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2024 Election: U.S. Congressional District 15 candidate profiles

By FOX 13 News Staff
Published  October 18, 2024 11:20am EDT
2024 Election
FOX 13 News

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    Pat Kemp (Democrat)

    TAMPA - Hillsborough County Commissioner Pat Kemp is a Democrat running to represent Florida’s 15th U.S. Congressional District. She hopes to unseat first-term Representative Laural Lee, who was elected to the House in 2022.

    Kemp, 67, currently serves on the Hillsborough County Commission. She was first elected to the Commission in 2016, but term limits prohibit her from running for another term.

    Kemp, who is a former chairperson for the Hillsborough County Democratic party, has been active in local politics for many years.  According to her campaign website, she served as a political aide to U.S. Representative Cathy Castor, when Castor was on the County Commission.  She also served as a legislative aide and worked as a news director and talk show host for WUSF radio.

    According to her LinkedIn page, Kemp earned her law degree at Stetson University College of Law in 1998 and worked as a Family Law Attorney for Bay Area Legal Services in the early 2000s.  She also maintained a private legal practice from 2007 to 2016.

    Kemp has made abortion rights a central theme of her campaign.  She supports Florida’s Amendment 4 which would restore abortion rights to the point of viability, which is considered to be 24 weeks. Currently, Florida restricts abortion to the first six weeks of pregnancy. 

    Kemp is challenging incumbent Republican Representative Laurel Lee, who won the seat in 2022 by defeating Democrat Alan Cohn by a wide margin, 58% to 41%.  According to filings with the Federal Elections Commission, Kemp had received $260,194 in campaign donations and had $151,788 cash on hand as of July 31 – a fraction of the $1.7 million in donations and the $1.2 million cash on hand, Lee reported.

    District 15 is a Republican-leaning district, which covers portions of Eastern Hillsborough County, portions of Pasco County, and western Polk County, including Zephyrhills, Plant City, Lutz, portions of Temple Terrace, Brandon and west Lakeland.  It is a relatively new district, created when Florida received an additional Congressional district based on population growth seen in the 2020 federal census.

    Courtesy: Laurel Lee/Pat Kemp

    Laurel Lee (Republican)

    U.S. Representative Laurel Lee, a Republican from Hillsborough County, is running for a second term in November.  Lee was first elected to represent Florida’s Congressional District 15 in 2022.  She faces Democrat Pat Kemp, who is currently a member of the Hillsborough County Commission.

    Lee has a long record of public service dating back to the early 2000s when she worked as an Assistant Public Defender. She later served as a Federal Prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Middle District of Florida, which stretches from Jacksonville to southwest Florida.  In 2013, Governor Rick Scott appointed her to serve as a Circuit Court Judge in Hillsborough County.  She served as a Judge for six years before becoming Florida’s Secretary of State under the DeSantis Administration in 2019.

    In 2022, Lee was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where she currently serves on the House Administration, Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees. She is also a member of the Bipartisan Task Force investigating the attempted assassination of Former President Donald Trump.

    Lee, 50, was born on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio in 1974 and grew up in a large military family. According to her congressional webpage, she graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in Political Science in 1996 and received her law degree from UF in 1999.

    On issues, Lee has been critical of the Biden-Harris Administration’s border policy.  She supports the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe versus Wade, which ended Federal protection of abortion rights, leaving it up to the 50 states to regulate individually.  Lee says she is pro-life but supports exceptions for cases of rape and incest.

    Politics is a family business for Rep. Lee.  She is married to former Florida State Senator Tom Lee, who served as Senate President from 2004 to 2006.  The couple and their three children live in Brandon. 

    Lee has held a significant fundraising advantage over her challenger.  According to the Federal Elections Commission, Lee had received nearly $1.7 million worth of donations and still has more than $1.2 million cash on hand as of July 31.  By comparison, Democrat Pat Kemp received $260,194 and had $151,788 cash on hand as of July 31. 

    District 15 is a Republican-leaning district, which covers portions of Eastern Hillsborough County, portions of Pasco County, and western Polk County, including Zephyrhills, Plant City, Lutz, portions of Temple Terrace, Brandon and west Lakeland.  It is a relatively new district, created when Florida received an additional Congressional district based on population growth seen in the 2020 federal census.

    Lee won the seat by a large margin in 2020, defeating Democrat Alan Cohn 58% to 42%.

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