Debbie Mucarsel-Powell was 24 years old when she got the news that would change her life. It was 1995, and she was living in California, studying to get her master’s degree in international political economy, when an urgent phone call from her sister pulled her out of class. “My father had been killed by a criminal with a gun in our home country of Ecuador,” Mucarsel-Powell, now 53 years old, says. “That was so devastating, and so traumatic.”
Almost 30 years later, the pain in her voice is still palpable. When he died, Mucarsel-Powell had been living with her mom and sister in the United States for 10 years. They came, like so many immigrant families do, in search of opportunity and safety. She pauses as she recounts what that time of grief was like. “Those gunshot wounds… You see that in the person that you love, that you’re burying. It’s such a violent way to lose a loved one,” she says. “I truly believe that that changed my trajectory and everything I decided to do with my life. I knew that I wanted to fight for justice.”
That passion led Mucarsel-Powell across the country, all the way to Florida. After receiving her master’s degree, she worked her way up to become the associate dean at Florida International University’s Colleges of Health and Medicine in 2008. During her tenure there, she oversaw a program to expand affordable health care to Floridians. But in 2017, when the U.S. House of Representatives—and specifically, her member of Congress—voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a landmark piece of legislation that aims to make health insurance more accessible, Mucarsel-Powell decided to switch gears. She ran against her representative, and in November 2018, she successfully flipped the seat from red to blue, becoming the first immigrant from South America to serve in the esteemed body.
“If you look at my story and the things that I was able to achieve…only in this country that happens,” she said in a CNN interview just after being sworn in. “Only in the United States of America, does an immigrant like myself get that chance.”
Mucarsel-Powell with members of the Democratic Women’s Caucus prior to the 2020 State of the Union at the U.S. Capitol.
During her two years in Congress, Mucarsel-Powell served as vice chair of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. She fought for gun control legislation, wrote a bill to expand Medicare coverage, and led on climate issues, specifically securing $200 million to help restore the Florida Everglades and introducing bipartisan legislation to protect coral reefs.
But, after just one term, the seat flipped back; she lost to Miami-Dade County’s then-mayor, Carlos Giménez, by less than four percentage points.
Now, she’s found herself quite literally called back into politics. In 2023, Democratic leaders launched an unofficial campaign to draft her into Florida’s U.S. Senate race, urging her to run against Republican Sen. Rick Scott this November. When she officially announced her candidacy, she decided to draw attention to a different attack on Florida’s health care: access to abortion.
Ever since the Supreme Court ruled in June 2022 that there is no constitutional right to abortion, the fight for reproductive rights has proven to be a winning electoral issue in the U.S. And with Vice President Kamala Harris newly leading the Democratic ticket, there’s been a burst of enthusiasm across the country, including in Florida.
Still, Mucarsel-Powell has her work cut out for her.
Florida used to be seen as the country’s main electoral swing state, but in recent elections, it’s lost that status as Republicans have expanded, and seemingly cemented, their state control. Former President Trump won the state—which he now calls home—in 2016, and then again by an even larger margin in 2020. Currently, all statewide offices are held by Republicans.
It’s the state that served as a springboard for Gov. Ron DeSantis’s rise to national prominence; a state he turned into a laboratory for ultra-conservative legislation like the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” laws. But Mucarsel-Powell doesn’t see it as a lost cause for Democrats.
“Unfortunately, extremists like our current governor and the former president hijacked this state,” Mucarsel-Powell says. “They started using voter suppression tactics and gerrymandering maps all to grab on to power. That doesn’t mean it represents the values of who we are.” Not only does Mucarsel-Powell believe she can change the losing streak for Florida Democrats, she sees herself as being uniquely positioned for the task.
Mucarsel-Powell advocating for the Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence Act in June 2019.
In Florida, the horrific mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland catalyzed the youth-led March for Our Lives movement. Mucarsel-Powell empathizes with the pain caused by gun violence, and she’s spent the last few years working with the Giffords organization, a gun safety group.
In a state where 21 percent of people are immigrants, she moved to the U.S. as a 14-year-old. In a state that is 30 percent Latino, she is the first Latina to be the Democratic Senate candidate. “Can you believe that?” she says. “How is that possible?” If elected, she will become the first Latina to represent Florida in the Senate and the second Latina U.S. senator in history.
In terms of polling for the race, to date, Scott is always in the lead—but several recent polls have Mucarsel-Powell within three percentage points, and an early September Emerson College poll had her down by only one point. She thinks the conditions are perfect for an upset, and she believes the same issue that has helped Democrats over-perform in elections across the country will also provide a boost in Florida: abortion.
This May, a DeSantis-approved six-week abortion ban went into effect, threatening access for nearly all Floridians and those across the Southeast for whom Florida served as a safe haven. Scott has waffled on what iteration of an abortion ban he supports. In 2023, he said of the six-week ban: “If I was still governor, I would sign this bill.” Then this April, he said he’d actually prefer a 15-week ban.
