Florida
Democrats claiming Florida Senate seat is in play haven't put money behind the effort to make it so
BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Florida Democrats made bold claims last week about their chances in a state that has steadily grown more conservative in recent years. But so far they have not matched their words with the kind of money it will take to win there.
“Florida is in play,” proclaimed Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former representative from Miami, at the start of a bus tour in defense of women’s reproductive rights in Boynton Beach. Mucarsel-Powell is the choice of Florida Democrats to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Rick Scott for one of a handful of Senate seats the GOP is defending this election cycle.
According to data from AdImpact, which tracks spending on advertising by political campaigns and their surrogates, Republicans have outspent Democrats on Florida’s U.S. Senate race by roughly a 4-to-1 margin through Sept. 11, $12.7 million to $3.2 million. Based on ad spots currently reserved through the general election, that margin is expected to grow.
The dynamics of the Senate race mirror what has happened in the presidential race in a state that used to be hotly contested by both parties’ top-of-the-ticket candidates. Vice President Kamala Harris did not attend the launch of the bus tour and has not been to Florida as a candidate since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president in the race against Republican former President Donald Trump.
The Republicans’ massive spending advantage may help to explain why Scott scoffs at the claims coming from Democrats about Florida being competitive.
“They are so far from what Florida voters believe in, that they don’t have a chance in the world of winning Florida,” he said in an interview last week. “They don’t have a chance of beating Trump, and they don’t have a chance of beating me.”
Mucarsel-Powell says her side is more in touch with voters on issues such as reproductive rights. She says ballot amendments on both abortion rights and legalizing marijuana will help Democrats turn out voters. She also said the switch from Biden to Harris gave Florida Democrats a burst of fresh momentum.
“This is momentum that has been building for quite some time, and her announcement just was like the tip of the iceberg on the momentum and the energy that was building here around the state of Florida,” Mucarsel-Powell said in an interview.
A national AP-NORC survey conducted in July showed that about 8 in 10 Democrats said they’d be satisfied with Harris as the party’s nominee for president, versus 4 in 10 Democrats in March saying they’d be satisfied with Biden as the nominee.
But Mucarsel-Powell’s task remains formidable. Although some polling shows Scott leading narrowly in the Senate race, national Democrats have yet to invest heavily in Florida’s expensive media markets. Harris, who has proven to be a prolific fundraiser since she became the Democratic nominee, recently allocated $25 million of her own campaign funds to help down-ballot Democrats in November — with only $10 million of those funds going to U.S. Senate candidates. Harris’ campaign did not respond to questions on how these funds were being allocated.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said it has spent money on staffing and digital advertising on the race but didn’t specify how much. In a statement, they did not address plans for spending going forward but said: “Scott’s unpopularity coupled with the strength of Debbie Mucarsel-Powell’s campaign makes Florida one of Senate Democrats top offensive opportunities.”
Scott, who has his eye on a Senate leadership position if he wins, said he would welcome a bigger effort from national Democrats.
“I hope they spend a bunch of money and waste it, because they don’t have a chance of winning the Senate in Florida,” he said.
Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried said national Democrats showed their support by starting their bus tour in Florida and sending campaign representatives there to support Democratic candidates. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who is in a strong enough position in her own reelection bid to work on behalf of other Democrats around the country, was one of several Democrats who joined Mucarsel-Powell at the start of the bus tour.
“They could have started anywhere else in the country. They started here in Palm Beach County, in Donald Trump’s backyard,” Fried said. “That shows how important Florida is, and that they are going to continue to watch what is happening on the ground, send surrogates here and making sure that we are in play for November.”
About 150 people attended the bus tour event.
Fried acknowledged that Democrats have been outspent on advertising in Florida, but she said they’re putting their energy into campaigning at the grassroots level. She said 40,000 new volunteers signed up after Harris entered the race and were making an all-out effort to knock on doors and reach out to Florida voters by phone.
This year’s Florida ballot looks different from the one voters saw two years ago, where U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis led the top of Florida’s ticket. The governor had hoped to ride a wave of momentum from his emphatic 19-point victory to national prominence but was unable to loosen Trump’s grip on the Republican Party nationally.
Trump, now a Florida resident, defeated Biden in Florida by 3.3 percentage points in 2020, further diminishing its status as a swing state.
Brian Ballard, a Republican political strategist who was a top fundraiser for Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, said the lackluster spending effort by Democrats will make it harder for Mucarsel-Powell to introduce herself to people across the state who don’t recognize her — as opposed to Scott, who was Florida’s governor from 2010 to 2018 and has since then been serving in the Senate.
The lack of spending from the national party, Ballard said, is “usually a sign of a losing campaign.”
