Leonard Spencer tried to tell someone he was not a politician soon after getting elected to the Florida Legislature. He was quickly told what to do.
He laughed as he told the story and said, “Nope.” “‘You were chosen. Yes, you are now a politician.
In Florida politics in 2024, Spencer, 53, of Gotha, is one of only a few Democrats who were able to flip a spot in the state House from red to blue during a GOP wave year.
Now the question is what the newcomer to politics can do in Tallahassee, where Republicans have a huge majority, and whether he will be able to build a long career in a district that barely voted for Donald Trump this year.
Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, said, “He will have to work really hard over the next two years if he wants to keep this seat.”
He beat one of the most susceptible Republicans in Tallahassee, which is how Spencer won. At the time, Carolina Amesty was a state representative.
In September, she was charged with four felonies for allegedly forgerizing a man’s signature on a job form she notarized while working as an administrator for her family’s small school.
Spencer won, but only by a thin margin of 1,600 votes, with 50.8% of the vote. This was his first time running for office.
Spencer does not believe that Amnesty’s accusations made a difference in the end.
After all, he said, President-elect Trump won re-election even though he had been convicted of crimes.
“Across the country, we have seen that people do not care.” He said, “I think it is more about, ‘Are you focused on the things that matter to me?'”
Amesty became a well-known culture fighter after she won the seat in 2022. She called out the “extremists” at Disney for spreading “far-left narratives and lies,” even though Walt Disney World is in her district.
“When you are focused on these small issues that do not get to the heart of what people are worried about?” Spencer said. “That is when people start to get mad.”
This year, Democrats were looking for someone to run against Amesty. Spencer suggested a few possible candidates, but then party leaders went around to him to see if he was still interested.
His wife, Tanya, his son Leonard, Jr., a former naval officer, and his daughter Taylor, a Washington lawyer, were the first people he asked.
“I said ‘Okay’ when they said yes,” he explained. “I will put my name in the hat.”
Spencer was born and raised in Florida, but he took a long way to get to Central Florida.
Born in Jacksonville, Fla., while his dad was still in the Navy, he had a “typical childhood in the South” growing up in Mobile, Ala., before going to Tuskegee University to study economics and the University of Alabama to get his MBA.
He thinks of himself as an economic conservative businessman and has looked up to leaders in both parties.
But one reason he switched parties was “the rhetoric that has come from the Republican side of the aisle, relative to inclusion, relative to abortion rights, relative to a lot of things.”
His last job was with The Walt Disney Company, which is where he moved to Central Florida in 2005. Now he is a senior manager at Amazon.
He worked for Disney as a financial analyst and then as a supply chain director. This gave him a unique view of what he called Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “bewildering” fight with the company.
After Disney’s former CEO spoke out against the so-called “do not say gay” rule, which says schools can not teach about sexual orientation or gender identity, DeSantis got rid of the special district that ran government services in Walt Disney World.
It seems silly for the governor to get into a fight with Disney over something as simple as supporting the people who work there.
Spencer said. “You ended up in a fight with the state’s biggest employer.” You should also think about all the companies that supply Disney and the people who work there.
Spencer said in the legislature that he wants to work on making housing more cheap, fixing the problem with homeowners insurance, making it easier for people to get health insurance, and protecting women’s rights to have children.
Those were the topics that all the Democrats running against Republican incumbents promised to fight for this year. Spencer is the only one who can now do anything about them, though.
“At least I was able to win a seat,” he said. “Now I can sit down at the table.” “It may not be the best seat in the house, but at least I can speak up and share my thoughts.”
If you look at seats that have been going blue over the last few elections, this one fits the bill. According to elections expert Matt Isbell, President Joe Biden would have won by about 4.5 points in 2020.
But Trump won by a little less than 1% this year. Spencer wants to know what kind of voters there will be in 2026.
“Being the current incumbent, he will be able to make his name known more across the district,” Jewett said. She said, “He might be able to raise more money than he did as a challenger.”
Jewett said it was important for Spencer and his team to give a lot of attention to constituent services, like another Democratic state representative, Anna Eskamani. That same day, the Orlando representative won her fourth term.
“Over and over again over the next two years, he and his staff will have to reach out to the people in his district,” Jent said. “If he does that, he has a good chance of being re-elected no doubt.”
Spencer is getting ready for the next congressional session, which starts in March, for now.
Spencer said of his new responsibilities, “I do not take it lightly.” “When I was younger, my grandmother and parents always told me, ‘When you walk out that door, you stand for me.'” Please do not make me look bad. That makes me feel like I have a duty.