Candidate Profile: LaVon Bracy Davis

Ahead of her run in the June 24 Democratic Primary for Senate District 15, State Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis, 45, is on a mission.

“I am a leader who listens. My mission, as a candidate, as a state representative and as a state senator, will always be to lift the voices of the unheard, to build bridges of opportunity and to deliver on promises,” the Ocoee lawmaker told VoxPopuli in a recent phone interview. 

Lift. Build. Deliver. Those three words are featured throughout her campaign website, and Bracy Davis hopes voters will remember them as they fill out their ballots. But if they forget, she has an easy way for people to remember what she's staked her candidacy on.

“If you think about lifting, building and delivering, you can't help but think of LBD — and when you think of LBD, you think Lavon Bracy Davis,” she said.

The only sitting legislator in the primary race, Bracy Davis is running against first-time candidate Coretta Anthony-Smith, an attorney; and the former Congressman Alan Grayson and her brother, the former State Sen. Randolph Bracy III. The victor will face Willie Montague, founder of the nonprofit House of Timothy, a facility for troubled boys and youth. Montague was the only Republican who filed for the Sept. 2 special election to represent Senate District 15, which includes Ocoee, Winter Garden, Oakland, Pine Hills, Dr. Phillips, Apopka, Eatonville and parts of Orlando. The winner of the special election will serve through 2028, finishing the rest of the late State Sen. Geraldine F. Thompson's term. Thompson died unexpectedly in February, following complications from knee surgery.

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.

Legacies and endorsements

Married to Pastor Adrian R. Davis of the Bethel IFM Church in Mount Dora, Bracy Davis comes from a powerhouse Black political family. 

Her grandfather, Rev. Thomas A. Wright Sr., was president of the Gainesville NAACP and is credited with introducing the civil rights movement to the city. Her mother, the author, civil rights advocate and three-time delegate to the Democratic National Convention, Dr. LaVon Wright Bracy, was the first Black student to integrate Gainesville High School in 1965. Her father, the late Rev. Dr. Randolph Bracy, founded Orlando’s New Covenant Baptist Church and was the former president of the Orange County NAACP.  

It’s a legacy Bracy Davis said she has worked hard to uphold. She has worked as a senior attorney with the Florida Department of Children and Families and as director of community programming for the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. She served as a legislative appointee on the Florida Council on Arts and Culture. In 2022, she ran for an open seat in House District 40 and won. Last year, she won re-election with 67 percent of the vote. 

In the House, she worked together with Thompson to pass the Tyre Sampson Act, which makes amusement park rides safer following the fatality of a teen at Icon Park because he was not securely buckled into a ride. 

Bracy Davis also expanded access to the Randolph Bracy Ocoee Massacre Scholarship, which awards 50 $6,100 scholarships a year to descendants of survivors of the 1920 Election Day violence and/or Black high school graduates in Ocoee pursuing secondary education. Bracy Davis added Florida’s three private historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) — Bethune-Cookman, Florida Memorial and Edward Waters — to the list of schools where the scholarship funds can be used.

Bracy Davis also worked alongside Thompson on the Harry T. and Harriet V. Moore Florida Voting Rights Act. Supported by both Democratic caucuses in the Legislature and numerous voting rights groups, the bill would expand voter access by establishing Election Day as a holiday, repealing laws that complicate voting by mail, authorizing same-day voter registration, creating a database for returning citizens to verify their eligiblity to vote and disbanding the Office of Election Crimes and Security. 

“We were really just tired of these horrific voting laws that didn't do the people any good or any justice and disenfranchised and created barriers,” Bracy Davis said. “We sat down with all sorts of voting advocates and talked through what are some of the things that we know have disenfranchised voters.”

Were it not for Thompson’s untimely death in February, Bracy Davis would still be serving District 40 in the House. But she told VoxPopuli that the two had spoken at length about Thompson endorsing her to run for her senate seat after she retired. That day just came sooner than anyone expected. 

“She's my mentor, my mother's best friend. My mother was a maid of honor at her wedding 50 years ago. I was really heartbroken by her unexpected death,” Bracy Davis said. “She did tell me before she passed that when she was ready to retire, she did want me to run for her seat.”

Thompson’s family has said the same. “She was very clear and  explicitly stated that when she left office, she intended to endorse and support Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis,” Thompson’s daughter Elizabeth Thompson Grace said when Bracy Davis announced her candidacy in March. “She believed that Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis was the best fit to be an advocate and a spokesperson for the constituents of Florida Senate District 15."