Mucarsel-Powell views both of those options as unacceptable government interference. “It’s so central to the health care of a woman,” Mucarsel-Powell says. “I just spoke to somebody today that said, ‘You know, Florida’s a pro-choice state.’ We have seen that [sentiment] in the polling.”
Mucarsel-Powell and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on June 24, the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade.
It’s also what she’s seen in her conversations with constituents. “I talked to this older gentleman in his 70s, and I asked him, ‘What is your top issue?’ He said, ‘Abortion.’” She continues, “He told me that his aunt, before Roe v. Wade, died because she couldn’t have access to this reproductive health care. It destroyed his family for decades.”
The current Florida law makes it nearly impossible to access abortion care, as most people don’t know they’re pregnant until after six weeks; rape and incest survivors in Florida must also supply documentation of the assaults before being given an exception to the rule. “You are putting women through such trauma,” Mucarsel-Powell adds. “We know that this is going to disproportionately affect low-income earners, women of color, Latina women, and Black women. And you know Rick Scott and these other extreme politicians, they just do not care.”
The good news for pro-choice Floridians is that, come November, they’ll have the opportunity to vote on a ballot measure that would restore abortion access in the state up to around 24 weeks of pregnancy. In fact, since Roe was overturned, Americans from Kansas to Ohio to Kentucky have turned out to protect abortion access via similar measures.
This fall, people in Arizona, Maryland, Nevada, New York, South Dakota, Missouri, Colorado, Montana, and Nebraska will also have the chance to vote on ballot measures that would protect abortion rights in their states. In Florida, the measure has more support than Harris or Mucarsel-Powell. But one theory is that the ballot measure could be what gets voters to come out on Election Day; from there, might they vote up-ticket for Democratic candidates?
“[She could be] riding the wave of a very important ballot measure that absolutely can turn out younger voters and women voters, in particular, where we already do pretty well,” says Jim Margolis, a political consultant who worked on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns and is part of Mucarsel-Powell’s team this cycle.
If the Florida ballot measure passes, it would have a significant impact. Mucarsel-Powell points to one abortion clinic that says it had to turn away 75 percent of its patients in the first 20 days after the state’s ban went into effect. In the two months after the ban was enacted, there was reportedly a 575 percent increase in Floridians calling the National Abortion Federation hotline, needing support to travel out of state for abortion services.
“There are some really difficult stories I’ve been hearing,” Mucarsel-Powell says. “There was this woman who didn’t know there was a six-week ban. She was told, ‘You’re going to need to go to Virginia,’ and this woman says, ‘I can’t take time off from work. That’s an 11-hour drive. Who’s going to take care of my kids here while I do that? And why can’t I get health care in my own state?’ That was exactly what she said: ‘How is it possible that I can’t get health care in my own state?’”
It’s a reality Mucarsel-Powell has had to explain to her own kids. With two daughters and a son all under the age of 24, she’s had to have tough conversations about how unplanned pregnancies alter lives.
“For my daughters, I worry about their safety, because we have seen the data that when you have these bans on abortion, there’s a higher rate of violence against women. It’s one of the reasons why in Latin America they actually made it legal to access abortion in Colombia, in Argentina, very conservative countries. For my daughters to be now living in a state where if anything were to happen, there is no direct access to this health care…” she says, trailing off. “That freedom of choice has been taken away from them.”
Mucarsel-Powell (second from left) with other members of Congress at an abortion rights rally in March 2020.
She hopes Floridians will not only approve the ballot measure, but also vote for Democrats across the board, so that abortion will be protected longterm: “One of the things that I’ve been telling people is that it will mean nothing if we pass this abortion measure and enshrine it into our state constitution, and then Rick Scott gets reelected and does whatever he can to push for a national abortion ban.”
But even with reproductive rights on the line, Mucarsel-Powell knows this is a challenging race. No matter what happens, she hopes her candidacy inspires others to jump into difficult fights: “So many of us [women] have gone to school, studied, and given back to our communities,” she says. “We take care of our parents, our children, we are volunteering, and we’re making sure we help our neighbors. Yet, so many of us are told, ‘It’s not your time yet,’ and ‘You’re not prepared.’ But we are.”
The possibility of progress is what keeps her going, though the stakes can feel high and the odds stacked.
“I’m a South American immigrant who went from working a minimum-wage service job to getting to represent my community in Congress,” she says. “I have hope, because I’ve experienced the possibilities of America firsthand—and when I travel across Florida, I’m meeting so many people who believe in those possibilities too. I’ve met Floridians young and old, of different political leanings and of different backgrounds, who are all united in the desire to build a better future.”
“Yes, this is a tough race, but I know I’m not fighting alone,” she continues. “And that gives me all the joy I need.”
Seamus Kirst is a political and entertainment journalist, author, and screenwriter. His work has appeared in Elle, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Vulture, The Guardian, and more.