Winner and Loser of the Week in Florida politics — Week of 7.20.26

Is Republican Rep. Fabián Basabe on the verge of losing his seat?

Last week, a Leon County jury found Basabe liable for battery, sexual harassment and defaming two former staffers, ordering him to pay a combined $450,000 to his two accusers. The Miami Beach Republican represented himself at trial and rested his case without calling a single witness.

This week brought the beginning of a political reckoning. Multiple elected officials who previously backed Basabe’s re-election bid publicly pulled their support, pointing straight at the jury’s findings as the reason.

The most notable came from Democratic Rep. Jose Alvarez, a former Kissimmee Mayor who endorsed Basabe last Summer in part because Basabe had helped get Alvarez’s first bill through the Legislature during his freshman year. That relationship wasn’t enough to survive last week’s verdict, with Alvarez telling Florida Politics he simply can’t stand behind someone with that record.

Surfside Commissioner Ruben Coto and Bal Harbour Council Member Buzzy Sklar also rescinded their support. Coto, a Republican who backed Basabe in November, said his prior support no longer holds, no matter how much work Basabe has put in for the area. Sklar went further, posting a blunt verdict of his own alongside a call for Basabe to leave office.

Sunny Isles Beach Commissioner Alex Lama followed, saying he was “disgusted.”

Basabe’s math isn’t getting any easier, either. His two Democratic rivals for the seat, Lucia Báez-Geller and Ashley Litwin Diego, have each pulled in more campaign cash than he has this cycle.

Democrats were always going to have their eye on this seat in November. The better question now is: Do Republicans seek to abandon ship before this gets any worse?

Now, it’s on to our weekly game of winners and losers.

Winners

Honorable mention: Kathy Castor. Democratic U.S. Rep. Castor is beating two leading Republicans in the running for her seat in a district GOP mapmakers built specifically to retire her, according to a new St. Pete Polls survey commissioned by Florida Politics this week.

The numbers show her beating former state Rep. Mike Beltran by 8 points, 46% to 38%, and edging state Rep. Kevin Steele 46% to 39%. Republicans redrew Florida’s 14th Congressional District to lean about 11 points toward Trump, carving up the Tampa Bay seat Castor has held since 2007.

But Democrats have tried labeling the DeSantis map a “dummymander.” That term describes a gerrymander that overreaches so badly it hands the targeted party an unintended opening, usually by spreading the favored party’s own voters too thin across too many districts, or by underestimating how strong an entrenched incumbent really is.

Castor’s seat may be an example of that very problem.

She didn’t hold back when the new lines came out, saying DeSantis “chose to give a political favor to Trump rather than protect Floridians’ constitutional rights.” These latest survey results are giving her renewed confidence, and she’s backing up the poll numbers with fundraising — a million-dollar quarter left her with $1.3 million on hand heading into August.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is already treating this week’s numbers as proof the strategy backfired. Spokesperson Anna Elsasser said flatly that “their dummymander is blowing up in their faces,” arguing that Tampa is sticking by the Congresswoman because she’s delivered results for the district.

Professional handicappers aren’t ready to call it, though — Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball both still rate CD 14 as “Leans Republican.” But for a map built specifically to end Castor’s two-decade run in Congress, “close” isn’t what Republicans had in mind. And come November, Castor could come out of this unscathed.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest winner: Demi Busatta. Busatta spent this week playing host to the country’s biggest gathering of conservative state lawmakers, running the show as National Chair of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

ALEC brought its 53rd Annual Meeting to Orlando, pulling legislators in from across the country for several days of policy debate. Busatta welcomed the crowd by touting her home state’s record, telling attendees Florida has “set the standard for education freedom and economic competitiveness.”

The Cape Coral Republican didn’t arrive at the gavel by accident. Before running for office, she spent time as a development director for a nonprofit, then served as Chief of Staff to former state Sen. Anitere Flores and worked in the Florida Senate Sergeant-at-Arms office. She has held her House seat since 2020.

The lineup she assembled for Orlando helped spotlight the network’s national pull. Attendees heard from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, future Florida House Speaker Jennifer Canady, Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz, former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, economist Stephen Moore, and radio host Hugh Hewitt, who broadcast his show live from the conference floor for several days running.

Legislators also spent the week debating roughly ninety pieces of proposed model legislation spanning topics like AI’s role in health care, reforming Medicaid, watchdogging government spending and countering foreign influence. ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson and President and Chief Economist Jonathan Williams both helped steer the sessions alongside Busatta.

By the time the gavel came down, Busatta had turned her Chair position into a showcase for both ALEC and the state she represents.

The biggest winner: Florida Democrats. The Florida Democratic Party (FDP) spent last weekend throwing its biggest event of the year.

Party faithful gathered at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort for the annual Leadership Blue weekend, capped by a Saturday night gala headlined by former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. This swing through Central Florida was yet another stop on Buttigieg’s tour of the country since leaving the Cabinet, a trip most people read as early positioning for a possible 2028 White House run.

Buttigieg didn’t sugarcoat the math Democrats are up against in a state where Republican registrants now outnumber Democrats by more than a million and a half, but he pushed back hard on the idea that Florida is a lost cause.

The weekend doubled as a showcase for the bench replacing that leadership. Incoming Senate Democratic Leader Tracie Davis and incoming House Democratic Leader Christine Hunschofsky both took the stage, alongside U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, who arrived fresh off an automatic re-election as no one filed to challenge him.

