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NEVER MIND WISCONSIN  
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Charlie Mahtesian
April 2, 2025
Politico
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_ The GOP Should be Worried About the Florida Results. _

Elon Musk speaks at a town hall, March 30, 2025, in Green Bay,
Wisconsin., Jeffrey Phelps/AP

 

From the time the Donald Trump-Elon Musk governing partnership took
shape, it’s had an expiration date attached to it. The relationship
wasn’t built to last — the egos were too big, the principals too
mercurial, the politics surrounding the world’s richest man’s
efforts to reshape the federal government too radioactive.

Now, POLITICO’s Rachael Bade reports
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it’s coming to an end. In the coming weeks, Musk will begin dialing
back his role in Washington. Trump has told his inner circle and
members of his Cabinet that both men have agreed he’ll be
transitioning out of the administration and his polarizing role atop
the DOGE initiative and stepping into a more supportive role.

For Republicans, Musk’s departure can’t come soon enough. On
Tuesday, in the first big test of the national mood in the wake of
Musk’s slashing tenure atop DOGE, persuasive evidence emerged that
the tech mogul has become a political liability.

It wasn’t just the outcome in Wisconsin, where Democrats won a
contentious swing-state Supreme Court race that functioned as a
referendum on Musk. It was the results in Florida, in one of the
nation’s most rock-ribbed Republican House districts, that suggested
Musk’s political blast radius could be a problem for the GOP going
into the 2026 midterm elections.

There were two special House elections in Florida Tuesday, both in
comfortably Republican districts where Democrats typically don’t
have a prayer. It was clear going in that Democrats were poised to
overperform in each of them — a result of grassroots rage toward
Trump and the party’s frequent advantage in special and off-year
elections.

The Democratic nominees in both districts indeed ran better than
expected — far better than in 2024 — but in the end, the GOP held
both seats. Yet the Republican victory in Florida’s Panhandle-based
1st District obscured a troubling harbinger that appears to be
connected to Musk — a loss in Pensacola’s Escambia County.

Closer to Dallas than to Miami, Escambia is the westernmost county in
the state. Like much of the state’s Panhandle, its politics are more
Deep South than South Florida. It’s the least red of the four
counties that make up the district, but that’s misleading given the
region’s general conservative orientation: Escambia, which borders
Alabama, hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since
1960. It’s a place that voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964, George
Wallace in 1968, delivered a nearly 20-point victory to Trump in 2024
and also voted for polarizing former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz by big
margins — even after the sex scandal allegations.

On Tuesday, however, Escambia County broke with habit and narrowly
voted for Democrat Gay Valimont over Republican Jimmy Patronis. In
2024, when Valimont was also the Democratic nominee, she lost there by
14 points.

In fact, across the four counties that make up the 1st District,
Valimont lost by 32 points in 2024. On Tuesday, that margin was cut in
half — she lost by 15.

While it’s too early to say for certain, Musk’s Department of
Government Efficiency initiative appears to have played a material
role in the changed circumstances. There are more federal workers in
Florida’s 1st District than in any of state’s 27 other
congressional districts [[link removed]].
Many of them are based in the Pensacola area — known as the Cradle
of Naval Aviation — where the military imprint is impossible to
miss. Navy installations include Pensacola Naval Air Station, Saufley
Field and Corry Station. There’s also Whiting Field, about 30 miles
northeast of Pensacola.

The military presence is so far-reaching that a financial service
center for Navy Federal Credit Union — which is not a government
entity but rather a credit union that serves military personnel,
retirees and their families, Department of Defense civilian employees
and government employees and contractors assigned to DOD installations
— is the largest non-governmental employer in Escambia County
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In nearby Okaloosa County, Eglin Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field are
the largest employers. Neighboring Santa Rosa County has many bedroom
communities that serve these installations.

The federal government imprint doesn’t stop there — park rangers
have already been laid off
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at the region’s Gulf Islands National Seashore.

What the 1st District special election results suggest is that voters
imposed a Musk tax on the GOP. It wasn’t enough to flip a seat in a
conservative House district in Florida, but it was big enough that it
should be a concern in other regions with sprawling military complexes
— such as Hampton Roads, Virginia, or the San Diego area — and in
places with sizable concentrations of federal workers.

Not only is Musk himself underwater in terms of his popularity
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polls show DOGE/government funding to be among the least popular items
on Trump’s policy agenda
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departure from the scene will be welcome news to Republicans who will
be on next year’s ballot. The question is whether it’s too late
for those in competitive districts.

* Florida
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* Elon Musk
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