Though she lost the special election in Florida on Tuesday, DCCC Chairman Steve Israel said he "absolutely" wants Alex Sink to run for Congress again in November, POLITICO reported.
"I hope she will, because of this. This district will be competitive in November," Israel said on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" on Wednesday. "This district in a regular election, not a special election in the midterm, but even a regular midterm election, will be in play. We feel good about our prospects here. And I hope that she does run again, because she did an extraordinary job."
Sink lost to Republican David Jolly in the race to fill the seat of late Republican Rep. Bill Young, who died last year. According to POLITICO, Sink lost by nearly 3,000 votes, or 2 percentage points.
Israel, a New York Democrat, said the closeness of the Sink-Jolly race gives him hope for a second election later in the year.
"It's not that we are saying this was an uphill battle for us. I mean, Greg Walden, the chairman of the Republican National Congressional Campaign Committee, also said several days ago this is a special election, and special elections do not represent the entire future," Israel said. "We started this race where the Republicans had a 13-point advantage in turnout. ... The deal is kind of like this, you start a baseball game 13 points behind, you claw back to two runs behind, the good news is you got back 11 runs. The bad news is we still lost by two, and we have some work to do."
Florida's special election was widely interpreted as a test for Obamacare, with Sink advocating on behalf of the new health care law and Jolly promising to repeal it if elected. Notable politicians like former President Bill Clinton and and Rep. Paul Ryan campaigned for the candidates, who together spent $11 million on the race, according to the Sunlight Foundation.
