Winter Springs will send two new Democrats to Tallahassee after Tuesday's election, with Nik Dean winning the open seat in House District 38 and John Lowndes defeating Republican state Sen. Jason Brodeur in Senate District 10.
The figures are unofficial results posted on the state's Florida Election Watch site and the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections results page, which was last updated at 10:01 p.m. Tuesday with all 82 county precincts in and 598 mail ballots still to be processed countywide. Neither race is close enough for those ballots to change the result.
House District 38
- Nik Dean (D): 38,911 (56.19%)
- Emily Duda Buckley (R): 30,339 (43.81%)
The district lies entirely in Seminole County, and Oviedo Community News reported that Dean will represent the Winter Springs area. The seat came open because Republican Rep. David Smith reached the House term limit. Buckley, a member of the Duda family, whose business has operated in Oviedo for a century, raised more than $518,908, compared with Dean's $46,400, the outlet reported.
Dean told Oviedo Community News that affordability should be the Legislature's first priority and that he wants to encourage employers to offer profit-sharing to workers.
Senate District 10
- John Lowndes (D): 124,629 (55.91%)
- Jason Brodeur (R): 98,286 (44.09%)
Lowndes, a lawyer and Maitland's mayor, carried both the Seminole and Orange County portions of the district, winning Seminole 106,114 to 86,902. Brodeur has been the Senate's president pro tempore, its second-ranking post, and campaigned on the roughly $130 million in state money he said he secured for the district over four budgets, according to Oviedo Community News.
The race turned in part on Seminole's rural boundary. Lowndes made protecting it a central issue, while Brodeur had backed a bill that would have weakened it, arguing in 2025 that blocking owners inside the boundary from developing their land amounts to a taking.
