Long-serving GOP Congressman Daniel Webster, 75, of Clermont is running for reelection against first-time candidate John McCloy of Mount Dora in the Republican primary for Congressional District 11. The winner will face Democratic nominee Barbie Harden Hall in the Nov. 5 general election.  The district, which includes West Orange County, the southern half of Lake County and a portion of north Polk County, is reliably Republican.

Webster may be the pater familiaas of  Webster Air Conditioning and Heating Inc., started by his father and now run by his sons, but he is a professional politician with a career that spans 44 years, starting in the Florida House in 1980.  Webster was the longest-serving state legislator, with terms as Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader, until he term-limited out in 2008. Then he rode the Tea Party wave into Congress — part of the “shellacking” President Barack Obama referred to after Democrats lost the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms. 

Webster is a hard-line conservative, but he just barely won the Republican primary in 2022 against MAGA challenger Laura Loomer after District 11 was redrawn. He was facing a similar challenge from another MAGA firebrand, Anthony Sabatini, who  dropped out once former President and convicted felon Donald Trump endorsed Webster.  Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott have also endorsed Webster.

Locally, Webster has worked to secure funding for the Orlando International Airport and plans to continue these efforts, recently with 2025 appropriation requests for $3,375,000 to improve traffic flow into the airport. He’s also requested $4M to restore part of Lake Apopka’s shoreline and $5M to upgrade and increase capacity at Winter Garden’s wastewater treatment facility.

However, Webster has taken heat from constituents and political opponents alike for his absentee voting record. “From Jan 2011 to Jun 2024, Webster missed 437 of 8,356 roll call votes, which is 5.2%. This is much worse than the median of 2.1% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving,” according to GovTrack.us.

The Center for Effective Lawmaking, run in partnership by the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, measures legislators’ effectiveness in office, defined as the “proven ability to advance a member’s agenda items through the legislative process and into law.” The center gave Webster a score of 0.038 in the previous 117th Congress (2021-23). The average score is 1.0.

Here’s what Webster worked on during the 118th Congresss. 

[Editor’s Note: The 118th Congress runs from 2023-2025, officially ending Jan. 3, 2025, when the new Congress is sworn in. A bill or other measure passes the House/Senate when a majority (usually a simple majority) votes “yea.” Bills that are introduced but not passed into law by the end of the congressional term die. Most measures die in committees or subcommittees from inaction.]

Abortion

A top priority for the congressman has been enacting nationwide pro-life policies nationwide has been a top priority for Webster, evidenced by the number of abortion-related bills he co-sponsored since 2023, an increase that aligns with the Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“Life begins at conception, and the protection of life ought to begin at conception as well,” according to his website. “The current system of infanticide can no longer be tolerated under any legal or scientific standard.”

Anti-abortion legislation introduced in the House in 2023-2024 that Webster signed on to includes:

• Life at Conception Act defines personhood as beginning from fertilization, including in vitro fertilization, and declares fetuses have the right to life under the 14th Amendment.

• Protecting Life on College Campus Act prohibits colleges that offer school-based abortion services to receive federal funds.

• Defund Planned Parenthood Act prohibits federal funds to Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortion services for a year. It includes exceptions for abortions performed in cases of rape, incest and to save a woman’s life.

• Second Chance for Moms Act adds a label on mifepristone with instructions on how to reverse the effects after ingestion. Webster tweeted his disapproval of the Supreme Court’s ruling protecting access to mifepristone following FDA approval calling the drug “dangerous.” [Ed. note: There is no evidence-based scientific research to support a protocol for reversing mifepristone.]

• Protecting Life in Health Savings Account Act prohibits reimbursements for abortion-related care qualifying as medical expenses. It includes exceptions for rape, incest and to save a woman’s life.

• Dignity for Aborted Children Act would require abortion providers and patients to provide proper burial or cremation of fetal tissue.

• Support And Value Expectant Moms and Babies Act would prohibit the FDA from approving new abortion drugs and further regulate existing abortion drugs.

These bills have not yet moved out of committee.

Immigration

A supporter of Trump’s hardline immigration policies, Webster co-sponsored the Finish the Wall Act, currently in committee, which authorized the completion of Trump’s border wall. He also voted on a bill that would have reinstated Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy and increased agents at the border, but that failed in the House.

He co-sponsored the Laken Riley Act, passed in the House and now being considered in the Senate, which would require the Department of Homeland Security to detain undocumented immigrants convicted of burglary, larceny, theft or shoplifting. It was proposed after an undocumented immigrant was charged with murdering Augusta University student Riley in February.

After a Washington D.C.’s City Council allowed some noncitizens to vote in local elections, Webster voted for a bill banning noncitizens in D.C. from voting in local elections. He also voted for another bill that requires a U.S. citizenship question on the U.S. Census. Both bills passed the House and are being considered in the Senate. 

[Ed. Note: There were efforts during the Trump Administration to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census as a behind-the-scenes way to influence the makeup of Congress by basing legislative representation only on the number of citizens in a state as opposed to everyone in a state.]

