Takeaways from the Florida Senate debate

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic Rep. Val Demings demonstrated in Tuesday’s Florida Senate debate why they are considered two of the brightest stars by their respective parties. In a spirited and testy 60-minute debate – the first and only of the race – they traded quick barbs, sharp rebukes and pointed answers, covering a range of issues from abortion and guns to the economy and nuclear war. Rubio, a one-time presidential candidate who is no stranger to the debate stage, leaned into his legislative achievements and policy proposals while calling his opponent a creature of the political left who hasn’t passed any meaningful bills. Demings, a House impeachment manager during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment proceedings, painted Rubio as a politician who will say and do anything to get reelected and compared his long career in elected office to her time on the police force in Orlando.

The race has largely flown under the radar compared to other hotly contested matchups that could control the fate of the evenly divided Senate. And neither party had plans going into Tuesday to spend much on airtime in the final three weeks. That reality favors Rubio in a state where Republicans have consistently held the electoral edge and now outnumber Democrats in registered voters, putting the onus on Demings Tuesday to seize momentum before early voting begins on Monday in many counties. On a day when President Joe Biden moved to recast the midterm election as a referendum on abortion access, Demings and Rubio tried to pin each other down on where they would draw the line in a post-Roe world. Rubio said that he is “100% pro-life,” including in cases of rape or incest because “I don’t believe that the value of human life is determined by the circumstances.” But he said he would support legislation with exceptions if it helps get something passed. He is one of nine Republican co-sponsors of a Senate bill to ban abortion nationwide at 15 weeks, which Sen. Lindsey Graham filed in response to the US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs earlier this year.