Daily Kos Elections’ “Most District” series flies over to Florida’s 1st congressional district for Memorial Day weekend: it’s the district that has the highest percentage of veterans. Eighteen percent of the civilian residents (18 years old or older) of this district, centered on Pensacola, are former service members.
You might think that veterans are pretty equally distributed around the country; for instance, they might go back to where they lived before they served, after they get out of the military. However, that’s not the case: a lot of veterans simply stay where they are once they’re discharged, so they’re disproportionately located around military bases anyway. The advantages of doing so are easy to understand; their friends and social networks are still there, and they retain some benefits, like using Tricare at VA hospitals and shopping at the deeply discounted PX, that are much easier to use if you stay near a base. And Florida’s 1st has not one but two large military facilities: the Naval Air Station Pensacola, which is the primary training center for naval aviators, and Eglin Air Force Base, a test and evaluation center.
On top of that, veterans tend to have better employment opportunities around bases. A lot of ex-military people proceed straight to working as a civilian employee of the military or for companies that contract with the military, so they wind up working on a base anyway. Even if they move to the private sector, in a field that’s related to skills they learned in the military, their professional networks are likely to keep them in a place that’s in close proximity to a military installation. For instance, following Florida’s 1st as the next most veteran-filled districts are Virginia’s 2nd in Virginia Beach, which has a large Navy presence (at 17 percent veterans) and Colorado’s 5th in Colorado Springs, which has a large Air Force presence (and 16.6 percent veterans).
The other place where you tend to find a lot of veterans is retirement destinations. After all, our nation’s veterans are disproportionately senior citizens. There aren’t a lot of World War II veterans left, but that was one of the largest mobilizations this country has ever seen. And even the youngest Vietnam era veterans have mostly reached retirement age now, as the Baby Boomers are in their 60s and 70s.
Florida, of course, is a prime retirement destination; if you separate out the top 10 congressional districts for highest median age or for highest percentage of senior citizens, most of them are found in Florida. The 1st, for instance, is 16.4 percent residents who are 65 or older, a higher percentage than the national average. (Also, Florida’s 11th congressional district, north of Tampa, has by far the highest percentage of seniors of any district in the nation: 33.8 percent of its population. It also has one of the highest rates of veterans—14.4 percent—even though there’s no military base there, only a vast array of planned retirement communities, most notably the sprawling hellscape of The Villages.)
The 1st district covers the western half of Florida’s Panhandle, from Pensacola (which nearly bumps up against the Alabama state line) at its west end and Fort Walton Beach and Eglin AFB on its eastern side. All along the barrier islands that face the gulf is a thin band of condos and retirement communities; inland, it’s largely rural. The notorious spring break destination of Panama City, and Tallahassee (or at least its white parts), are further east in the 2nd district.
Between the large military presence, a large evangelical population, and its status as the most culturally “southern” part of Florida (even if it’s the northernmost part of the state), Florida’s Panhandle is one of the most conservative parts of the country. The 1st, in fact, is the reddest district in all of Florida, with Donald Trump winning the district 68-28 in 2016 and Mitt Romney winning it by a similar 69-30 in 2012.
The 1st is represented by a freshman Republican, 35-year-old Matt Gaetz. Gaetz was a state representative for six years prior to winning the 1st in 2016, and benefited from the name recognition derived from his father, Don Gaetz, who was previously the president of the Florida state Senate. Gaetz’s best-known moment may be when he raised some eyebrows when he said at a town hall that Donald Trump should release his tax returns, but don’t confuse him for a moderate; he’s been a party-line conservative vote, and given the district’s dark-red status, will probably continue to do so for a long time.
Gaetz won the 1st in 2016 when it was an open seat, following the retirement of former Veterans' Affairs committee chair Jeff Miller, who represented the seat starting in 2001. Miller was first elected in a special election to replace the 1st’s most famous representative: Joe Scarborough. Long before he was a TV host, Scarborough was a back-bench House Republican for 6 years until resigning under mysterious circumstances; he was, in fact, the first Republican to ever represent that part of Florida in the House, starting in 1994, even though the counties in the 1st had stopped voting Democratic in presidential elections by 1960.
“The Most District” is an ongoing series devoted to highlighting congressional district superlatives around the nation. Click here for all posts in this series.