Bracy Davis' House resignation is effective Sept. 1, just one day before Election Day for the special election. That date is no coincidence. She said she met with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s chief of staff to ensure there would be no gap between her resignation and potential election. 

“Never will House District 40 be without [representation,]” Bracy Davis said. “As soon as I leave, there will be another representative there.”

The trade-off is being unable to accept donations while the Legislature is in session per election law. Although the session was meant to end May 3, lawmakers did not pass a budget, so the session has been extended until June 30 — six days after the primary. Bracy Davis said she considered resigning her seat immediately, but opted not to because that would have left a good segment of West Orange County without representation during the legislative session.

“We already don't have a senator, and then we also wouldn't have a state rep going into the legislative and budget process. I thought I would do my people a disservice by resigning.”

"Nonsense bills"

Faced with a Republican supermajority and a small Democratic caucus, Bracy Davis said she’s confident in her ability to legislate across the aisle. 

During the current legislative session, Bracy Davis worked with Republican State Rep. Berny Jacques of Pinellas County on a juvenile justice reform bill aimed at reducing truancy and providing social services to keep at-risk kids out of the criminal justice system. The bill passed both chambers with unanimous support and is awaiting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature. 

“You have to figure out a way to get things done,” Bracy Davis said. 

Still, Bracy Davis found herself frustrated by what she described as a “dysfunctional” Legislature that was “wasting time” and “filing and arguing over nonsense bills.”

She pointed to the Legislature passing a bill to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in textbooks, rather than deal with “real concerns” like rising property insurance premiums across the state.

“The number one issue in Senate District 15 is affordability,” Bracy Davis said. “Floridians can't afford to be Floridians. That's what we should be focusing our time on, instead of giving insurance companies bailouts, instead of answering questions that people aren't asking, instead of these culture wars, instead of attacking the LGBTQ community, instead of creating this false sense of fraud in the election space.”

Bracy Davis said lawmakers should help people by offsetting the impacts of inflation and other costs, such as rental and home insurance, the latter of which increased roughly 40 percent from 2022 to 2024. 

“You know what hasn’t gone up with that percent? People's paychecks,” Bracy Davis said emphatically. “When people tell me that their property insurance has doubled, I say my property insurance has doubled as well. I am the working class. I don't come from generational wealth or trust funds. When we talk about affordability, I suffer from the same things that my constituents suffer from.”

If elected, she plans to fund initiatives like the Live Local Act , which she said has been “transformative” for affordable housing in Florida, and the Hometown Heroes Loan Program, which provides down payment assistance. 

Attack ads and clean campaigns 

Political campaigns can get ugly. The Committee to Protect Florida, a conservative group chaired by Republican political consultant Mark Zubaly, recently ran an attack ad on Orlando TV stations that criticized both Bracy Davis and her brother as “career politicians,” who had accepted “thousands of dollars” from the health insurance industry. The ad included screenshots of Cigna and Florida Blue donations to Bracy’s 2020 state senate campaign and attempted to tie the donations to Bracy Davis by association. Her campaign finance records show no record of having accepted donations from either corporation in any of her past or current campaigns. An attorney from Bracy Davis’s campaign sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Orlando TV stations, refuting the accusation and demanding they stop airing the ad. 

Bracy Davis also stiff upper-lipped it without comment following an unseemly video posted on social media by her sister-in-law and amplified by her brother.

She said she's focused on running a clean campaign. “I have never sent an attack mailer. I have never sent an attack ad, and I never will," Bracy Davis said, "because I think how you run is going to be how you serve, and I serve with integrity.”

In a follow-up email, she responded to the TV ad and several political mailers circulating in the district, saying in part, "Let me be clear: the recent ad and political mailers are not just misleading —they are lies. They are shameful and beneath the dignity of public service. These baseless attacks, often pushed by anonymous or unaccountable sources, are meant to distract and divide. But they don’t work. Voters are smart. They’re not moved by lies, manipulation, or fear tactics.

"While I cannot control what others do, I can control what comes from the Bracy Davis campaign. And I’ve made a clear decision: the only candidate I will address in any of my mailers is me. I will only talk about the work I have done and the work I plan to do. I have never sent an attack ad, and I never will.

This campaign is about building, not tearing down. I’m staying focused on what matters — expanding affordable housing, protecting public education, and delivering for working families. Voters deserve leaders who speak to the issues and lift up our communities — not those who rely on deceit to score political points."