Democratic candidate Emily Gregory is projected to win a special election on Tuesday evening for a Florida state House seat representing a Palm Beach County district whose residents include President Donald Trump.

Gregory’s projected victory over Jon Maples, the 43-year-old Republican endorsed by Trump, would flip the House District 87 seat from GOP control. The district includes Trump’s Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, where he holds residency.

With more than 95% of the votes counted as of 9 p.m. ET, Gregory was leading Maples by 51.2% to 48.8%

Gregory’s expected win was immediately touted by Democrats as yet another warning sign to Republicans for the upcoming 2026 midterm elections.

Since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, 29 seats in state legislatures around the country have been flipped from Republican control by Democratic candidates.

“If Democrats can win in Trump’s backyard, we sure as hell can win anywhere across the country. Onward to November!” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said in a post on the social media site X.

Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee President Heather Williams, in a statement, said, “Mar-a-Lago just flipped red to blue, which should have Republicans sweating the midterms.”

“A Trump +11 district in his own backyard shouldn’t be in play for Democrats, but tonight proves Republicans are vulnerable everywhere,” Williams said. “Gas prices are spiking, grocery costs are up, and families can’t get by – it’s clear voters at the polls are fed up with Republicans.”

“If Mar-a-Lago is vulnerable, imagine what’s possible this November,” she said. “Democrats are clearly on offense as we prepare for the most expansive midterm strategy ever down-ballot, with 650 seats in play. 2026 is shaping up to be an election for the history books.”

Gregory, a 40-year-old small business owner, had not sought elected office before this year. She is expected to seek election to a full two-year term in November.

The special election was held to fill the seat previously held by Mike Caruso, a Republican who resigned in August to become Palm Beach County clerk.

Caruso, who won District 87 in the 2024 election by nearly 20 percentage points, was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had unsuccessfully sought the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, which was won by Trump.

Trump had praised Maples at an event in Florida on Saturday, calling the candidate up on stage.

“I’m honored that the voters of District 87 have placed their trust in me,” Gregory said in a statement on Tuesday night.

“Tonight’s result sends a clear message that people want Florida to move in a new direction, one where leaders focus on lowering costs and standing up for working families,” Gregory said.

“Floridians are being squeezed by rising housing costs, insurance rates, and everyday expenses, and that’s what this campaign has always been about: making Florida more affordable and making sure our state works for the people who live here,” she said.

Maples’ campaign did not immediately reply to a request for comment by CNBC.

Emily Gregory, a small business owner and first-time candidate for elected office, is looking to score an upset in a Florida special election on Tuesday to represent Mar-a-Lago in the state legislature.

Gregory is a Democrat running for state House District 87, which runs up the coast of southeast Florida and includes Palm Beach — where President Donald Trump’s home and resort is located — as well as South Palm Beach and Juno Beach.

“It is the kind of district that fits just kind of outside the bubble of what we’ve seen Democratic over-performance in these targeted races,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in an interview with journalists from CNBC and MS Now. “We could win it. If we don’t win it it’s not going to be a surprise.”

Gregory is squaring off against Trump-endorsed candidate Jon Maples — a financial advisor and former college basketball player — in a district the GOP has controlled since 2022.

Republican Mike Caruso, who represented the area in the state House until his resignation in 2025, won reelection in 2024 by 19 points. But as Trump’s approval ratings dip and Democrats throughout the country are showing gains in special elections, Gregory and her supporters see an opportunity to play spoiler and potentially pick up a seat with major symbolic value.

But according to Gregory, Trump is not the focal point.

“It’s impacted people’s interest in talking to me about it,” Gregory said in an interview. “He is a constituent. But I am more focused on all 115,000 voters in District 87, not just the one.”

But in the MAGA era, Trump cuts a large figure even in some state and local races, particularly ones where the president has a personal stake. In January, Trump endorsed Maples, who last year stepped away from his seat on the Lake Clarke Shores Town Council.

