Republican state Rep. Debbie Mayfield filed suit directly to the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday, alleging state election officials broke the law when they blocked her from qualifying for a special election to fill a state Senate seat.
“It is well-settled that the Secretary (of State) serves a purely ministerial role in processing the Qualifying Paperwork, and has no authority to determine whether the Qualifying Paperwork is accurate, or whether there are grounds to challenge Mayfield’s eligibility to run in the Special Election for SD 19,” Mayfield’s complaint says.
The Florida Division of Elections’ director sent her a letter Wednesday, the day after the qualifying period for the Senate District 19 race ended. Because of term limits, it said, Mayfield wasn’t eligible to run since she held the seat for eight years until November.
Mayfield, 68, is a Melbourne Republican who served in the House 2008–16 and in the Senate from 2016 until November. Last year she ran for and won a seat in the House, starting her second stint in that chamber.
Debbie Mayfield
But the falling dominoes from President Donald Trump’s decisions to place Florida officials in his new administration led Mayfield to look to regain her Senate spot.
Sen. Randy Fine, R-Melbourne Beach, won the race to replace Mayfield in SD 19 – a district that covers most of Brevard County – last November. When Trump picked former U.S. Rep. Mike Waltz to be the next national security advisor, Fine jumped in the race for the special election to his old U.S. House seat.
On Jan. 28, Fine won the Republican primary in that special election. The general election is set for April 1. Fine’s resignation from the SD 19 seat will take effect March 31. Florida law requires elected officials to resign their position to run for another seat if the terms will overlap.
That leaves Mayfield’s old seat open again. Despite Florida’s cap on lawmakers serving more than eight consecutive years in one office, Mayfield and most political observers believed that because she was out of the office for several months she could still run to return to the seat.
State election officials, however, disagreed – blocking her from qualifying for the race. Mayfield blamed the move on Gov. Ron DeSantis, alleging he holds a grudge against her for endorsing Trump instead of him during the 2024 GOP presidential primary. (DeSantis isn’t named in the lawsuit.)
Mayfield’s legal challenge argues the role of the Division of Elections is merely “ministerial” and they can’t deny her a spot on the ballot.
She points to a series of similar cases, including one in 2018 in which a GOP rival challenged the eligibility of former GOP state Rep. Jamie Grant of Tampa to be on the ballot that year.
Grant was first elected to the House in 2010, but a separate legal challenge in 2014 led to him not being seated after the 2014 election, leading to a special election to be called in 2015, which he won.
Former state Rep. Jamie Grant of Tampa
But he was out of office for five months, and when his candidacy was challenged in 2018, Department of State attorneys argued the suit should be thrown out because he hadn’t served consecutively eight years in office.
Mayfield’s lawsuit asks the court to compel “the Secretary to immediately recognize her as a qualified candidate for the SD 19 Special Election, including ensuring her name appears on the requisite Special Election ballots.”
The primary for the SD 19 special election is set for April 1, with the general election set for June 10.
Gray Rohrer is a reporter with the USA TODAY Network-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at grohrer@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @GrayRohrer.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Rep. Debbie Mayfield sues state after getting bumped from ballot
