“Florida Rep. Val Demings is planning to run for the U.S. Senate, rather than governor, providing Democrats with a big-name candidate to take on Republican Sen. Marco Rubio next year. For months, Demings mulled which statewide office to pursue, but decided she could do the most good by taking on the two-term senator, according to several Democrats familiar with her thinking. ‘I would’ve supported her running for governor, but this is the right fit for her and for us,’ said Alex Sink, a former Florida chief financial officer who narrowly lost her 2010 bid for governor against Rick Scott, who is now a senator. ‘She’s going to draw a contrast between who she is and how she represents Florida vs. Marco Rubio, who a lot of people where I live never see him'” Politico reports.

“Sink said she was recently on a Zoom call with Demings and activists with Ruth’s List, the Florida-based organization dedicated to electing women who support abortion rights, and it was clear that she and national Democrats felt she would represent the party’s best chance to put Republicans on defense as they try to take back the U.S. Senate. Demings, 64, was first elected to the House in 2016 from Orlando and held the distinction of being the city’s first Black woman police chief. She rose to national prominence as the only non-lawyer on the first House impeachment committee to charge President Donald Trump with wrongdoing. As a Black woman and law enforcement officer, her background made her uniquely situated to be a national Democratic spokesperson for policing and race issues – it helped catapult her to President Joe Biden’s shortlist as a possible running mate in 2020. A top adviser to Demings compared her personal biography to Rubio this way: ‘She’s the daughter of a maid and a janitor who became the first Black woman police chief in Orlando. He’s the son of a maid and a bartender who’s a career politician.'”