Republican David Jolly wins tight Florida congressional race

Republican David Jolly defeated Democrat Alex Sink in a U.S. congressional election Tuesday, in a Florida district where Democrats and Republicans had spent millions of dollars testing national strategies for the rest of the year.

The contest for Florida's 13th District seat was widely viewed as an opening salvo in the national fight this year over who controls Congress in the last two years of President Barack Obama's final presidential term. The House of Representatives is expected to remain under Republican control. But in the Senate, Republicans are hoping to leverage Obama's unpopularity and his health care law's wobbly start to gain the six seats required to control the 100-member chamber.

With almost 100 percent of the vote counted in the race for the Tampa-area House district, Jolly had 48.5 percent of the vote to Sink's 46.7 percent. Libertarian Lucas Overby had 4.8 percent.

Sink conceded shortly before 8 p.m. in the special election held to succeed Republican Rep. Bill Young, who died in October at 82.

Seeing the race as a bellwether for the coming election year, both parties had called in star advocates like President Bill Clinton and former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, and had blanketed the district with ads, calls and mailings. More than $11 million has been spent on the election, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit group that tracks government information.

That makes the race in Florida a pricey proving ground for both parties heading into November elections.

Jolly, who was backed by Republicans and outside groups, campaigned on repealing the health care law, saying in one ad that Sink would undermine Medicare because of Democratic-passed cuts to programs under the Affordable Care Act.

The message is a rallying cry for Republican voters.

"No more big government. We've got to stop," said Irene Wilcox, a 78-year-old retired waitress and Republican from Largo who voted for Jolly.

Others described Sink as a clone of Obama and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, a key argument of Jolly and national Republicans.

"As bad as Bush may have been, he was a saint compared to the guy we have in Washington," said Rich Castellani, a retired treasury agent who supported Jolly.

Meanwhile, Sink, Florida's former chief financial officer and the Democratic nominee for governor in 2010, painted Jolly as an extremist who wants to "take us back" to when people were denied coverage due to existing conditions. She pledged to "to keep what's right and fix what's wrong" in the health care law.

That argument resonated with some voters.

"While I know it's not perfect, it's may be the beginning of where we can provide adequate health care to everyone, not just the wealthy," said Frieda Widera, a 51-year-old Democrat from Largo who backed Sink.

Voters have been hit with more than barrages of television advertising and other campaign material, financed in large part by the national parties and partisan groups hoping a victory in this race would signal the prospect of a bigger win in the November mid-term elections.

"You can see the handprints of the national parties all over the race," said Susan MacManus, a longtime political analyst and professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

"It almost seems as if the 2012 presidential race never ended, and just the faces and the district changed."

MacManus said an early campaign focus on Obamacare got little traction because older voters were not affected. Sink switched to criticizing Jolly for representing a client who wanted to privatize Social Security and turn Medicare into a voucher program – changes Jolly said he does not support.

"This is a strategy I think Democrats are looking at nationally to change the focus from Obamacare to Social Security and Medicare," MacManus said.

Following the election, MacManus expects both parties to use the Tampa Bay area, the nation's 10^th-largest television market and home to 25 percent of all registered Florida voters, as a political laboratory to conduct focus groups on the campaign strategies.

Al Jazeera & Wire Services