PANAMA CITY BEACH — Voters of Florida’s 2nd Congressional District on Tuesday elected a new representative by a razor-thin margin.
With Democrat Gwen Graham’s defeat of two-term incumbent Steve Southerland, R-Panama City, Graham, a former labor negotiator for the Leon County School District, became the first woman elected to Congress in the district’s history after a race in which women’s issues were often at the forefront.
Graham’s strength in her home county of Leon, where she gathered just over 64 percent of the more than 106,000 votes cast, was enough to overcome the support for Southerland in Bay County, where he earned just shy of 70 percent of the nearly 57,000 votes cast. She finished with 125,132 votes district-wide, according to complete, unofficial returns.
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Southerland took more votes than Graham in nine of the 12 remaining rural counties in the district, but Graham’s strength in Tallahassee was enough to put her ahead by nearly 3,000 votes. He finished with 122,939 votes across the district, according to complete but unofficial returns.
Southerland’s team joined supporters Tuesday night at Edgewater Beach Resort, along with Jay Trumbull, the Republican candidate elected to represent District 6 in the Florida Legislature, his campaign staff and his supporters.
The results came in first from the western end of the district, where Graham is strongest and where the polls close an hour earlier because it’s in the Eastern Time Zone. She jumped out to an early lead, which steadily narrowed as the evening progressed.
Though Southerland was trailing as Trumbull addressed the crowd, the energy in the room was still positive. When The Associated Press called the race for Graham shortly after 8:30 p.m., it was as if the air had been sucked from the room; the crowd turned somber and began to thin.
A few minutes later, Southerland entered the ballroom to a standing ovation and spoke for about 10 minutes, thanking his family, his staff and supporters.
“Thank you for allowing me to stand on your shoulders for the last five years,” Southerland said. “It has been a view that I will never ever forget.”
Locally, Graham’s supporters had planned to gather at a restaurant in Panama City on Tuesday night to watch the results of the election.
Graham’s campaign celebrated the victory in Tallahassee. The News Herald was unable to reach members of her campaign staff Tuesday night, but Graham released a statement thanking her supporters shortly after she was declared the victor.
“I want to thank all of you for standing with me and supporting me in this race,” she said. “Over the past 581 days we have put 36,000 miles on my car and talked with voters all across this district — it was your energy which pushed me every day of this campaign.
“I also want to thank Congressman Southerland for his service over the past four years.
“In Congress, I will work with Republicans and Democrats in order to provide economic development for our district while protecting what is most important to Florida. … I promise I will always do all I can to make North Florida proud.”
Southerland said he’d spoken to Graham moments before his remarks and offered to help ease her transition.
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“He was very gracious. … I thanked him for his service to the district,” Graham told reporters in Tallahassee, according to the News Service of Florida.
Southerland said he doesn’t know what his future holds, but he looked forward to spending more time at home with his family and going hunting.
“I think the bar’s open, and I think we’ve got a little more food,” Southerland concluded. “And I want to say we’re not going to be defined by the losses. We’re not. We’re going to be defined by the blessings.”