Sitting at a cozy corner table at Caracas Bakery, Florida’s newest Democratic Senate candidate Hector Mujica described his Sunday routine: church with his wife and 16-month-old son, sometimes with their dog Coco in tow, before heading here for pastries. “This place has been a bit of a ritual for the sacredness of our weekends,” Mujica said. “It’s a small business that a friend of mine started a few years ago,” he added, raving about the cachitos de jamón. “Venezuelans have the best baked goods.”
A pastor’s kid and child of immigrants who left Venezuela for Broward County, Mujica, 36, points to his faith and parents’ example of service as central to his identity — and to his campaign pitch to Floridians. His newly launched campaign video opens with a Bible verse and shots of him walking the streets talking to homeless Floridians. He’s facing a steep uphill battle. But the God-fearing, first-time candidate is hoping to appeal to Florida voters at a time that the Democratic Party is struggling trying to find relevance or a defining identity in the MAGA era. “In Florida, there’s more of a hunger for public servants and nonpoliticians,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who Mujica has hired, said. “And then the other thing and I keep coming back to but I think it’s really key: Florida Latinos are really hungry for a Latino candidate.” The Florida International University graduate has worked for Google’s philanthropy arm for the past 13 years in disaster response and most recently disseminating grants across the Americas, but left his job earlier this month to hit the campaign trail full-time. If successful, he’d also be the first Venezuelan-American senator, at a time when Venezuela has become a central part of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. “I’ve been fortunate and lucky to have my entire extended family here in South Florida. Also, my wife’s entire extended family is also here in South Florida,” he told the Miami Herald in an interview. “Our families are reflective of the diversity of the state of Florida when it comes to political belief and I think that’s part of the strength that I bring to this candidacy.” Success is unlikely in Florida — even if he does find a way to capture independents and some Republicans. Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat since 2012 or any other statewide race in the past seven years.
The state is particularly expensive to campaign in and national Democratic funding arms have all but written off its Senate race. A spokesperson for Mujica said they’re actively fundraising, but declined to provide their cash on hand so far. Plus, since he’s never run for office before, Mujica has no statewide name recognition. And he’ll have to make it past a Democratic primary, which also includes Jennifer Jenkins, who’s actually run a political campaign before for school board. To bolster his chances at success, he’s hired Lake, the ubiquitous Democratic pollster who also works for Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost. She makes the case that Mujica is exactly the kind of candidate voters want as Democrats’ struggle to gain back power. “The strongest thing in the poll by far was Hector’s unique story. People really, really, really were interested, really responded to it,” Lake said. She pointed to both his parents’ background in faith-based community service and his work at Google, including around AI — which she says has been coming up as a key issue in her polls across the country.
She also insists that Sen. Ashley Moody — who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis after Trump tapped Marco Rubio for Secretary of State earlier this year — is uniquely vulnerable because she hasn’t been elected to the seat before. Moody won reelection as Florida’s attorney general in 2022 with 60% of the vote. But the Republican political machine in Florida is such a behemoth, Moody, as the Republican incumbent, has a much easier path forward than any Democrat in the state. In the unlikely race, Mujica said his focus is on keeping his message personal. “Part of my diagnosis of what’s so broken today in America is that we’ve lost an orientation towards community,” he said. “We’ve lost an orientation towards seeing other people as dignified image bearers of the Creator, that they too are worthy of respect and of shared humanity.”
