By Jim Ellis — Thursday, January 15, 2026
House
Florida Rep. Neal Dunn (R)
Rep. Dunn, a physician, served in the Army Medical Corps for 11 years before coming to the Florida Panhandle where he founded two medical facilities and a bank, all prior to his initial election to the US House in 2016.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) indicates he will call a special session in April for congressional redistricting, so we can expect to see some different district configurations result in northern Florida. Rep. Dunn’s open 2nd District will likely become more Republican under new construction since the GOP map drawers will want to secure the district for a new party nominee.
Rep. Dunn’s 2nd District currently stretches from west of Panama City to the city of Perry at the easternmost point of the CD and through the capital city of Tallahassee, including all of Leon County. The 2nd features a 54.3R – 43.7D partisan lean (Dave’s Redistricting App statistics), a distinctly Republican seat but one with a weaker GOP inclination than most of the Sunshine State’s northern congressional districts. It would be an easy territory swap for the new map drawers to include more Republicans from the western 1st District in exchange for a commensurate amount of Democratic territory moving from the 2nd to the 1st.
Click on image to go to interactive map of Florida CDs on DavesRedistrictingApp.
The weaker districts are 7, 4 (Rep. Aaron Bean-R), and Rep. Dunn’s 2nd CD. Expect all three to gain Republicans under a new draw with the three strongest northern Florida GOP seats, the 1st, 6th, and 5th (Rep. John Rutherford-R), potentially giving up Republicans to strengthen the others.
The 6th District, which freshman Randy Fine (R-Melbourne Beach) represents, may remain close to its current configuration because he is the candidate who won the special election when then-Rep. Mike Waltz resigned to join the Trump Administration. Rep. Fine actually represented a state Senate district about 100 miles from the 6th CD, so keeping this seat as strong as possible will be a GOP goal to make sure that Fine has a viable opportunity to solidify his new political base.
Watch for a major redraw of District 7. Here, Rep. Cory Mills (R-New Smyrna Beach), who is under a scandal cloud and holds the weakest Republican seat in northern Florida, is staring at a difficult re-election. He already has two Republican primary challengers with several other possibilities depending upon how the new 7th is drawn.
Because the current 7th District partisan lean is only 52.8R – 45.0D, without redistricting Rep. Mills can expect a credible Democrat to challenge him. Six Democrats, including former NASA chief of staff Bale Dalton, are preparing campaigns, but this field could also drastically change once a new configuration becomes public.
It will be interesting to see if the map drawers decide to draw the seat with Mills-favorable Republicans or design a new 7th so another Republican likely wins the party nomination, thus jettisoning Rep. Mills because of his scandal trouble.
With Rep. Dunn retiring, the open-seat count now grows to 53 (28 Republican seats; 20 Democratic; and five new seats created through California and Texas redistricting). Of the 48 current members not seeking re-election, only 19 are retiring from elective politics. The remainder, excluding the two members who have passed away, are running for different offices.