Gubernatorial hopeful David Jolly supplied one of the weekend’s loudest applause lines, telling the crowd that “if the election were tonight, we would win this race” against Republican Byron Donalds. He spent much of his speech arguing Donalds had let deep-pocketed interests buy his loyalty, drawing repeated cheers from the room.

As FDP Chair Nikki Fried attempts to eat into the GOP’s growing edge in Florida, Leadership Blue looked like exactly the kind of energized, well-attended show of force a minority party hopes to put on before a Midterm.

Losers

Dishonorable mention: Jackie Espinosa. The Kissimmee Mayor is facing possible removal from office after an independent investigator concluded she broke the city’s ethics code over a COVID relief program tied to her own family’s businesses.

Special Prosecutor Mayanne Downs spent months digging through seven separate ethics allegations before releasing her findings in a 13-page report Thursday.

She cleared Espinosa on four of the counts — including accusations that the mayor cut off a public speaker mid-meeting and pushed through refunds for people she knew — but found clear grounds to proceed on the remaining three: an improper conflict of interest, a failure to disclose a financial stake, and disregarding formal advice from the City Attorney.

All three tie back to Business Boost 2.0, a city initiative created to funnel federal pandemic relief dollars to struggling small businesses. Espinosa herself cast the vote to expand that program, and businesses connected to her and her relatives went on to collect $50,000 from it.

Former City Attorney Olga Sanchez de Fuentes had flagged the arrangement months earlier, telling Espinosa and City Manager Mike Steigerwald in a December email that she believed the payments ran afoul of state ethics rulings — citing three separate opinions from the Florida Commission on Ethics on elected officials benefiting from programs under their own control.

Espinosa kept the funding anyway.

Downs’ report didn’t pull punches, declaring that “no warning should have been necessary; the oath of office is warning enough.” She also recommended referring the matter to outside law enforcement and called for a full accounting — and the return — of the missing money.

Espinosa didn’t make the review easy, initially refusing to cooperate and filing an appeal that slowed the special prosecutor’s work by months. Now, her team is signaling a fight rather than a resignation.

The impeachment recommendation now heads to the Kissimmee City Commission to decide what happens next.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest loser: Paula Stark. Stark’s bid to save her House seat has collapsed for good, closing out a monthslong saga that started with a single missing form from an incumbent lawmaker who should know better.

Stark, a two-term St. Cloud Republican representing House District 47, was left off the 2026 ballot after the state said her campaign never turned in a required financial disclosure, known as Form 6, by the noon June 12 qualifying deadline.

Stark and her campaign Treasurer — and partner — Joel Davis insisted the form had been hand-delivered in Tallahassee, only to be mistakenly returned to Davis by a confused clerk.

Five Division of Elections staffers who worked the counter that day told a different story under oath, testifying that everything they received before the deadline got stamped, and that they had no memory of handing anything back. Leon Circuit Judge Joshua Hawkes sided with the state staffers on July 9, writing that “the Form 6 was not turned in before the noon deadline.”

He gave Stark seven days to explain why the case shouldn’t be dismissed. She failed to do so, so Hawkes refused to put Stark back on the ballot by issuing a final order of dismissal.

Stark brought in attorney Anthony Sabatini to lead an appeal, a hire that landed the same day a Judge tossed out another Sabatini case entirely — his effort to remove U.S. Rep. Cory Mills from Florida’s 7th Congressional District ballot — with prejudice. Mills didn’t hold back afterward, saying Sabatini had “proven he can’t just lose campaigns but is equally a terrible attorney.”

Why Stark would want to tie her fate to Sabatini is a mystery, but she learned the hard way what most in The Process already know: Sabatini is a surefire loser.

That ruling effectively flips District 47 to the Democrats. With no Republican qualified, Jorge Figueroa and Anthony Nieves will face off in an Aug. 18 Primary open to every registered voter in the district, regardless of party.

When the ballot fight first broke, Stark said she just wanted the process to play out fairly, insisting “it is important that facts — not speculation, assumptions, or political spin — guide the conversation.”

In the end, the facts were exactly what sank her.

The biggest loser: Cory Mills. Speaking of Mills, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into Mills this week, according to a report by MS NOW that was quickly confirmed by other outlets.

Sources told reporters the inquiry touches on Mills’ personal finances, though the exact scope hasn’t been made public. One source added that the FBI had already reached out to at least one person last year with questions about Mills’ money and the broader allegations swirling around him. Mills brushed off the news when a reporter asked him about it, saying “this is the first I’m hearing about it.”

The DOJ probe piles onto an existing House Ethics Committee investigation that’s been running since November. That inquiry covers a wide range of allegations, from sexual misconduct and improper gifts to campaign finance violations and misuse of congressional resources.

The paper trail behind Mills’ campaign has drawn scrutiny before this. A 2024 referral from the Office of Congressional Ethics flagged the $1.8 million Mills poured into his own campaign across the 2021-2022 election cycle, questioning where the money actually came from.

The same referral raised concerns about his defense company, Pacem Defense, and a related business called ALS, which have collected close to $1 million in federal munitions contracts since 2023 — the kind of government business members of Congress are generally barred from holding a stake in.

None of this is new territory for Mills, who has faced down calls to resign and a censure push over the past year alone. House Republican leaders have so far declined to remove him from the conference, pointing to the ongoing Ethics Committee review as reason enough to withhold judgment.

A federal criminal investigation makes that argument considerably harder to sustain.