5 things to know about Pam Bondi, Trump's new AG pick
Won both of her elections by landslide margins in a swing state
Bondi became attorney general of Florida after winning her first election with 54.8% of the vote in 2010, defeating her Democratic opponent by a margin of 13.4 percentage points. Bondi significantly overperformed Rick Scott, the Republican gubernatorial nominee that year, who only won his election by 1.2 percentage points.
Bondi's electoral overperformance came just two years after Democrat Barack Obama won Florida in the 2008 presidential election and two years before Obama carried the state again in his successful 2012 re-election bid. Bondi won her 2014 re-election campaign by a similarly large margin as her first race, capturing 55% of the vote and beating her Democratic opponent by over 13 percentage points.
Like in 2010, Bondi performed significantly better than Scott in 2014 as he sought a second term as governor concurrently. Scott only won re-election by a margin of 1 percentage point.
Since Bondi left office at the end of her second term in 2019, Florida has transitioned from a swing state into a red state. In 2022, Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis won re-election by more than 19 percentage points as Bondi's successor, Republican Ashley Moody, secured re-election by a slightly larger margin of 21.2 percentage points. Unofficial results from the 2024 election show that Trump carried the state by more than 13 percentage points after he won by much smaller margins in 2016 and 2020.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