“Florida is not in play,” Ballard said. “I hope the Democrats commit and spend a lot of money in Florida on the presidential race. It’ll move the needle not at all. If she’s relying on Democrats spending on top of the ticket, she’s relying on fool’s gold.”
The Florida contest has not drawn much attention from national Democrats, who are trying to hold onto far more Senate seats than Republicans this year. Instead, they have focused much of their energy and resources on defending seats they already hold, including in the red states of Ohio and Montana. Still, the Florida U.S. Senate race was close in late July, just before the Florida Senate primaries, according to a poll of Florida voters conducted by the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab.
Scott said in the interview that he isn’t “taking a chance” by treating his own race lightly. And yet he has spent at least some of his time campaigning for other Republicans, including a trip across state lines to battleground Georgia last week for a town hall in Braselton, northeast of Atlanta.
“This is a team sport,” Scott said of his efforts on behalf of other GOP candidates.
Tiffany Lanier, 36, attended the bus tour Tuesday morning in Boynton Beach. Lanier, a Lake Worth civic engagement public speaker, said that although Biden ran on a similar platform to Harris, she thinks Harris’ position and emphasis on abortion rights really excites and motivates people to turn out to vote.
“I think it was more like in my wilder dreams that Florida would be in play for this November,” Lanier said. “I know that we are so very tight in the polls, but I do see that there is an energetic shift. And so, I do see a lot of possibility here.”
___
Chief elections analyst Chad Day contributed to this report.
The trail started in the early 1500s when the Spanish would drop off cattle in Fort Pierce on the east coast and drive them across the state to the Manatee River on the west coast for shipping.
Florida’s 39th annual Florida Cracker Trail Ride to Fort Pierce
The 39th annual Florida Cracker Trail Ride to downtown Fort Pierce.
Editor’s note: In celebration of America’s 250th birthday in 2026, TCPalm/Treasure Coast Newspapers takes a look throughout the year at some of our region’s history and landmarks important to all of America.
The Florida Cracker Trail is older than America.
It started in the early 1500s when Spain owned Florida. The Spanish would drop off Andalusian cattle in what’s now Fort Pierce on the east coast, drive them across the state to the Manatee River on the west coast, then put the cattle on a barge and take them to Mexico.
The 146-mile trail was the only dry route across the state to move cattle, said Mike Harrison president of the Florida Cracker Trail Association.
The Kissimmee River and its floodplains were to the north, and Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades were to the south.
“Florida was the first state to have cattle drives and the last state to have cattle drives” Harrison said. “They’ve been using the same route for over 500 years.”
The Florida Cracker Association paraded through downtown Fort Pierce
Hundreds gathered to watch the annual Florida Cracker Trail Ride from Bradenton and ending in downtown Fort Pierce on Saturday, Feb. 25, 2023.
KAILA JONES/TCPALM, Wochit
When Florida became part of the United States in 1821, the wild cattle left behind by the Spanish roamed free. Florida officially became the 27th state in 1845.
Early settlers would have wild cow hunts using the trail, except for the Manatee River. Instead, they would take cattle to Punta Rassa in Southwest Florida near Sanibel Island to ship to Cuba.
“Every group of people, every color — the Seminoles, the Black people, the freed slaves — all of them at one point were collecting these wild cows and making money off them in Florida,” Harrison said.
They were called cowmen or cattlemen — never cowboys like out West — because they had to hunt the cows on horseback in the Florida swamps, he said.
They became known as Florida Crackers because they used long bullwhips between 10 and 12 feet long made of braided leather.
“The cows would get bogged down in the wetlands,” Harrison said, “and the Crackers would use the whips to keep them moving.”
The snaps of their whips would break the sound barrier and create tiny sonic booms that could be heard for miles, he said, making a loud crack.
“People knew that the Crackers were coming,” Harrison said.
Re-enacting that rough ride annually
Every year, typically in February when the weather is cooler, Harrison is part of a group of riders who honor the history of the Cracker Trail with a cross-state ride.
From west to east, the trail follows State Road 64, or Bradenton-Arcadia Road, to a small part of U.S. 17, then County Road 66 to U.S. 98 to County Road 68, then a small part of U.S. 441 before back to C.R. 68, which is Orange Avenue, into downtown Fort Pierce.
It attracts between 60 and 200 riders each year, Harrison said, depending on the weather and the economy, especially gas prices.
The riders camp for over a week on a different ranch each night across the state, ending with a Saturday parade into downtown Fort Pierce.
“It is not a pleasure ride — it is an endurance ride,” Harrison said. “It’s grueling.”
The ranches have changed over the years and so has the route. The original 146-mile trail is now shortened to about 120 miles starting east of Bradenton because of development, he said.
