Two special congressional elections on Tuesday in Florida were supposed to have been cakewalks for the Republican Party. Instead, one contest has turned into the unlikely scene of a multimillion-dollar spending brawl — and of pre-election finger-pointing on the right over how the race ever became a race at all.
The seat, in Florida’s Sixth Congressional District, was most recently occupied by Michael Waltz, who resigned to serve as President Trump’s national security adviser and who has found himself in the middle of the Signal-leak episode. It was not remotely competitive last fall when Mr. Waltz coasted to victory by 33 percentage points.
Yet Democrats are now pressing to turn this deep-red district around Daytona Beach into — if not an actual victory — a symbol of much-needed momentum by cutting deeply into the district’s typical G.O.P. margin.
The race’s surprising competitiveness has already affected Mr. Trump’s cabinet. Last week, he announced he was withdrawing his appointment of Representative Elise Stefanik as his United Nations ambassador, saying the move was partly to avoid another special election later this year for her seat, which is less solidly Republican than Mr. Waltz’s old one.
“I didn’t want to take a chance,” Mr. Trump said on Friday in the Oval Office. For now, Republicans have only 218 seats in the House, with four vacancies, two of which are in solidly Democratic districts. It is a razor-thin margin to attempt to pass the president’s agenda.
Some private polls have shown Mr. Trump’s pick in the Sixth District race, State Senator Randy Fine, a Republican, facing a real contest against Josh Weil, the 40-year-old Democratic nominee who has been a public-school teacher.
