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Florida Congressman Daniel Webster announced Tuesday that he would not seek re-election to Congress and would retire at the end of this term.
In a statement posted on his website and on social media, Webster, who represents District 11, said, “The time has come to pass the torch to the next conservative leader and spend more precious time with my wife, children and 24 grandchildren.” He said it had been “an honor and a privilege” to represent Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Reached for comment, Dan Williams, running in the District 11 Democratic Primary, said, “It’s great that he is going out the way he is on his own terms. I’m looking forward to having a clean slate in the race.”
Democratic hopeful Royal Webster II (no relation), also running in the primary, offered congratulations on Webster’s “impressive 46 years of service” to the state and country. In a text to VoxPopuli he said, “To my knowledge, he never lost an election during that time, a remarkable achievement that I was looking forward to change.”
By late Tuesday afternoon, Lake County Commissioner and Mount Dora attorney Anthony Sabatini had filed his paperwork to run for Webster’s seat. In a brief phone interview, Sabatini — who served in the Florida House and on the Eustis City Commission — said politics needs younger people and new people.
“We can’t have the same people in the same office for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years,” he said, emphasizing that he favors term limits.
With redistricting, Sabatini said he wasn’t sure who else might join the primary race, but that based on his polling when he ran against Webster in 2024, he was the likely frontrunner — something he was “humbled by.”
“Hopefully I can earn that position in addition to having it already just based on my previous run,” he said. He was confident the seat would remain Republican.
Webster, 77 (who celebrated his birthday Monday), spent 46 years in public service, beginning in 1980 in the Florida House. There, he was the longest serving state legislator and became the first Republican Speaker of the House in 122 years. He was later Senate Majority Leader. He termed out in 2008. In 2010, he was elected to Congress as a member of the Tea Party.
On Facebook, Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power thanked Webster “for a lifetime of service to Florida,” and said that his “commitment to faith, family, and principled leadership has left a lasting impact on our state.”
Webster is responsible for the legislation that legalized homeschooling in Florida with the 1985 Home Education Program Act. He is also responsible for the legislation requiring that women seeking an abortion first have an ultrasound.
Working with Democratic Reps. Val Demings, Stephanie Murphy and Darren Soto and fellow Republican Rep. Gus Bilirakis, Webster helped secure a $15.8 million grant to extend SunRail to the airport and Brightline to Tampa, according to Florida Politics. He also secured the funding for road improvements that improved traffic flow around Orlando Airport and that built State Road 429.
More recently, Webster was one of the 147 members of Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election. He was also cited by the Center for Effective Lawmaking from the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, as the least effective Florida lawmaker in terms of getting legislation passed. GovTrack ranked Webster number 16 in the 117th Congress during which he missed 7.6 percent of the votes and 73rd in the 118th Congress where he missed 3.3 percent.
Democrat Barbie Harden Hall — spurred to run for Congress in 2024 after Webster refused to meet with her when she was advocating for rare diseases after the death of her young son — said in a phone call that while she couldn’t get her head around the news, ultimately she wasn’t surprised by Webster’s retirement. She has routinely knocked Webster for not showing up for votes and town halls with constituents and refusing to debate her in their last race.
“The last election, I was like, This will be Daniel Webster’s last run, you know, win or lose. This will be his last. Just the few times I saw him out and about, I really was like He’s not going to do this again. And then when I saw that he missed that first day of Congress, like 40 percent of the votes, I was just like, Okay, he’s done. He just hasn’t been in it. So I’ve been expecting it.”
Harden Hall said that the possibility now of facing Sabatini in the general election does not change her game plan.
“Now there’s going to actually be an opportunity for people to hear and see what the options are as opposed to somebody just running on their record and them having been an elected official for several decades,” she said.
But she added that she was not looking forward to tangling with Sabatini’s supporters whom she said she encountered when he briefly ran in 2024.
“That was the first time I learned what a Groyper was because they were supporters of Anthony Sabatini,” she said. “They liked to call me a Jew. I was like who are these people, and why are they thinking that it’s an insult to call me a Jew even though I’m not one? They were talking about me being raped and grabbing me by the pussy and all this other stuff. That was my first introduction to that whole group of people. But, you know, I will deal with it as it comes. It’s not going to dissuade me from the fight at all.”
First-time Republican candidate Mike Wilnau sounded similarly confident about Sabatini's entry into the primary, telling VoxPopuli via text, "I welcome anyone who wants to earn the votes of the people of District 11 and share their vision for the future of our country with our neighbors. I will add one point — I have to ask where all these 'Republican fighters' were at when there was an 8-term congressman with a massive war chest and a Trump endorsement to tout? Where were these people when everyone said it was too hard?"
