Pensacola-area Republicans will choose between two military veterans as their nominee in the race to succeed Alex Andrade in Florida Statehouse District 2.
The two candidates vying for the party’s nomination are Jon Fay and Trei McMullen.
Fay is a retired Navy flight officer and was the executive officer of the U.S. Navy Blue Angels in the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
McMullen is a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and finished his military career in special forces as a Green Beret stationed at Elgin Air Force Base.
Both candidates in the race are pitching themselves as conservative Republicans.
Fay, who has the backing of the traditional Republican donors, largely approves the approach Florida’s Republican leaders have taken in Tallahassee, but he acknowledges there’s been too much preemption of local governments by the state.
“I think Florida has really been a leader in our nation at a time when we’ve needed it most, and I’ll continue to enact policies that will make it more affordable, more enjoyable for people to work and live, take care of our military, our first responders, our veterans, and their families,” Fay said during a debate earlier this summer. “Long live the free state of Florida.”
While McMullen is more of an outsider candidate and financial underdog in the race, he says he’ll bring unheard of levels of transparency to Tallahassee.
“All I know is trial by fire,” McMullen said. “What is inevitably getting ready to happen within the next two fiscal years is going to reshape and change the face of Escambia, Santa Rosa County. I think you’re going to need somebody that’s used to tightening their belt. I’m the youngest child of six, so I know how to share, and I know how to listen.”
Fay told the News Journal that he is running because when he retired from the Navy, he wanted his three kids to feel like they had a place that was home, and he felt that was Pensacola.
“Being in the military, you can imagine we moved around quite a bit, and so they didn’t have one place that just stood out as like this is home,” Fay said. “Now, we feel we have that with Pensacola. We like the trajectory it’s on, and we want to help be a part of something that’s maintaining both the small-town vibe that it is, as well as the growth and smart development opportunities that we could possibly be a part of and provide a better future for them.”
Since leaving the military, Fay works in private aviation, leading a business team that sources certified aircraft parts for high-value civilian aircraft.
McMullen also felt called to Northwest Florida from his ties in the military. He views the community as having saved his life when he faced a life-threatening cardiovascular issue while training and was life-flighted to Sacred Heart Hospital. He started private security businesses after he had to medically retire from the Army and said he was motivated to run in the wake of the campus shooting at Florida State University where his daughter was a student.
He said he believes strongly in Second Amendment rights, but he believes the state is not doing enough to secure schools, such as metal detectors and professional security.
“Parents have old school thinking and not being raised in the environment that their kids are,” McMullen said. “Their kids want the protection because, guess what? They got two or three friends that have actually went through a school shooting. We didn’t have that. … When you wonder why kids can’t learn, well, they’re scared.”
Affordable Housing and homeowners insurance
Both candidates debated each other at multiple candidate forums held by local civic groups, like the event the News Journal attended on June 30 in front of the Warrington Revitalization Committee, which is a private group of residents and business owners that advocate for policies to revitalize the community.
That debate focused more on how the state interacts with local communities, which may become more important if the property tax amendment passes in November, as local governments will turn to the state for more help to fund local problems.
Fay and McMullen were divided on how the state should approach issues such as affordable housing and home insurance reform.
The Live Local Act took away the ability for local governments to reject certain kinds of affordable housing developments as long as they were following state guidelines.
While Fay acknowledged affordable housing remains a big problem, especially for younger people, he said the Live Local Act may have gone too far. It was one of the few issues he disagreed with that had come out of Tallahassee.
“The Legislature, the governor, kind of took a sledgehammer to the problem rather than a surgical application to it,” Fay said. “So again, I think the role of the state in that is to knock down barriers, to identify obstacles and areas where they can help.”
McMullen said he believes more should be done with the Live Local Act to provide additional tax credits above what the law currently does to encourage affordable housing that people will actually see.
“Affordable housing, for way too long, has been used as something that it never actually turns out to be,” McMullen said.
Both candidates agreed that homeowners’ insurance remains one of the biggest drivers of housing cost increases, but they differed on how they would approach the issue.
Fay said he believes the increasing cost to rebuild a home remains a problem affecting insurance rates, but he believes laws passed in recent years are starting to have an effect. He said the Legislature next year will have to focus on the reinsurance market to further drive down premiums.
“Reinsurance is basically insurance for the insurers, and so that’s where we can actually move the needle,” Fay said.
McMullen also agreed that reinsurance is where the state should focus its efforts, but doesn’t believe the state’s efforts in recent years have had much of an effect.
“We’re not feeling it right now, and they’ve been saying this stuff for years,” McMullen said. “So we need to actually do something that actually works.
Whoever wins the Republican primary on Aug. 18 will face Democratic candidate Johnny Austin Thompson in November.
House District 2 favors Republicans
House District 2 covers southern portions of Escambia and Santa Rosa counties. In Escambia County, the district includes all of the city limits of Pensacola and areas south of Fairfield Drive like Warrington, Myrtle Grove, Perdido Key and Pensacola Beach. In Santa Rosa County, the district includes most of the Gulf Breeze peninsula, including Gulf Breeze proper and Midway as well as areas of Navarre south of U.S. 98 and all of Navarre Beach.
Republican candidates have long dominated the district. Andrade, who is term-limited, was first elected to the seat in 2018 with no Democratic opposition. In 2020 he faced Pensacola Beach advocate Dianne Krumel as his Democratic opponent. He won that race by 11 percentage points.
Since redistricting was done by the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature after the 2020 Census, Andrade won elections over his Democratic opponents by more than 20 points in 2022 and 2024.
Andrade’s primary races reveal a consistent divide among Pensacola-area Republican primary voters in the districts, with 60% backing Andrade and 40% backing a candidate who lacked the support of traditional Republican donors.
In the 2026 primary, those traditional donors have lined up behind Fay, and he’s been endorsed by Andrade.
Fay has raised over $171,000 with donations from Pensacola businesses as well as statewide political committees, signaling that donors believe Fay will be heading to Tallahassee next year. McMullen has raised just under $24,000, largely from individual supporters.
This story was updated to correctly identify Fay’s occupation in the Navy.
Jim Little is the City Government Accountability Reporter for the Pensacola News Journal. If you have a news tip, please send it to jwlittle@pnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Race to replace Alex Andrade is between a Blue Angel and Green Beret
Reporting by Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
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By Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal | USA TODAY Network
