Update: Election results show Black, Hispanic women candidates bringing new perspectives to Florida politics

EDITOR'S NOTE: Read the original story here: https://floridatrend.com/article/35113/black-and-hispanic-women-running-for-office-are-shaking-up-floridas-political-landscape 

In the November 2022 issue of FLORIDA TREND, we profiled several Black and Hispanic women candidates who are part of a trend of more women of color running for political office. The 2022 election set a new high bar for women of color in Florida politics: 49% of women candidates running for major state or federal office in Florida are women of color.

Here are the results of Tuesday’s general election:

• Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez (R) glided to victory alongside her running mate, Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a landslide (19.4-point) victory over Charlie Christ and his running mate, Karla Hernández-Mats.
• Incumbent Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican, defeated Democratic candidate Annette Taddeo, a former state senator, in U.S. House District 27 in Miami-Dade County, which is home to the largest population of voting-age Hispanics in the state. “This election proves what Ronald Reagan famously said, that Latinos are Republicans, they just don’t know it — until tonight, because 2022 has been the year of the Hispanic Republicans,” Salazar said in her victory speech.
• Kiyan Michael, a Black Republican who also ran on a mantle of immigration reform, defeated two write-in candidates in her race for Florida House District 16 in the Jacksonville area.
• Susan Plasencia, a Republican who is of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent, unseated four-term state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat, in Florida House District 37 in Central Florida. Plasencia, who won with 52% of the vote to Smith's 48%, tweeted that she was “honored” to be elected and would “begin the process of #WorkingTogether as we move Florida forward!”
• Carolina Amesty, a Venezuelan-American, won Florida House district 45, defeating Democrat Allie Braswell with 53% of the vote to Braswell’s 47%.
• Incumbent state Rep. Fentrice Driskell, House Democratic leader and the first Black woman to be elected to that post, won a third term in north Tampa's District 67. She defeated Republican newcomer Lisette Bonano, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan.
• U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Haitian-American Democrat, was re-elected to Congressional District 20, the Broward-Palm Beach district she won in a January special election to succeed the late Congressman Alcee Hastings. With 78 percent of the vote, she handily fended off a challenge from Republican Drew-Montez Clark.
• Former Ninth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Aramis Ayala, an Orlando Democrat and Florida's first Black state attorney, was unable to unseat Republican incumbent State Attorney General Ashley Moody.
• Cuban-American businesswoman Janelle Perez, a protege of Republican former U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, was defeated in her first bid for elected office by Republican Alexis Calatayud, a 28- year-old Cuban American and former Florida International University student body president, in Miami-Dade's redistricted Senate District 38.

Tags: Government/Politics & Law, Extra, Decision 2022