ANALYSIS

The Florida GOP chairman finished third (almost 4th), lost his home county and failed to carry a single county in the district. He now returns to a state party that is losing races its registration advantage says it should win.

The Republican Party of Florida once promoted Evan Power as the leader of “the most successful state party in the nation.” On Tuesday, Power put that reputation before Republican voters in Florida’s 2nd Congressional District.

He won zero counties.

Not one of the 16 counties in the district put the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida in first place. According to the state’s unofficial election-night results, Power finished third in an eight-candidate field with 13,831 votes, or 15.78 percent. Austin Rogers won with 26,701 votes, nearly twice Power’s total, and Keith Gross finished second. The man who says he knows how to win could not get within 10,000 votes of the winner.

Power’s campaign finance filings tell the same story. Through July 29, the last reporting period before the primary, the Evan Power for Congress Committee had raised $727,092 and spent $464,183, according to the Federal Election Commission. Of what he raised, $150,000 was a loan from himself, none of which has been repaid. Party committees gave him $0.00.

Three weeks out from election day he was still sitting on $262,909 in cash against $177,978 in debts. By comparison, a super PAC backing Rogers spent more than $1.6 million, and Keith Gross poured roughly $12.2 million of his own money into the race. No outside group spent a dollar attacking Power. Nobody needed to. The FEC shows no independent expenditures either supporting or opposing Power. The state party chairman got zero dollars from party committees. Irrelevant may be the best word to describe him.

The statewide result was bad. The county map was worse. Rogers won Bay, Calhoun, Holmes, Jackson, Taylor, Wakulla, Walton and Washington counties. Murphy won Gadsden, Jefferson, Leon and Madison. Jim Norton won Franklin, Gulf and Liberty. Audie Rowell won tiny Lafayette County. Power won nothing.

That is not a setback. It is a performance review.

His own county rejected him

Leon County should have been Power’s fortress. He chaired the Leon County Republican Party from 2012 through 2024. He built his political identity there, cultivated the local organization there and used that record to climb into the state chairmanship.

Leon Republicans still chose Luke Murphy.

Murphy received 5,258 votes in Leon County to Power’s 4,704. Power lost his political home by 554 votes. The chairman could not carry the county organization he ran for 12 years, even with the highest possible local name recognition and a statewide title beside his name.

The registration numbers make the home-field mythology even thinner. At book closing, Leon County had 87,051 registered Democrats and 54,508 Republicans. Power spent more than a decade leading the local GOP. The county remained Democratic by more than 32,000 voters, and when he finally asked Leon Republicans to vote for him, they preferred someone else.

Party insiders loved him. Republican voters did not.

In January 2025, Republican state committee members re-elected Power as chairman by a vote of 183 to 19. That was 90.6 percent support from party insiders.

Nineteen months later, 84.2 percent of Republican primary voters in CD 2 chose someone else.

Power did not enter this race as an unknown. He entered with the state party title, a statewide donor network, endorsements from Attorney General James Uthmeier and multiple members of Congress, years of political contacts and the built-in publicity that comes with running the party.

In the end he spent at least $33 for every vote he received, before any final pre-primary spending is added which will drive that figure up. The investment bought third place and zero counties.

The Florida machine is springing leaks

Power could dismiss one personal loss as the result of a crowded primary. He cannot dismiss what has been happening under his chairmanship across Florida.

On March 24, Democrats flipped two Republican-held legislative seats on the same night.

In House District 87, the district containing President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Democrat Emily Gregory defeated Republican Jon Maples. Trump endorsed Maples. Republican Mike Caruso had won the seat by 19 percentage points in 2024. In the special election, Gregory won 17,124 votes to Maples’ 16,323, an 801-vote defeat for the GOP.

The turnout data made the loss more embarrassing. Registered Republicans cast 15,351 ballots, compared with 12,108 cast by registered Democrats, according to Palm Beach County turnout reporting cited by Florida’s Voice. Party registration does not reveal how anyone voted, but the arithmetic leaves only two explanations: Gregory dominated voters with no party affiliation, won support from some registered Republicans, or did both. Power’s party had the larger partisan turnout and still lost Trump’s home district.

In Senate District 14, Democrat Brian Nathan defeated Republican Josie Tomkow by 40,245 votes to 39,836. The margin was 409 votes. Republicans had 116,095 registered voters in the district to 93,403 Democrats, a registration advantage of 22,692. Nathan had raised just over $101,000, while Republican campaign accounts and party support pushed spending on Tomkow’s side to roughly 10 times that amount. The GOP had the registration advantage, the money advantage and the experienced officeholder. It lost anyway.

That is the recurring problem with Power’s leadership. He keeps pointing to the size of the Republican army. Then the ballots are counted. It’s an army lead by a general that no one respects and has no idea what he’s doing. It appears the only power he has is his last name.

A Republican seat lost before Election Day

House District 47 did not even require voters to expose the breakdown.

Two-term Republican Rep. Paula Stark failed to qualify for re-election after her campaign did not submit a required Form 6 financial disclosure by the noon June 12 deadline. Five state election workers contradicted her campaign treasurer’s claim that the form had been delivered and handed back. Leon County Circuit Judge Joshua Hawkes rejected the account, ruling that the form was not submitted on time. The state now lists Stark as “Did Not Qualify.”

