Despite being targeted by national Republicans last election cycle, U.S. Rep. Darren Soto won re-election by 12 percentage points. But as Hispanic voters in Florida and across the country tilt further right, the GOP sees the Kissimmee Democrat as more vulnerable in 2026.
That’s even as Democrats hope to capitalize on Midterm outrage over President Donald Trump’s return to office and controversial policies, and to retake a House majority lost in last year’s presidential election cycle.
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) on Thursday told Punchbowl News there will be a concerted effort to flip many heavily Latino districts from blue to red. NRCC spokesperson Maureen O’Toole told Florida Politics that includes Florida’s 9th Congressional District.
“Hispanic communities are sick and tired of radical Democrat Darren Soto turning his back on Floridians time and again,” O’Toole said in an email. “Hispanics are forcefully rejecting the far-left agenda that resulted in years of open borders, skyrocketing prices and woke insanity like men in girls’ sports. Republicans are the party of common sense and Hispanic voters know it.”
Florida Republicans felt heartened when a majority of voters in Osceola County, which makes up the bulk of Soto’s district, supported Trump in the November election. The Republican carried the county by only about 2,500 votes, but that was four years after Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump in the county by more than 17 percentage points.
The NRCC noted in CD 9 overall, voters shifted Republican by almost a 23-point swing between 2016, when Soto first won election, to 2024 (notably, district lines shifted as part of the decennial redistricting in that time). The GOP vote share among Latino voters nationwide, meanwhile, grew from 29% in 2018 to 43% in 2024.
Still, Soto won Osceola County in November by almost 10 percentage points, receiving about 16,000 more votes than Republican Thomas Chalifoux. His campaign expressed confidence the voters in CD 9 will stick with him next year, especially after living under Trump’s policies for nearly two years.
“We consistently won by delivering for our community in jobs, infrastructure, healthcare, environment, and more,” reads a statement from Soto’s campaign to Florida Politics.
“Under Trump, Hispanics see prices rising, hateful division and their immigrant family members deported by the thousands. The GOP’s Big Ugly Law has record cuts to Medicaid, Obamacare, nutrition, Pell grants and Medicare along with record national debt that hurts our families. That’s why nearly 60% of Americans oppose it according to a recent Fox News Poll.”
The statement’s reference to the “Big Ugly Law” is a dig on Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which includes an expansion of the tax cuts he implemented in his first term that would have expired, as well as cuts to various programs, including Medicaid, Medicare and food assistance, among others.
Of course, the Soto campaign’s confidence is predicated on lines remaining unchanged before 2026. Gov. Ron DeSantis has toyed with a mid-decade redistricting, and even called for a new Census that leaves out undocumented individuals.
“I think it’s unconstitutional that they’re counted in the census,” DeSantis said earlier this week.
If another round of redistricting were to occur, it could have a significant impact on the boundaries of CD 9, which was drawn as a Hispanic majority district in 2022.
Soto has already promised to fight any efforts to redraw the lines ahead of next year’s election, and attributed any conversation about doing so to political panic.
“A reckoning is coming for Republicans next election and they know it,” his campaign said in its statement. “That’s why they want to cheat and try to draw new districts across Florida. We will fight them on all these fronts and more for the good of Central Florida.”
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