Republican Rep. Ross Spano is defeated by primary challenger Scott Franklin in Florida's 15th District

• Florida held primaries in all of its House districts on Tuesday.
• The incumbent Republican Ross Spano was defeated by his primary challenger Scott Franklin in Florida's 15th District, making him the eighth House incumbent to lose renomination this cycle.
• Kat Cammack won the crowded Republican race in the 3rd District to replace the retiring Ted Yoho, while Byron Donalds won the contest to replace the retiring Republican Francis Rooney in the 19th District.

Florida held primaries in all 27 of its House districts on Tuesday, and it resulted in yet another incumbent being replaced.

In the 15th District, which includes a large part of the area between Tampa and Orlando in Hillsborough and Polk counties, the first-term Rep. Ross Spano was defeated by his primary challenger Scott Franklin.

Franklin is a 26-year US Navy veteran, insurance businessman, and Lakeland City commissioner, a position he was first elected to in 2018. He entered the race relatively recently, in April, and raised over $587,000, including from a $350,000 personal loan, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Shortly after being elected to Congress in 2018, Spano came under suspicion of violating campaign-finance law over a personal loan he made to his campaign. He is believed to have borrowed $180,000 from two of his friends before making the personal loan for a similar amount.

Under federal campaign-finance law, individuals can loan a candidate for federal office no more than $2,700 in a single election cycle, while candidates can loan themselves an unlimited amount.

He is the subject of investigations from the Federal Election Commission and the Florida Bar Association in addition to a federal criminal investigation from the US Department of Justice.

Franklin told Bay News 9 that Spano's ethics troubles and no clear ideological disagreements pushed him to get into the race. Franklin was endorsed by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who has blasted Spano as "weak."

In the 3rd District, a deeply Republican seat that includes Gainesville and the surrounding area, Kat Cammack won the crowded Republican primary to replace the retiring Rep. Ted Yoho.

Yoho recently verbally accosted Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of the Capitol. She said he called her a "f---ing b----," prompting her to give a rousing speech on the House floor denouncing sexism and verbal abuse.

Cammack, a local businesswoman, farmer, and Yoho's former deputy chief of staff, defeated the physician Dr. James St. George, the railroad contracting executive Judson Sapp, and Gainesville City Commissioner Todd Chase, a former Navy pilot.

The Center for Responsive Politics reported that Sapp and St. George largely self-funded their campaigns and led the field in fundraising and spending.

Sapp was endorsed by several influential figures, including Gaetz and the other Florida Reps. John Rutherford and Vern Buchanan, as well as the former 3rd District Rep. Cliff Stearns.

Despite having less cash, Cammack was also considered a frontrunner in the race, Florida Politics reported, thanks to her strong ties to the district. She was endorsed by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and was backed by the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund.

And in the 19th District, a safe red seat in the southwestern part of the state that includes Fort Myers, Naples, and Marco Island, state Rep. Byron Donalds won a hotly contested GOP primary to replace the retiring Rep. Francis Rooney.

The businessman Casey Asker, a US Marine Corps veteran who runs several large food-service franchises in the area, led the field in fundraising partly because of self-funding, followed by William Figlesthaler, who owns a network of medical clinics; Donalds; and state Rep. Dane Eagle.

Donalds received outside spending supporting his candidacy from the conservative Club for Growth PAC, the Center for Responsive Politics noted, and was endorsed by the National Rifle Association.

In winning, Donalds overcame some dirty tricks. The day of the election, text messages from an unknown number posing as Donalds went out to primary voters falsely saying Donalds had dropped out of the race and linking to a deceptively edited YouTube video uploaded Tuesday with years-old footage of Donalds announcing the suspension of a political campaign he ran in 2012.

On the Democratic side, the former news anchor Alan Cohn defeated state Rep. Adam Hattersley to face Franklin in the 15th District.

Spano is the eighth House incumbent to lose renomination this cycle, the highest number in a non-redistricting cycle since 1974, and the third first-term representative to be defeated.

The first-term Rep. Denver Riggleman of Virginia lost renomination at a party-run convention in June, and the first-term Rep. Steve Watkins of Kansas lost to a primary challenger in early August shortly after being criminally charged with four counts of voter fraud.