Destin: who represents it, and who is running

2026 General Election (Florida) with the City of Destin municipal election votes on 2026-11-03. It elects u.S. Senator (special election for the Rubio seat, held by appointee Ashley Moody); U.S. Representative FL-1; Governor and Lieutenant Governor (open), Attorney General, CFO, Commissioner of Agriculture; Florida Senate SD-2 and Florida House HD-4; judicial offices. City of Destin: Mayor (four-year term) and three at-large City Council seats (four-year terms), per the City's notice of election as quoted in search results - the qualified municipal candidates are NOT recorded (see notes)..

Holding office14

the sitting council

On the ballot18

4 sitting members running again

The official candidate list ↗ · What Destin is like — the /local page

Congressional district (city hall): Florida's 1st congressional district (City Hall, 4200 Indian Bayou Trail, at 30.3925, -86.4475; all 17 in-city grid points) — Jimmy Patronis (Republican)

Mayor

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Bobby Wagner ✉️ Elected	Mayor	Independent		City of Destin

Councilmember

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Chatham Morgan ✉️ Elected	Councilmember	Independent	At-Large	City of Destin
Dewey Destin ✉️ Elected	Councilmember	Independent	At-Large	City of Destin
John Stephens ✉️ Elected	Councilmember	Independent	At-Large	City of Destin
Kevin Schmidt ✉️ Elected	Councilmember	Independent	At-Large	City of Destin
Rodney Braden ✉️ Elected	Councilmember	Independent	At-Large	City of Destin
Sandy Trammell ✉️ Elected	Councilmember	Independent	At-Large	City of Destin
Terésa Hebert ✉️ Elected	Councilmember	Independent	At-Large	City of Destin

Governor

Name	Office	Party / slate	Source
Ron DeSantis Elected	Governor	Republican	Executive Office of the Governor of Florida (as read 2026-10-15 for us-jacksonville; not re-read)
Byron Donalds	Governor Running	Republican	Florida Division of Elections
Charles Burkett	Governor Running	Independent	Florida Division of Elections
David Jolly	Governor Running	Democratic	Florida Division of Elections
Dean Ocean Abrams	Governor Running	Independent	Florida Division of Elections
Frank J. Russo	Governor Running	Independent	Florida Division of Elections
Jeffrey Peter "Dr. Jeff" Datto	Governor Running	Independent	Florida Division of Elections
Moliere "Moe" Dimanche	Governor Running	Independent	Florida Division of Elections
Scott Eckhard Jewett	Governor Running	Libertarian	Florida Division of Elections

State Representative — HD-4

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Patt Maney Elected	State Representative → Running	Republican		Florida House of Representatives
John Peter Emerling	State Representative Running	Democratic		Florida Division of Elections

State Senator — SD-2

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Jay Trumbull Elected	State Senator → Running	Republican		The Florida Senate
Lauren Donahoo	State Senator Running	Democratic		Florida Division of Elections

U.S. Senator

Name	Office	Party / slate	Source
Rick Scott Elected	U.S. Senator	Republican	@unitedstates congress-legislators (legislators-current.json); senate.gov not used (HTTP 403 on robots.txt in earlier runs)
Ashley Moody Elected	U.S. Senator → Running	Republican	@unitedstates congress-legislators (legislators-current.json); senate.gov not used (HTTP 403 on robots.txt in earlier runs)
Angie Nixon	U.S. Senator Running	Democratic	Florida Division of Elections
Neil J. Gillespie	U.S. Senator Running	Independent	Florida Division of Elections

U.S. Representative — FL-1

Name	Office	Party / slate	Source
Jimmy Patronis Elected	U.S. Representative → Running	Republican	U.S. House of Representatives
Gay Valimont	U.S. Representative Running	Democratic	Florida Division of Elections
Tyler L. Davis	U.S. Representative Running	Independent	Florida Division of Elections

Notes on this record

How the lists were read, and what could not be.

Candidates (federal and state): Florida Division of Elections Candidate Tracking System, 2026 General Election (20261103-GEN), County = Okaloosa, Status = ALL (except WIT/DNQ), retrieved 2026-10-31 via the form's own POST (dos.elections.myflorida.com robots.txt 404). Kept: Qualified candidates who won or had no primary, for U.S. Senate, FL-1, Governor, SD-2, HD-4. Dropped: defeated primary candidates (e.g. FL-1 Douglas Chico, John Frankman) and write-ins (Governor: Kathy Anderson, Erik Morris). Detail pages (which print addresses) not opened. The Division calls the system an unofficial reference; it is the state's qualifying list.
Sitting municipal officials: City of Destin 'Mayor & Council' page (cityofdestin.com/142/Mayor-Council) and each member's page, read 2026-10-31. cityofdestin.com robots.txt has a named group for ClaudeBot / Claude-SearchBot that repeats the site-wide disallows (calendar, search, RSS, bids, FAQ, admin); no page used is disallowed; 10-second spacing kept. The City 'operates under a council-manager form of government with seven at-large elected councilors and a mayor'. Terms are recorded as each page prints them; two pages (Destin, Schmidt) still show '2020-2024'. Official @cityofdestin.com emails are those linked on each member page; City phone not copied.
Interim seat: John Stephens' page says he was appointed in July 2026 to complete the remainder of a vacant term ('July 2026-November 2026'); Chatham Morgan's page says 'through November 2026'. Search results quoted a City notice that the seat vacated 2026-04-07 is filled by interim appointment until the November 3, 2026 general election.
BLOCKED - municipal candidates: Destin's election is run by the Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections (www.voteokaloosa.gov), whose robots.txt has 'User-agent: ClaudeBot / Disallow: /' and 'User-agent: anthropic-ai / Disallow: /'. Its qualified-candidate list was therefore not read, and the SOE's okaloosa-soe.s3.amazonaws.com file store was not used as a way around it. govote-okaloosa.com (an older domain) failed TLS on robots.txt. The City Clerk page (/92/City-Clerk) and the site map carry no candidate list. So the 2026 Mayor and three Council races have NO candidate rows; Jim may want to add them from the SOE's qualified list. SLIP: in the same shell command that read voteokaloosa.gov/robots.txt, the homepage was fetched once before the disallow was seen; the file was deleted unread and nothing from it is used.
Districts: Census geocoder (Current_Current = 120th Congress / 2026 legislative layers) at City Hall gives CD-1, SD-2, HD-4 (Destin city, Okaloosa County). A 9x9 grid kept 17 points in 'Destin city': all CD-1, SD-2, HD-4 on both vintages. Coarse; a sliver could be missed.
Sitting members: Patronis (FL-1) from house.gov/representatives ('1st Patronis, Jimmy R'); Senators Rick Scott and Ashley Moody from the CC0 @unitedstates legislators file (Moody appointed 2025-01-21, term ends 2026-11-03); Trumbull from flsenate.gov/Senators/s2 (Crawl-delay 10 honoured); Maney from the flhouse.gov Representatives list. Governor DeSantis reuses the earlier us-jacksonville reading because flgov.com's robots.txt disallows Claude agents. Photos linked, never copied.
standsFor null for everyone; no candidate statement was read. No home addresses, phones or personal emails; nothing accepted, requested or emailed; one User-Agent throughout.

Sources

Prepared 2026-10-31. Nomination papers are never opened: they carry home addresses. After voting day a candidate list becomes a result; these rows are reconciled, not deleted.