Audrey Gibson, seen here as a Jacksonville mayoral candidate in 2023, is running unopposed for Rep. Angie Nixon's seat. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
Published on January 19, 2026 at 11:00 am
Jacksonville Today seeks to include a diverse set of perspectives that add context or unique insight to the news of the day. Regular opinion columnists are independent contractors who are not involved in news decisions. Want to submit your own column on a matter of public interest? Email pitches to jessica@jaxtoday.org.
Two Jacksonville Democrats appear, as of now, to have an uncomplicated path to winning election to the Florida House.
But appearances can be deceiving.
Audrey Gibson, the former leader of the Senate Democrats, is unopposed in her bid to replace Angie Nixon in House District 13 after Reggie Gaffney decided instead to run in the local elections in 2027 — in a race to be determined.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
And Rep. Kim Daniels, elected in House District 14 in 2022, right now has no competition in her bid for a third consecutive term and fifth term in the House (recall that she lost to Nixon in 2020 but benefited from redistricting in 2022, which allowed her to make a political comeback). Daniels’ previous opponent, Therese Wakefield-Gamble, decided against a second try as her fundraising faltered.
Gibson and Daniels don’t necessarily align politically; the former is a more traditional Democrat, and the latter has often sided with Republicans on bills on abortion and religious expression, in moves that daunt Dems but accord with her vocation as a Christian minister.
As Angie Nixon likely can tell you, being a Democrat in the Florida House can be a thankless job.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
Your appropriations requests likely won’t make it through. You do get familiar with I-10 and Busy Bee, and making passionate speeches and filing amendments to gut GOP legislation to no avail, because your party is in superminority status.
There’s a reason Nixon is running for Senate. Or Jacksonville City Council. Or whatever.
It’s because being a Tallahassee Democrat can be a waste of time.
It’s possible to get some traction if you’re willing to go along with the Republican agenda, but that comes at the expense of progress in your caucus.
If you adhere to what are Democratic values on issues like health care, reproductive rights, and so on, you likely are marginalized, as Nixon is.
She has filed ambitious bills for years, covering issues ranging from cannabis to labor rights, but to what end?
They don’t even get one committee hearing, never mind the three or four they would need to even get to the House floor.
When it became clear last week that Gibson and Daniels would be, for now, unopposed, a number of Democrats reached out to me to say that opposition may manifest.
At least one of them was a current elected official.
That person – and I will keep this as a blind item here to respect the off-record conversation – is not running. But they say there may be opposition for Gibson in 13 and maybe Daniels in 14.
Time will tell.
Should there be competition though?
Depends on your perspective on the candidates and politics writ large.
The argument for Gibson and Daniels is that they’ve been through the process, they’ve scored victories over the years, and in their respective capacities, they may be able to score some modest wins despite potentially again being in a legislative superminority, especially with Jacksonville Sen. Tracie Davis set to lead the Democratic Senate Caucus starting next year.
The argument against them may be more existential.
Gibson will be 71 when the 2027 session is kicking off.
Daniels will turn 60 shortly after next year’s session ends.
This is not intended to sound ageist – your columnist here is in the zone with AARP eligibility, senior discounts, and early bird specials, and the most relevant things on television to him these days are the Colonial Penn ads.
But there is the issue of bringing new ideas and perspectives to the fore from Jacksonville Democrats, similarly to what happens in other parts of the state and the nation.
The book on older, pragmatic politicians is that they know how the game works … but they acquired the knowledge at the expense of the idealism that is the province of youth and naivete.
They’re willing to go 15 rounds and take their chances at winning or losing on decision, but in doing so they are fighting a fight that makes more sense from a tactical perspective than one that dazzles.
It remains to be seen if my Democratic friends are just talking about challengers manifesting. Recall that Daniels faced two opponents in 2024’s primary, and got nearly ⅔ of the vote.
Who wants to face that buzzsaw?
And Gibson, though she struggled against Donna Deegan in March 2023’s election and fell short when she challenged Nikki Fried for the chair of the state Democratic Party thereafter, has a lot of relationships in this town and has forgotten more about campaigning than many of her detractors will ever know.
It has to be said, too, that there is a vast difference between the disempowered Democratic Party and the disciplined GOP.
How many quixotic challenges do you see in this region in House races on the Republican side, beyond House Speaker-designate Sam Garrison of Clay County somehow drawing two primary challengers as he prepares to take the gavel next year? And it remains to be seen if they qualify.
It’s worth mentioning, if only in passing, the battle royale to face Aaron Bean in his Congressional reelection race, one that sees Michael Kirwan running a professional campaign against the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Because it illustrates the stark difference between the two parties right now.
Republicans seem to look for wins by coalescing behind candidates before voters have their say, and they don’t discard capable people for wildcards.
Democrats, who have so much ground to make up, very often seem driven by ego in the internal battles, which leave them spent before the real fights begin.
Sometimes that works out, as it did in the 2023 mayoral race when Deegan was the most polished and likable candidate, benefiting from the circular firing squad of the GOP establishment.
But more often, here and elsewhere in the state, it leaves them in the cold, so deleveraged that they aren’t even in a position to negotiate modest compromises that would help out the constituencies and the issues about which they claim to care.