But they still move slow like the Crackers who didn’t want to overwork the fat cows, going at a grazing speed of about 3 mph across the state.
“When you go on horseback, you’re going to see everything, and you get to really enjoy Florida,” Harrison said. “Now you see a lot more asphalt than you used to, a lot more houses, but there’s still some great ranches.”
‘Keep some agricultural history alive’
The Florida Cracker Trail Association formed in 1987 and started the annual cross-state ride the following year.
Harrison, who’s been president of the association for over eight years, is the second-longest-running member of the organization at over 35 years.
“We wanted to keep some agricultural history alive,” Harrison said. “We wanted people to remember the Florida Cracker Trail was a route that was used to get Florida on the map. It was the economic development of cattle and this agriculture corridor that brought success to Florida.”
The Florida Cracker Trail was selected as a Community Millennium Trail in 2000, according to its website. Millennium Trails was a partnership between the White House Millennium Council, the Department of Transportation, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, the National Endowment for the Arts and other public agencies and private organizations.
The goal was to create of a nation-wide network of trails that protect natural environment, interpret history and culture, and enhance alternative transportation, recreation and tourism.
The Cracker Trail Museum is on the actual trail in Zolfo Springs, according to its website. The Hardee County museum is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday, but it’s closed for lunch.
The historic Cracker Trail is a reminder of how Florida got its economic start before America was born, Harrison said.
“We knew the development would come, so we wanted people to remember this little corridor,” Harrison said. “These rural communities that we go through, they’re there because of agriculture, not because of Disneyland.”
Laurie K. Blandford is a breaking news reporter with TCPalm. Email her at laurie.blandford@tcpalm.com.
Florida
Man, 74, becomes oldest inmate executed in Florida in state’s 10th lethal injection this year
STARKE, Fla. — Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was one of three older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state.
Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said. He was convicted of killing a woman on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.
Alex Lanfranconi, a spokesman for the governor, said the execution was carried out without complications and that Sochor issued an apology in his final words, saying he was “deeply sorry” for his actions.
Another 74-year-old inmate just a week younger than Sochor at the time of execution was put to death late last month. And later this month, the state is preparing to execute an 80-year-old, the state’s first octogenarian scheduled to receive a lethal injection.
The execution plans highlight the aging death row population in the U.S. and the busy death chamber in Florida, which has now carried out 10 executions this year — more than every other state combined.
It’s unclear why Florida scheduled the executions of the three prisoners consecutively.
Maria DeLiberato, legal director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, noted that in Florida the governor has practically sole discretion when it comes to scheduling executions. In many other death penalty states, the scheduling is up to the courts.
DeSantis did not respond to an email prior to Tuesday’s lethal injection seeking comment about the executions.
According to court records, 18-year-old Patricia Gifford was celebrating the upcoming New Year with a friend at a Fort Lauderdale area bar when they met Sochor and his brother in the waning hours of 1981.
The four spent several hours talking, but after the friend became ill and went to sleep in her car, Gifford left with Sochor and his brother to get breakfast. But instead of going for food, Sochor stopped his truck in a secluded area and attacked Gifford when she refused to have sex with him, according to investigators.
Sochor was later arrested in Georgia in 1986 on unrelated charges and extradited to Florida. Sochor’s brother told police that Sochor was responsible for Gifford’s disappearance, and Sochor himself confessed on tape to choking Gifford and disposing of her body, which was never found. A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and kidnapping in 1987, and he was sentenced to death.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Sochor’s last request to intervene.
And last week, the state Supreme Court denied Sochor’s appeals. His attorneys had argued that the state violated his right to a fair trial by failing to disclose a 2022 letter sent to Sochor’s brother from a South Florida detective asking for information about the location of Gifford’s body. The attorneys also claimed that the execution drugs wouldn’t effectively keep Sochor sedated.
On June 25, Florida executed 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer for the killing of his wife Karen. Until Tuesday, Spencer was the oldest inmate executed in Florida.
According to Florida Department of Corrections records, the oldest inmates executed by the state before Spencer were both 72: Samuel Lee Smithers on Oct. 14, 2025, for the 1996 killings of two women and R. Charlie Gifford on Feb. 21, 1951, for the 1950 shooting of a state representative, Charles Schuh Jr.
Meanwhile, Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, is scheduled to be executed July 28 for the killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents.
He would become the second oldest prisoner known to be put to death in modern U.S. history after 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr. Moody was executed in Alabama in 2018 for killing a federal judge and a Black civil rights attorney during a wave of Southern mail bombs.
A total of 16 executions have been carried out this year in the U.S., with Florida, so far, carrying out more than all other states combined.