Maples did not respond to multiple phone calls to his financial advisory office. His campaign did not respond to multiple emailed requests for comment. The Republican Party of Florida did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

“As your next State Representative, Jon will fight tirelessly to Grow the Economy, Cut Taxes and Regulations, Promote MADE IN THE U.S.A., Stop Migrant Crime, Safeguard our Elections, Support our Military, Veterans, and Law Enforcement, and Defend our always under siege Second Amendment,” the president wrote in a post to Truth Social in January.

Trump became a Florida resident in 2019, during his first term as president.

Maples has branded himself a “conservative outsider. America First patriot.”

On his campaign website, Maples says he would focus on “congested roads, polluted waterways” and “affordability challenges, from inflation to soaring insurance premiums to ever-increasing property taxes.” After notching Trump’s endorsement, Maples called the president “the most transformative leader I’ve seen in my lifetime” in a social media post.

“The positive impacts of his presidency will be felt for generations — from the liberation of Venezuela, to the incredible trade deals he’s negotiating, to securing the Southern Border after 4 years of open border policies. America is better off with Donald J Trump in the White House,” Maples posted to Instagram.

Gregory is eager to talk about affordability issues. She said she would be focused on addressing the state’s property insurance crisis and concerns about spiking health insurance costs with the expiration of Affordable Care Act tax subsidies earlier this year. She said the state legislature should expand Medicaid, stop gutting public education and focus more on kitchen table issues.

“The legislature is focused on attacking vulnerable communities and participating in culture wars and not solving the affordability crisis in the state,” Gregory said.

But Gregory has an uphill climb to win on Tuesday in a state where Republicans have a cash advantage and outnumber registered Democratic voters by more than a million. 

Gregory sees hopes in national trends of Democrats overperforming in special elections in the last year, including in ruby-red Florida.

Democrats outperformed 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in nine special elections in Florida in 2025, in some cases by double digits, according to local outlet MCI Maps. And in December, Eileen Higgins became the first Democrat to win a mayoral race in Miami in nearly 30 years.

“We’ve knocked all of the doors, we’ve made all of the calls. I’m really proud of the campaign we ran. I think it’s going to be close, and I think we’re going to come out on the right side of it,” Gregory said.

The Strait of Hormuz shutdown caused by the war in Iran is jacking up fertilizer prices, hitting farmers in their pocketbooks and threatening to raise food prices.

Now, Democrats trying to win the U.S. midterm elections in November see another new opportunity to pound the affordability crisis and turn the tide after years of losses in the states that produce crops and livestock.

The Strait of Hormuz is a critical channel for fertilizer, including about 50% of global nitrogen-rich urea fertilizers, according to the Fertilizer Institute, the industry’s trade association. The strait has been effectively impassable since President Donald Trump launched the assault, which is now in its third week with no end in sight.

The closure has spiked fertilizer prices just before planting season, potentially scrambling decision-making for farmers across the U.S. And it comes on top of already low commodity prices that have lingered for years and eaten into farmers’ margins.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” Matt Frostic, a Michigan farmer who sits on the board of the National Corn Growers Association, said in an interview with CNBC. “It’s like a code red.”

Frostic said he purchased nitrogen fertilizer, critical for corn crops, in January for around $350 per ton. That same product, he said, is now closing in on $600 per ton.

The murky farm outlook also comes eight months before the midterm elections that could cost Trump control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Democrats, who are trying to win competitive seats in farm-heavy states such as Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska, are jumping on the high fertilizer prices as a new example of the affordability issue that continues to haunt Trump and Republicans.

“There are tons of people just like me in our district who are like, I don’t get it. I don’t understand. It was already hard, and now they’re making it harder, and nobody knows why,” said Jake Johnson, a public school teacher who is running for Congress in Minnesota’s first District against incumbent Republican Rep. Brad Finstad.

“Our number one job as a campaign and what we want to talk about to every single person we talk to is we need ways to make things cheaper,” Johnson said.

