Republican Anna Paulina Luna (left) is defending her CD-13 seat against Democrat Whitney Fox. (Photos from the Luna and Fox campaigns).
A day after a poll showed the race in Florida’s 13th Congressional District between Republican incumbent Anna Paulina Luna and her Democratic opponent, Whitney Fox, in a dead heat, a new survey commissioned by the conservative Club for Growth PAC shows Luna up by 6 percentage points, 51%-45%, with 5% undecided.
A previous poll commissioned by the Club for Growth PAC taken in late August had Luna up, 48%-43%, with 10% undecided. The PAC released only the bottom line of its new poll, conducted Oct. 6 and 7.
The race is considered the most competitive of the 28 congressional districts in the state, but the district is definitely Republican leaning. As of late July, nearly 55,000 more registered Republicans than registered Democrats lived in the district, according to the Florida Division of Elections.
The Fox campaign dismissed the survey as a “biased, right-wing poll.”
“Anna Paulina Luna’s insecurity is boundless,” said Fox campaign manager James Corti in a statement sent to the Phoenix.
“While Pinellas families struggle with rising costs and hurricane recovery, Luna is more focused on spinning biased right-wing poll results than people’s problems. Anna Paulina Luna knows she’s locked in a tight re-election race, as proven by yesterday’s independent poll showing a dead even race at 46-46. Luna’s extreme record speaks for itself — she voted against disaster relief right before Hurricane Helene hit, supports a national abortion ban with no exceptions, and has done nothing to lower costs. Pinellas deserves better than a representative who puts self-promotion and their own vanity over service.”
A St. Pete Poll survey released on Monday showed Luna and Fox deadlocked at 46% each.
The new Club for Growth poll was conducted by WPA Intelligence, which surveyed 403 likely voters in the district. The survey has a margin of error of +4.9% at the 95% confidence level. That’s in contrast to the St. Pete Polls survey, which interviewed more than twice as many voters (905). It was conducted before Hurricane Milton hit Florida and did not include any demographic information on who was polled.
Conservative
Luna was first elected to the seat in November 2022, defeating Democrat Eric Lynn by 8 percentage points. She has governed from the far right since then, leading to claims by Fox that she is out of touch in Pinellas County, which historically has supported moderate lawmakers, such as C.W. Bill Young, who served the district for more than 40 years until he died in 2013, and David Jolly, who succeeded Young before losing to Charlie Crist when the district was drawn up to favor Democrats in 2016 (the district was redrawn up in 2022 and has been Republican leaning since).
Fox has hammered Luna over the past month for declining to take up her offer to at least one televised debate, a decision that other incumbents are employing this election cycle in Florida, none more prominent than Rick Scott.
On Monday, Fox posted on X pictures of other congressional and Senate debates taking place recently with the comment, “This could be us, but Anna Paulina Luna is too afraid to face the voters. Why? Because Luna works for herself and her donors, not the people. Let’s hold her accountable on Nov. 5.”
The polling organization 538 is forecasting Luna to hold on to the seat by more than 6 percentage points.