Florida carried out a record 19 executions in 2025. DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was eight executions set in 2014.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
Florida
Skunks, warthogs & monkeys, oh my! Here’s what Florida records reveal about 140+ captive animal escapes since 2022
Kangaroos, monkeys, giant lizards, snakes and a 2,000-pound white rhinoceros are among more than 140 animals that escaped from captivity in Florida since 2022, according to state wildlife records obtained by News4JAX sister station WKMG in Orlando.
The escaped animals, which include some exotic and non-native species that require a state license to possess, slipped away from enclosures located in homes, businesses, wildlife sanctuaries and accredited zoos.
One notable case includes a white rhinoceros at Wild Florida in Osceola County in 2022. The rhino was supposed to be part of a new exhibit at the park, but it escaped its enclosure and, in the end, was killed.
The USDA determined the park violated the federal Animal Welfare Act in that case.
Another case involved a kangaroo in Volusia County that escaped its enclosure after a bear damaged it in 2024. The kangaroo was eventually found and the owner was fined.
Several escapes have been reported at the Jacksonville Zoo & Botanical Gardens since 2022, but in each case, the critters were recaptured by zoo staff and no injuries were reported.
In one case at the zoo, during an education program on April 1, 2022, a cane toad kept in a small container was left on a wagon in a portable classroom while everyone went outside for the outdoor segment.
Video security footage later showed the cane toad hopping out of its container and then heading out a door that was left ajar. Staff set traps near the portables and searched for days before recapturing the cane toad on April 18, 2022.
Only certain species of captive animals must be reported to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission when they escape. The state agency believes those escapes are under-reported due to the owners’ apprehension and fear of enforcement action.
INTERACTIVE MAP: Tracking animal escapes around Central Florida
According to FWC records obtained and compiled by WKMG investigative reporter Mike DeForest, escaped animals in the Northeast Florida area since 2022 include:
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Striped Skunk — High Springs (Alachua County), Feb. 2022; captured by neighbor and returned to owner
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White-faced capuchins (3) — Gainesville (Alachua County), March 2022; two of the monkeys never left the property of Koreymonde Capuchin Rescue and were recaptured quickly. The third monkey was caught by a neighbor luring it into vehicle where it was contained.
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Cane Toad — Jacksonville (Duval County), April 2022; a cane toad used in education programs at Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens escaped from a small container that was placed in a wagon in the classroom when everyone went outside for the outdoor segment of the program; video security footage shows the cane toad hopping out of its container and then heading out a door that was left ajar; later recaptured by zoo staff
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Wild Turkey — Jacksonville (Duval County), October 2022; two turkeys in the Wild Florida exhibit at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens escaped; one went back in immediately and the other jumped out and ran down the tracks toward the bald eagle exhibit. Staff netted the turkey behind the scenes between the bald eagle and whooping crane exhibit
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Fox — Lake City (Columbia County), January 2023; remains loose; owner issued written warning
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Raccoons (2) — Hilliard (Nassau County), March 2023; 2 disabled raccoons escaped and are presumed dead
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Axis Deer — Robert’s Ranch BHP (Putnam County), April 2023; recaptured by owner, who received written warning
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Capybara — (Duval County), March 2024; recaptured by owner
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Chinese Alligator — St. Augustine (St. Johns County), April 2024; escaped at St. Augustine Alligator Farm; recaptured by staff
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Fennec Fox — Yulee (Nassau County), Aug. 2024; recaptured by owner, who received written warning
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Capuchins (2) — Gainesville (Alachua County), Oct. 2024; escaped from Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary; recaptured by staff
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Warthog — Jacksonville (Duval County), Dec. 2024; escaped at Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens; recaptured by staff
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Red Fox — Jacksonville (Duval County), March 2025; fox escaped from owner, killed by car
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Ring-tailed Lemur — Jacksonville (Duval County), April 2025; escaped from same owner as red fox above; recaptured by owner, who received a written warning
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Blackbuck — Gainesville (Alachua County), April 2025; escaped and was killed on a road
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Boa constrictor — Yulee (Nassau County), June 2025; escaped and was recaptured by unpermitted owner, who received written warning
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Beaded lizard — Gainesville (Alachua County), June 2025; escaped and was recaptured by owner, who received written warning
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Black throat monitor — Jacksonville (Duval County), July 2025; escaped unpermitted owner and remains on the loose; written warning issued/misdemeanor pending
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Rhino Iguana — Gainesville (Alachua County), Aug. 2025; escaped and was recaptured by owner
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Wattled Crane — Jacksonville (Duval County), Aug. 2025; escaped at Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens before being recaptured
Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.
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