Hector Mujica drops Florida Senate bid, enters race against Carlos Giménez

Hector Mujica traded a Florida Senate bid for a far steeper climb in the U.S. House, entering the race against Republican Rep. Carlos Giménez in Florida’s 28th Congressional District after first filing for the Senate contest.

Mujica officially filed as a Democrat for the 2026 U.S. Senate race on January 23, then switched to the congressional race on April 2. Florida Division of Elections records still list his Senate candidacy as active, but Ballotpedia says he will not appear on the ballot for the special Democratic primary. The move left Mujica in a district that stretches across all of Monroe County and the southwest portion of Miami-Dade County, where Democrats face an entrenched Republican incumbent.

Giménez first won the seat in 2020 and has represented it since the redistricting cycle. In the 2024 general election, he defeated Democrat Phil Ehr by about 64.57% to 35.43%, a margin that underscores how difficult it has been for Democrats to make inroads there. Cook Political Report rates FL-28 as a solid Republican seat, reinforcing the scale of the challenge facing any Democrat hoping to flip it.

Mujica’s campaign is leaning on a biography built for a different kind of race. He is a Venezuelan-American and former Google executive, and campaign materials also emphasize his role as a father. His message centers on affordability, housing costs and what he describes as a shortage of opportunity in South Florida, issues that could resonate in a fast-changing region even if the district’s partisan lean remains a major obstacle.

The 2026 House primary is scheduled for August 18, with the general election set for November 3. Phil Ehr is also running in the Democratic primary, setting up a contest that will test whether Democrats can assemble a competitive coalition in one of South Florida’s more reliably Republican districts. For Mujica, the shift from the Senate field to FL-28 turns a statewide ambition into a far more targeted gamble, with the history of the district suggesting that flipping it blue remains aspirational rather than likely.