Josh Weil to run for U.S. Senate and says he’ll raise cash for other Democrats

Although Josh Weil came up 14 points short to Republican Randy Fine in a special congressional election in Northeast Florida earlier this year, he stunned political observers by raising more than $15 million in a district that had elected a Republican by 33 points just five months earlier.

Emboldened by that display of fundraising prowess, the 40-year-old Orlando Democrat is now announcing his bid for the U.S. Senate in 2026, in a race that he surmises may require raising up to $100 million to compete against Republican Ashley Moody.

In addition to the challenge of raising that prodigious amount for his own candidacy, he is asserting that he intends to help Democratic congressional candidates financially throughout the state next year.

“We built what I believe is the strongest fundraising infrastructure in the country right now during our last campaign,” Weil told the Phoenix earlier this week in a video conference call. “I believe that we have the opportunity and the ability to raise a lot of money, and that’s what Florida needs. That’s what the Florida Democratic Party needs. Someone can take that money and invest across the state.”

Weil has been floating that idea recently. In an appearance in Clearwater last month, he said his team is poised to raise $10 million for voter registration efforts in Florida leading up to the 2026 election, with an emphasis on Miami-Dade and Pinellas counties.

Weil (as well as fellow special election Democratic candidate Gay Valimont, who ran and lost in the Panhandle in April) benefitted by being one of the few candidates running during the first months of Donald Trump’s second presidency.

Those contests gave Democratic voters across the nation an opportunity to voice their opposition to Trump by contributing to those two special elections — which would have allowed the Democrats to chip away at the then razor-thin GOP majority in Congress. Campaign finance records showed that the vast majority of financial contributions that Weil received came from outside of the Sunshine State.

Additional skepticism resides in the fact that previous Florida Democratic Senate candidates made bold assertions of fundraising for voter registration efforts that failed to occur.

Voters concerns

Weil is a single father of two boys who had been working as a public school teacher in Osceola County before he filed to run in Florida’s 6th Congressional District special election late last year. An election was necessary after President Trump tapped the GOP incumbent there, Mike Waltz, to serve as National Security Adviser. (Waltz left that position earlier this year, and was nominated by the president on May 1 to become the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, though he hasn’t come up for a Senate confirmation vote yet).

Weil previously had been a candidate for a brief time for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 2022 before dropping out.

When asked what he had learned in this spring’s congressional election, Weil said it was what the voters told him was what was on their minds. As a public school instructor, he said, he intended to make public education a central plank of his platform, but learned quickly that Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and veteran’s benefits  were top of mind of District 6 voters.

“They were far more concerned about how they’re going to continue to survive in a Florida that’s become increasingly unaffordable with housing challenges and insurance challenges,” he said.

Weil has been touring the state before Democratic voters even though he’s only now entering the Senate race. The issue of affordability is something he hears all the time from the public. “There’s people in every corner of Florida who are struggling to survive,” he said.

When asked where he stands on immigration, Weil calls it “an incredibly complicated issue” that touches on border security, law enforcement, agriculture, labor, and tourism.

“There are cascading effects to immigration which make it one of the most difficult to deal with — and it’s why, as you mentioned, we’ve seen people really struggle with this in the Senate, because there are so many variables to try to control for it to ensure that you’re not doing more damage in one area than you are relief in another,” he said, labeling the Trump administration’s goal for mass deportations “sheer recklessness.”

Weil blasted some of the actions from ICE that have been reported in recent month, “where people are being dragged out of schools and churches and workplaces. Where people are seeing their neighbors being dragged off by plain-clothed officers,” he said.

Democratic ‘messaging’ a problem?

When asked about the polling from last year’s general election that showed immigration and the economy as the two top issues that led voters to support the GOP, Weil blamed “messaging” more than the  policies of his party for that outcome.

“I’m not going to be the first person to say that the Democratic Party has struggled with its messaging in recent years,” he said. “Immigration and the economy are definitely areas that we struggle to get our message out in recent cycles.”

He quickly added that he thought President Joe Biden “did some amazing things,” specifically referring to the billions of dollars to expand access to clean drinking water — not a usual talking point you hear from Democrats in assessing the Biden presidency.

He did say that Biden “struggled to get his message out as a leader” in the latter part of his time in office, and that Democrats need to take heed of that. “We need to get out and meet voters where they are with a message that they can believe in.”

As the Democratic Party searches for new ways to break through with the electorate, party chair Nikki Fried has floated the possibility of opening the party’s primary election to non-party-affiliated voters, who comprise more than a quarter of the state’s voting population. Weil offers, “We’d love to see everybody with an opportunity to vote.”

While Weil’s strong fundraising is something he’s proud of, not all Democrats in the state seemed to be happy about it. Some consultants said the money could have been better spent on party infrastructure instead of contests in which the odds were nearly insurmountable, like both special elections held in red districts this spring.

Some questioned his own spending in that race. His campaign spent more than $600,000 for musical talent at campaign events (which on one occasion featured R&B icon Patti LaBelle). Weil insists the money was well spent as he looked for ways to attract voters who might not have been paying attention to a congressional race in the early spring.

“This was an April 1 election. Up until the final week, major news [organizations] weren’t covering this. We needed to find ways to attract people outside of just political realms,” he said.

“I think music is a great area to reach out to people away from the political realm. You know, attract them and be able to then deliver your message. So we set up a large number of concerts. We brought out a bunch of talent. It was all something that I wanted to do to District 6. We see these things happen all the time in Orlando and Miami and bigger areas. And I told the people of District 6 – you’re all worthy of investing in as well. Your vote is just as important as a congressional vote in Miami. And so I wanted to bring talent, I wanted to bring events that district doesn’t normally get.”

No barometer reflects how far the Republican Party has ascended and Democrats have receded in state elections more than what happened in last year’s race for the other Senate seat in Florida, held by Rick Scott. In his three previous statewide elections, Scott never won by more than a single percentage point. But last year, he defeated Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell by 13 points.

So, how will Weil, if he wins the Democratic primary next summer, fare against newly appointed Republican Sen. Ashley Moody?

“We just went in to District 6 down by a loss of 32 points and we ran a strong economic message,” he said. “We knocked on over half-a-million doors. We were on the ground, meeting with voters where they were at. And we pushed it to 18 points. I believe that we can do the same thing, district-by-district, county-by-county across the state. We push an R-13 [district] by 18 points and we win by 5.”

Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power slammed the news of Weil announcing his candidacy for U.S. Senate.

“Unhinged Josh Weil wants to bring his failed congressional campaign statewide? Despite spending 10s of millions of dollars, the residents of Congressional District six saw through the ads and learned the truth about radical leftist Josh Weil,” Power told the Phoenix in a text message. “The people of Florida will come to the same verdict and realize he’s just too dangerous to represent Florida.”

A request for comment from Ashley Moody’s Senate campaign was not immediately returned.

Weil’s announcement of his candidacy comes just days before state Democrats convene in Broward County this weekend for the Florida Democratic Party’s Leadership Blue event. By becoming a top sponsor to the event, he’s been awarded a speaking spot. That upset Tamika Lyles, who has already declared her candidacy for the Senate seat. Weil says he doesn’t understand the concern.

“The opportunity is there for every candidate to be able to give back to the party and have an opportunity to speak back to them as a result of it,” he says. “It’s an open, fair board. Anyone can purchase those sponsorships.”