The only qualified candidates were Democrats Jorge Figueroa and Anthony Nieves. No Republican will be on the November ballot. A Republican-held House seat was effectively handed to the Democratic Party without the GOP nominee receiving a single vote under Power’s watch.

The missed deadline belongs to Stark and her campaign. The larger failure belongs to a political apparatus that calls itself the most successful state party in America but apparently lacked a working compliance checklist for one of its own incumbents. A chairman cannot personally carry every candidate’s paperwork. He can make sure the party has a system that confirms its incumbents are actually on the ballot.

The registration boast is a statistical magic trick

Power’s answer to every warning sign is voter registration. Florida Republicans now lead Democrats by more than 1.5 million active voters. That sounds overwhelming because it is.

It also deserves a closer look.

Florida’s official figures show 5,607,836 active Republican voters as of July 31, 2026, compared with 4,066,503 Democrats. At the end of 2024, the state reported 5,635,902 Republicans and 4,479,820 Democrats. Since then, the Republican total has fallen by 28,066. The Democratic total has fallen by 413,317. Florida’s total active electorate has fallen by 757,461.

In other words, the Republican advantage grew while the Republican voter roll shrank. The gap widened primarily because Democrats disappeared from the active rolls much faster and because hundreds of thousands of voters of all affiliations came off the rolls.

That is still an advantage, but it is not proof that Power built a party 1.5 million voters stronger. It shows that his party shrank less than the opposition. More importantly, the two March special elections showed that a registration advantage is not self-executing. A party can lead on paper and lose at the ballot box. Under Power, Florida Republicans have now done it twice in one night.

Twitter wins do not count

Power has spent years treating X as if a flippant reply were a precinct operation. In 2024, he declared Florida Democrats “dead on the side of the road.” In July, after Democrats outlined a path to break the Republican legislative supermajority, Power volunteered his analysis on social media: “there isn’t one.”

That would sound more convincing if Democrats had not just flipped two Republican legislative seats, including Trump’s home district, and if a Republican incumbent had not failed to make the ballot in a third. It would sound less ridiculous if Power had managed to carry even one county in his own primary.

Posting dunks is not organizing. Mocking Nikki Fried is not candidate recruitment. Calling Democrats dead does not make them stop winning special elections. Power has confused online attention with political control, and Republican voters just supplied the correction.

The judgment problem predates Tuesday

Power’s political record also includes a 2018 DUI arrest that derailed an earlier attempt to climb the state party ladder.

Tallahassee police arrested Power after his car struck a legally parked vehicle near Eighth Avenue and Cherry Street. The responding officer reported a strong odor of alcohol, glassy eyes and slurred speech. Power said he had consumed two beers. He began field sobriety exercises but did not complete them, then refused a breath test after his arrest. At the time, Power said he had been tired and distracted and would use the court system to set the record straight.

The DUI charge did not result in a DUI conviction. More than four years later, on March 20, 2023, the case ended with a plea to a reduced reckless-driving charge. Power received six months of probation and 50 hours of community service.

That distinction matters. So does the conduct that produced the arrest: a crash into a parked car, visible signs of impairment documented by police and a refused breath test. The incident was not invented by a political opponent, and it was not ancient history when Power first sought the state chairmanship. It was part of the judgment record Republicans considered when they eventually put him in charge.

The defense, and why it is no longer enough

Power’s defense writes itself. Florida remains a Republican state. Trump won it by 13 points in 2024. Republicans control the Governor’s Mansion, every statewide elected office and supermajorities in both legislative chambers. Those are facts.

They are also inherited advantages. Power took over a party that was already dominant, in a state that had already moved sharply to the right. Riding a presidential wave is not the same thing as proving the machine works when conditions tighten.

A serious party chairman is judged when turnout is awkward, independents are restless, candidates need recruiting, incumbents need compliance help and the national environment turns hostile. Those are the moments when organization matters. Those are also the moments when Power’s operation has started failing.

Florida is not purple yet. But under Power, the idea is no longer as laughable as he pretends. Democrats have shown they can win in Mar-a-Lago’s district, overcome a 22,000-voter registration deficit and a roughly 10-to-1 spending disadvantage in Senate District 14, and take a Republican House seat because the incumbent failed to file the right form. Power has done more to make Florida look competitive than any of his social-media targets.

Now comes the result he cannot blame on Nikki Fried, national headwinds, independent voters or a candidate’s paperwork. This one was his campaign, his name, his endorsements, his money and his home turf.

He finished third.

He lost Leon County.

He won zero counties.

Power launched his campaign by declaring, “I know how to beat the Left and I know how to deliver results.” He delivered results, all right. They were the political equivalent of a positive COVID-19 test: unmistakable confirmation that the operation was sick.

Power apparently believed that catering to party power brokers like Randy Fine, supporting state-party interventions in local Republican organizations, and refusing to sanction a gubernatorial primary debate that might inconvenience the frontrunner would stockpile enough favors to carry him into Congress. When his own name reached the ballot, the favor bank was empty. Party officials could endorse him. Republican voters did not.

He could not beat the Left. He could not beat his fellow Republicans. And across 16 counties, he could not win a single one. He’s a chair that can’t find a seat.