Candidate Profile: Alan Grayson

After a succession of failed attempts to return to public office, Alan Grayson, 67, is running for a hotly contested Florida Senate seat.

The outspoken Democrat who served in Congress during the Obama administration wants to fill the Senate District 15 seat that opened after Geraldine F. Thompson died unexpectedly Feb. 13. Her term runs through 2028. The traditionally Democratic stronghold includes parts of Orlando, Winter Garden, Oakland, Ocoee, Pine Hills, Apopka and Eatonville.

Grayson is running against Ocoee lawyer Coretta Anthony-Smith, State Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis and her brother, former State Sen. Randolph Bracy in the June 24 Democratic primary. The winner will face Willie Montague, founder of House of Timothy, the nonprofit facility for troubled boys and youth. He was the only Republican who filed for the Sept. 2 special election.

Florida state senators serve four-year terms and earn $29,697 annually.

The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is June 12. Early voting will take place June 14 to 22, daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Click here for early voting locations.

Since leaving the U.S. House about eight years ago for an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate, Grayson has tried repeatedly to make a political comeback. He ran for the House again in 2018, 2020 and 2022 as well as the Senate in 2022 and 2024, but dropped out of three of those races early. 

Grayson said the difference in this election is his legislative experience and promise to unite the Democratic Party.

“It’s the best way I know to make the world a better place and to help people,” said Grayson in a recent interview with VoxPopuli. “I want to rally people with common sense and a conscience and commitment for the common good.”

Born and raised in the Bronx, where he attended the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, Grayson worked his way through Harvard as a janitor, nightwatchman and features reporter for the Boston Phoenix, an alternative weekly newspaper. 

The multimillionaire made his fortune as the first president of the IDT Corporation, a telecommunications company that he said earned him $6 million when it went public. He also founded the law firm, Grayson & Kubli, which specialized in whistleblower cases against Iraq War contractors.

Grayson enters the race with some baggage.

During his time in Congress, Grayson was dubbed the “Democrat’s Donald Trump” for his inflammatory remarks. In a campaign email, he compared the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan and called a lobbyist and adviser to the Federal Reserve a “K Street whore.”

He is best known for his 2009 comment on the House floor on healthcare reform. "If you get sick, America, the Republican healthcare plan is this: Die quickly." 

Grayson said America still needs a better healthcare system. As a congressman, he secured funds to build the Orlando VA Medical Center in Lake Nona and said he will work to improve Central Florida’s healthcare system, if elected.

In his first year in Congress, the federal competitive grant dollars returning to the district nearly doubled to $200 million, Grayson said. He vows to push for education reform and points to the $100 million he landed to move public school children out of portable classrooms and into permanent ones.  

In 2016, the House Committee on Ethics started an investigation on Grayson for soliciting business as a member of Congress while working as a hedge fund manager. After the complaint was filed, he refunded the money from two outside investors, leaving only Grayson and a family trust invested in the fund, according to a story in the New York Times. 

The case was dismissed. 

Grayson said the Democratic chair, who worked for fellow Democratic congressman Patrick Murphy, filed the complaint. Grayson was running against Murphy in the 2016 Democratic primary for Senate. 

Grayson maintains that he did nothing wrong. He said, “Any fool can file a complaint.” He added that the Times story was a “hit job” and he has never been a hedge fund manager. 

Grayson made national headlines when his 25-year marriage to his second wife Lolita Carson Grayson ended. Democratic leaders pushed Grayson to drop out of the Senate race over his wife’s claims of abuse and financial abandonment. Grayson said she was the abuser who repeatedly hit him and their five children. 

“She (Lolita Grayson) lied about me and smeared me,” he said. “My daughter took a video of her coming at me with a large kitchen knife.”

No abuse charges were filed by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office against either party.

The marriage was annulled in 2015 after a judge found that Lolita Grayson had not divorced her previous husband when she married Alan Grayson in 1990. In 2017, Lolita Grayson opened a GoFundMe account asking for $20,000 to help pay legal expenses from the annulment that she said left her penniless and on the verge of eviction. Grayson’s net worth was listed as $31 million in court documents, according to a Florida Politics story.

“One of my most important accomplishments was raising five children who love me and ended up with me after we managed to get through some very difficult circumstances,” Grayson said.

The public dissolution of his marriage didn’t ruin his reelection chances, according to Grayson. He blames Lachlan Murdoch, son of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, for damaging his reputation by running half a million dollars in negative ads. 

Grayson said the “dirty money” was run through a political action committee named No Labels. 

Grayson married his third wife, Dr. Dena Minning, in 2016. She took his last name, and the same year ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House seat he was vacating. 

Grayson said he is now living in his wife’s Indialantic home while renovations are completed on his home in District 15. The 5,000-square-foot house was badly damaged during a 2021 fire caused by a propane grill. 

“I’m well aware of Florida’s residency requirements,” Grayson said. “I’m dividing time between my wife’s home and the Windermere house.” 

Florida elected officials are required to live in the district they represent.

Grayson, who grew up in Adee Towers, a public housing complex in the Bronx, said he will push for affordable housing in Central Florida. He plans to bring back affordable mortgages at a rate that, he said, would allow people to afford homes again. 

He supports gun control and wants to ban assault weapons. Grayson helped organize the gun safety sit-in that shut down Congress for 26 hours after the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting. 

He labels himself as pro-choice and wants to repeal Florida’s six-week abortion ban.