Trump’s Pick To Represent Him In Florida Statehouse Doesn’t Even Live In The District

President Donald Trump, hoping to prevent a Democrat from representing him in Florida’s statehouse, has endorsed the Republican running for the seat in a special election this month — even though the candidate’s home is not in the district and he recently moved his voter registration to a cheap beach motel to satisfy state law.

Trump won House District 87 by 11 points in 2024, but Democrats, powered by antipathy to Trump, have been showing up in droves in otherwise low-turnout contests.

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The result has been a run of successes around the country in special elections, with wins in seats even redder than the one containing 1100 S. Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach, Trump’s official residence at his Mar-a-Lago country club.

“I feel very encouraged,” Democratic nominee and political novice Emily Gregory said, rattling off figures showing that Democrats, who are handily outnumbered in the district by registration, have thus far returned more mail ballots than Republicans.

State Democrats suspect that even Gov. Ron DeSantis knows that his party could lose that seat, which is why he postponed calling a special election for it for two months after the vacancy happened. A lawsuit filed by Gregory and the ACLU forced his hand.

DeSantis’ office did not respond to a HuffPost query about the delay.

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State legislative races are usually about local issues, which in Florida right now include a windstorm property insurance crisis and increasingly unaffordable housing. Yet Trump may have helped make this special election about himself by endorsing Republican Jon Maples even before January’s primary.

“Jon is a very successful Businessman and Civic Leader, who is known and loved, and also endorsed by so many of my Palm Beach County friends,” Trump wrote.

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Maples, though, was not even registered to vote in the district at the time of Trump’s Jan. 6 endorsement.

The 43-year-old former member of the Lake Clarke Shores town council did not respond to HuffPost queries.

Lake Clarke Shores, south of West Palm Beach, is where the 2,500-square-foot home he and his wife bought nine years ago is located and which receives a homestead exemption property tax break. That, however, is a mile and a quarter west of the House District 87 boundary. His voter registration now shows that he lives in a motel in Palm Beach Shores, 15 miles to the north. Records obtained by HuffPost under the state public records law show that he registered to vote at the motel address on Jan. 12 — too late to vote for himself in the Jan. 13 primary for which Trump offered his endorsement and which he handily won.

The motel does not publish its rates on the internet and calls to its listed phone number went unanswered. Its one reviewer on Yelp gave it only one star, citing previous “infestations” of termites and flies, while noting that “the maintenance man does substances all day starting in the morning with a neighbor.”

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HuffPost could not independently verify the complaints cited by the reviewer.

In any case, it is unclear whether Maples actually lives there. Florida requires him to live in the district on Election Day, which in this case is March 24.

One prominent Florida Republican, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Maples is in the process of buying a home inside the district but acknowledged that public records would not yet reflect this. He added that Trump endorsed him because Maples had been a delegate to the 2024 RNC convention.

Gregory, who is 40 and runs an exercise business that caters to new mothers, said she has focused on cost-of-living concerns she hears about while campaigning and has thus far knocked on 1,000 doors to turn out Democratic supporters. She has not tried a visit to Mar-a-Lago. “That’s not a friendly door,” she said.

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The district favors Republicans by registration by about 10 percentage points, but nearly a third of voters are registered as not affiliated with either party. “I think that the independent is a left-leaning independent in this district,” she said.

Trump, a native of New York City, is no stranger to Democratic lawmakers, who dominate state legislative and congressional seats in that city. Trump himself donated freely to Democrats prior to running for president in 2016, although he has said he did so in order to make them do as he wanted.

With a turnout of perhaps 20% expected, it is unclear who will win in two weeks, although state vote tracking figures show that Democratic voters have returned just under 1,000 more ballots by mail than Republicans as of Friday.

It’s also unclear whether Trump’s endorsement — which Maples does not even mention on his website — will help or hurt Maples, given Trump’s increasing unpopularity.

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“I think, in this moment, Trump’s endorsement is Kryptonite,” said Nikki Fried, the Democratic state party chair.

As to Maples’ living outside the district, thus far it does not appear to have arisen as a campaign issue. Gregory joked that after the March 24 election, it won’t be an issue at all, because she intends to win. “As I have told Jon, he doesn’t need to worry about it,” she said.

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