The rural entreaties from Democrats come after years of bleeding support in the country’s rural, agrarian states in the middle of the country. Trump in 2024 won nearly every state in the Midwest, with exceptions in Minnesota and Illinois. He also dominated the county-by-county contest, according to the Center for Politics, winning 2,660 counties compared with former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 451, which were centered in the most populated parts of the U.S.

Turning the tide in rural America has been a longtime goal for Democrats, but has often proved elusive. In Iowa in 2018, Democrats won 3 out of the 4 congressional seats in the state. Now, Republicans control all four. But with Trump’s economic approval plummeting and Democrats leading in the generic ballot, Democrats have high hopes this year.

Johnson said farmers in particular are recoiling from Trump’s tariff campaign, which saw his White House authorize a roughly $12 billion bailout last year. The war now adds a new inflationary wrinkle.

On Thursday, more than 50 agriculture trade groups including the Farm Bureau wrote another letter to Trump, asking him to include farm aid in the forthcoming defense package.

“As the Administration considers what needs to be included in a defense supplemental package in
the coming weeks, we urge you to include much-needed market relief for America’s farmers,” the letter read.

Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., the Senate Agriculture Committee chair, said he’s working with the administration to quickly find a solution to the fertilizer issue.

President Donald Trump threatened to withhold his signature from any bill that reaches his desk until Congress passes a controversial election measure known as the SAVE America Act, which would make it much harder for many Americans to vote.

“It must be done immediately. It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed.”

The SAVE America Act would require proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote. The measure has been the subject of an immense pressure campaign from right-wing commentators and congressional Republicans.

The House passed the bill last month, but it is short of the 60-vote filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Republicans hold a 53-47 vote majority in the upper chamber, and Democrats have vowed to oppose it. That has led some Republicans to call for subverting the filibuster, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D, has so far resisted.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the threat of gridlock does not change Democrats’ stance.

“If Trump is saying he won’t sign any bills until the SAVE Act is passed, then so be it: there will be total gridlock in the Senate,” he said on X. “Senate Democrats will not help pass the SAVE Act under any circumstances.”

Trump has also called for Congress to deliver him an enhanced version of the bill, “NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION,” he wrote.

“GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY – ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL: NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS: NO TRANSGENDER MUTILIZATION FOR CHILDREN! DO NOT FAIL!!!” Trump added.

Trump’s demands would require the House to pass another iteration of the SAVE America Act — it has already passed two versions of the measure during this Congress. That’s anything but assured when Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., only has what is effectively a one-vote majority in the House.

Trump’s threatened signature blockade also imperils other must-pass legislation, like a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security for the remainder of the fiscal year. The department is currently shut down after funding lapsed last month. Democrats are demanding new restrictions on Trump’s deportation efforts after two American citizens were shot and killed by federal immigration agents.

A signature blockade may have mixed results. Trump can veto any bills sent to him and send them back to Congress, which can override his veto with a two-thirds majority in each chamber. If Congress adjourns, the president also can let the bill sit for 10 days, and it will not become law — a procedure known as a “pocket veto.”

But an unsigned bill that sits for 10 days while Congress is in session automatically becomes law, meaning Congress could overcome a signature blockade by staying in session.

The clock is also ticking for Republicans facing a tough midterm election in November, which could potentially see Democrats winning back the majority in one or both chambers. The window for pushing through any of the GOP’s or Trump’s legislative wish list is already narrow, and polls indicate that voters are souring on Trump and his economy ahead of the elections.

An NBC News poll released Sunday found that 62% of voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of inflation and the cost of living — the top issues for voters in that poll. Democrats held a six-point lead in the generic congressional ballot in the survey.

November’s midterm was always supposed to be about affordability. Then, the bombs began falling in Iran.

The expanding U.S. war in the Middle East threatens to scramble the cost-of-living narrative that has so far defined the contest for control of Congress. The election, now less than eight months away, will determine whether President Donald Trump retains his iron grip on Washington or spends his last two years in office fending off Democratic congressional majorities.

