has also disqualified Gabriel Goddard, who filed for SD 19 on Tuesday and whose check payment was received one minute before the qualification deadline.
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