Redistricting made Republican Rep. John Mica's suburban Orlando seat considerably bluer (Obama carried the new version of Florida’s 7th Congressional District by less than 0.1 percent in 2012), and national Democrats are making an expensive effort to flip it. While former Defense Department official Stephanie Murphy jumped in just before the June filing deadline, the DCCC quickly signaled its support with a huge $3 million fall ad reservation here. House Majority PAC has also recently began airing ads as part of their own $800,000 buy.
Despite these big bookings, we’d been skeptical as to whether there was really any “there” there and wondered if Democrats were just trying to make fetch happen. But now it looks like fetch might indeed be happening: A few days ago, the D-Trip released a survey giving Mica a small 48-45 lead. Mica’s team dismissed it as a “deceitful and misleading push poll” but notably didn’t release their own numbers.
Still, national Republicans seem confident enough in the incumbent’s chances to not reserve any airtime here. And Mica, who holds a large cash-on-hand lead over Murphy, also won’t be easy to beat. The congressman hasn’t faced a credible Democratic foe in well over a decade, but his decisive 61-39 2012 primary win over fellow Rep. Sandy Adams demonstrates that he still knows how to campaign. However, Democratic spending and this new poll both indicate a real race is brewing here, so we’re changing our rating from Likely Republican to Lean Republican.