Both parties have sought to capitalize on kitchen-table issues, as Americans struggle to keep up with the rising costs of ordinary goods and services. The war in Iran now threatens to exacerbate those concerns — and Democrats are seizing on the opportunity to pillory Trump and Republicans for beginning a conflict that could make life even more expensive for ordinary Americans.

“Because there was no plan going in, I think there will be lots of things that are unforeseen consequences of this,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in an interview with CNBC. “I mean you saw how much gas has gone up in a day, oil futures have gone up, there are going to be a lot of knock-on effects.”

Some of those knock-on effects have already been evident. U.S. crude oil has jumped past $90 per barrel, up from $67 the day before the war broke out. The global market index Brent has skyrocketed to more than $90 per barrel. That’s caused gas prices to spike to about $3.38 per gallon, according to a national average from Gasbuddy, up more than 35 cents from the week before the war.

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, was quick to point out in an interview that liquefied natural gas prices have also spiked. Though U.S. increases have been modest so far, global LNG supply has been squeezed by a shutdown in Qatar — one of the world’s top LNG-producing countries. Natural gas is the largest electricity generator in the U.S., which is critical as the booming data center industry stresses the electric grid and increases utility costs.

“I think what American families have been feeling most acutely for the past year-plus is their energy bills, their utility bills rising,” Huffman said. “A big part of the utility bill increase is that natural gas is getting more and more expensive … a lot of our effort has been pushed into LNG exports instead of strategies that would lower bills for American consumers. That problem is only more amplified by this conflict.”

But a quick operation in Iran is far from certain, and any extended conflict could create an election-year quagmire for Republicans, said Brittany Martinez, executive director at Principles First and a former aide to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

“If energy prices rise or markets stay volatile, affordability becomes a harder message for Republicans to carry cleanly,” Martinez said. “Republicans will argue that projecting strength abroad prevents greater instability, while Democrats will try to link any sustained price increases to foreign policy decisions. The real question is whether this turns into a prolonged conflict that voters feel in their household budgets.”

Many believe the military intervention in Iran has the potential to drag on, including Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., a national security advisor in the Obama White House.

“This administration doesn’t seem to think about this at all,” Kim said when asked about a potential power vacuum keeping the U.S. in the region longer. “The intelligence community has done a whole range of assessments that very much keep me up at night, and the fact that this White House, I assume, read the same things I read and still went through with this, I just find that to be absolutely reckless.”

Complicating matters more for the GOP is that the war in Iran is unpopular. A CNN poll released March 2 found that nearly 60% of those surveyed disapproved of the U.S. taking military action in Iran. That comes as Trump’s economic approval remains underwater: A Fox News poll released March 4 found that 61% of voters disapproved of Trump’s job on the economy.

“We don’t see it as an opportunity, but I do think it’s our responsibility to tell the American people exactly the decision that Donald Trump is making,” said House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, D-Calif. “He’s sending billions of our tax dollars to the Middle East for another war while he’s kicking people off of healthcare and … eliminating nutrition programs.”

Rep. Zach Nunn, an Iowa Republican seeking reelection in a district Cook Political Report with Amy Walter has labeled a “toss up,” said he is not concerned the war could drown out the GOP’s affordability message. He pointed to the sprawling tax and spending bill that was signed into law last year, increased domestic energy production, and housing legislation that advanced out of the House last month as examples of things the party will use to show action on rising costs.

War in the Middle East does not necessarily preclude Republicans from continuing to try to bring prices down, he argued.

“A more fulsome conversation would be, how do we make sure that we still deliver on affordability?” Nunn said in an interview. “I think this is the absolute right spot for us to be in.”

But Trump, the “America First” president who campaigned on ending the U.S.’s foreign entanglements, risks alienating his base with his Iran offensive. Democrats see the war as evidence of what they have been telling voters about Trump all along: he does not care affordability.

“We have a president who has campaigned on ending forever wars, and he has jumped into war without justification or explanation to the American people,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “So this has been broken promise after broken promise. This has been at the expense of the needs of everyday Americans. And I do think voters will hold them accountable in November.”