Florida Rep. Cory Mills Loses Primary After Scandal-Filled Campaign

Rep.

Cory Mills, R-Fla., attends the House Armed Services Committee hearing titled "Department of Defense FY2027 Budget Request," in Rayburn building on Wednesday, April 29, 2026 —Tom Williams—CQ-Roll Cal Florida Rep.

Cory Mills , the incumbent representing the state’s 7th District, lost his Republican primary on Tuesday to former TV anchor Ryan Elijah after a controversial campaign for a third term in Congress.

President Donald Trump notably gave Mills his “Complete and Total Endorsement” on Feb.

10, when he wrote a social media post describing the candidate as “an America First Patriot.” But it didn’t seem to outweigh ongoing allegations of sexual misconduct, accusations of mishandling campaign finances, and questions about his military record.

Read More: Trump Says Voters Are Angry With Republicans—But Not With Him.

Here’s What Polls Show “Whether [Mills] wants it to be or not, obviously the allegations against him have become the defining thing that people are talking about,” says Kevin Wagner, professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University.

“The president's endorsement is powerful,” he says, “but it doesn't prevent voters from making a calculation on what they think of him individually in that seat.” The controversies that came to define Cory Mills’s campaign Going into the primary, the latest polling showed Elijah with 44% of the vote, while 27% backed Mills and 19% remained undecided.

That meant there was no assured winner heading into Tuesday, Wagner says, with the number of undecided voters suggesting a lot of “volatility” in the race.

Incumbents are often the strong frontrunners in re-election campaigns for Congress, but Mills has been embroiled in a string of scandals in the past year.

Last October, there was a court-issued injunction against him after a former girlfriend accused Mills of threatening to release explicit videos of her.

The judge found that the woman in question, Lindsay Langston, provided evidence in support of her claim that Mills caused "substantial emotional distress." He wrote in his ruling that he did not find Mills's "testimony concerning the intimate videos to be truthful." In a separate incident in February 2025, D.C. police responded to a report that Mills had assaulted a woman with whom he was in a relationship.

The woman later retracted her account , according to Politico , and police did not charge Mills.

In November 2025, the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into Mills.