In March, during the political instability and violence in Haiti, Webster and three other Florida representatives sent a letter to President Joe Biden requesting that he use the U.S. Navy to assist the Coast Guard in turning back an influx of Haitian immigrants fleeing the island for Florida. He told WESH that undocumented immigrants should be sent back to their countries.

Economy and energy

Webster, who has long advocated for conservative fiscal policies such as lowering taxes and cutting spending, voted for the Consolidated Appropriations Act (under reconsideration in the House despite a majority vote in favor) that would cut $200 billion in spending, including from the ATF, EPA, FBI and the Department of Transportation. He also co-sponsored a 2023 tax-exemption bill, currently in committee, for seniors that would exclude Social Security benefits from gross income.

Like his primary opponent McCloy, Webster wants relaxed regulations on energy production across the nation, except for Florida (He co-sponsored a 2023 bill in committee that would have extended a moratorium on oil and gas exploration off Florida’s coast). He voted for the Lower Energy Cost Act in 2023 that the House passed largely along partisan lines. It would reduce regulations on permits for oil and gas while prohibiting petroleum sales to China, North Korea, Russia and Iran. The Senate has not taken up the bill.

“When President Biden began his crusade against American oil and gas production, his Administration began relying on adversaries like Iran and Venezuela for oil,” Webster said in a press statement. (Under Biden, the U.S. has become the largest crude oil producer in the world. The administration has also kept pace with the prior administration in issuing permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands through 2023).

Gun rights

A Second Amendment advocate, Webster co-sponsored a bill, which would bar federal funds from enforcing new restrictions set by the ATF on firearm dealers, including a crackdown on license checks. Another bill would allow those with concealed-carry permits to carry them in other states that also allow it. Both bills have been sitting in committee since 2023.

In 2022, he voted against a House bill that died in the Senate that would have prohibited sales and transfers of semiautomatic weapons to people under 21, the federal regulation of bump stocks and regulations on firearm storage. He also voted against the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, passed into law, that expands background check requirements, cracks down on straw purchasing and restricts firearms to domestic violence offenders.

“I am concerned that it does more to chip away at law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment rights than prevent violent crimes,” Webster said in a press release about his vote.

Foreign wars

While Webster supports U.S. aid to Israel in its war in Gaza, he wants aid to Ukraine limited to lethal weapons and did not support a recent spending bill for Ukraine, he said in a press release. He voted against an April House resolution combining support for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. President Biden signed a $95 billion aid package for the three countries into law days later.

On Israel, he voted to give the nation $26.8 billion before the bill was attached to Ukraine aid, the press release states. He co-sponsored a bill in May, now in the Senate, to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) for seeking arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The bill condemns the ICC for seeking action against a U.S. ally that is not an ICC member. 

Editor’s Note: The court also issued warrants to three Hamas leaders.

Education and LGBTQ+ rights

Webster joined with more than 120 members of Congress in a letter urging the Department of Education to withdraw Biden’s student-debt forgiveness proposal.

A proponent of school-choice policies and increased parental involvement in education, he introduced a resolution in January designating a week as “National School Choice Week” to raise awareness about the variety of education options in the country (Webster’s six children were homeschooled). In 2022, he co-sponsored a bill in 2022 that would have prohibited federal funds to elementary schools if they did not get written parental consent permitting sexual orientation and gender identity lessons be taught, but it did not pass.

Webster also co-sponsored a June 2024 resolution that the House is expected to vote on, condemning the Education Department’s Title IX proposed expansion, which includes gender identity in its protections against sex-based discrimination. He also lambasted the proposed changes on social media, calling it an affront to women’s rights and women’s sports.

Democracy and Trump

Webster was one of the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election. No ballot recount, investigation or court case has found proof of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Members of Trumps’ inner circle, from Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien to former Attorney General Bill Barr and former advisor Kellyanne Conway acknowledged there was no fraud and told Trump there was no fraud and that he had lost the election.

During the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Webster tweeted  “attacks on law enforcement” and “violence is wrong.” However, after the Justice Department indicted Trump with conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, including obstructing the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, Webster released a statement saying that was an “abuse of powers” and a “two-tier justice system” on a “never-ending witch-hunt” against the former president.

(The House Jan. 6 Committee investigating the insurrection interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, including members of the Trump administration, and found Trump’s election fraud claims were false and that his social media comments perpetuated the violence on Capitol Hill).

Webster missed Trump’s second impeachment vote on whether he incited the Jan. 6 insurrection because of “family medical obligations” — something McCloy criticized, saying it was a critical vote he shouldn’t have missed. 

Webster attended Trump’s hush money-election fraud trial in New York City to support him. After Trump  was convicted of 34 felony counts, Webster released a statement saying the trial was once again a “witch-hunt against President Trump.”

A poll from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago found that compared with just 22 percent of Democrats, 83 percent of Republicans believe Trump's jury trial conviction was politically motivated.