Suddenly, emergency elections are looming that were supposed to be a sleepy event

The race for a House seat in a deep-red Florida district is spending millions of dollars ahead of Tuesday's election. Even if they lose, Democrats hope it will send a much-needed signal of momentum.

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Josh Weil, a Democrat running in a special election for Florida's Sixth Congressional District, was campaigning in Ocala, Fla., last week. He has raised millions for the race.

Two congressional special elections in Florida on Tuesday should have been a walk in the park for the Republican Party. Instead, one contest turned into an unlikely scene of a multimillion-dollar fight over spending — and pre-election finger-pointing on the right about how the race even became a race.

Florida’s Sixth Congressional District seat was last held by Michael Walz, who resigned to become President Trump’s national security adviser and was at the center of a leaked signal episode. It was not even remotely competitive last fall, when Mr. Walz won by 33 percentage points.

But Democrats are now looking to turn the deep-red district around Daytona Beach into, if not a real victory, then at least a symbol of much-needed momentum by significantly reducing the GOP's typical advantage in the district.

The surprising competitiveness of the race has already had an impact on Mr. Trump’s cabinet. Last week, he announced that he was withdrawing his nomination of Representative Elise Stefanik as his ambassador to the United Nations, saying the move was partly to avoid a special election this year for her seat, which is less solidly Republican than Mr. Waltz’s old one.

“I didn’t want to take any chances,” Mr. Trump said in the Oval Office on Friday. Republicans currently hold just 218 seats in the House, with four vacancies, two of which are in heavily Democratic districts. That’s a slim margin to try to pass the president’s agenda.

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