I'm Ionel Roiban — a software engineer, a 25-year Boynton Beach resident, and the Republican candidate for Florida House District 90. I don't ask anyone to take my word for anything, so let's do what this campaign always does: put the numbers on the table and check the math together.
The short version: this race is closer than the headlines suggest, it's getting closer, and in a midterm year the margin is small enough that your household — literally yours — can decide it.
Start with the official registration data. At the July 20, 2026 book closing, the Florida Division of Elections counted 103,143 active voters in District 90, across 106 precincts, all in Palm Beach County:
That's a Democratic registration edge of 8,293 voters — D+8.0. Notable, but hardly a wall. And here's the part almost nobody has reported: the gap is narrowing. At the November 10, 2025 book closing for the December special election it was D+8.7 — 40,285 Democrats to 31,365 Republicans out of 102,903 active voters (Florida Division of Elections book closing, Nov. 10, 2025). Since then, Republicans in this district added 487 voters while Democrats lost 140. Nobody sent a press release. The state's own spreadsheet just quietly moved our way.
Now look at how this seat actually votes. Per Ballotpedia's official results:
That last number is the one the "safe seat" narrative leans on, and it's the least representative of the four. A 27-point margin on 15,000 ballots tells you who shows up for a December special election. It tells you almost nothing about a November midterm with four times the electorate.
2026 is a midterm — and midterms are a different election. Florida's statewide turnout was 78.8% in the 2024 presidential and 53.8% in the 2022 midterm. In District 90 terms, that's the difference between roughly 85,000–88,000 ballots and about 63,000. The 2022 midterm — the best analog for this November — is exactly when this seat ran its closest: D+9.8.
Two more facts complete the picture.
First, no side has a majority here. Democrats are 38.9% of registration. Republicans are 30.9%. The 26,601 independent (NPA) voters — 25.8% of the district, a bloc nearly as large as the entire Republican base — decide every competitive race in District 90. They aren't ideological voters; they're cost-of-living voters. Whoever earns them wins.
Second, seats like this one flip in midterms — including next door. In 2022, House District 91 — south Palm Beach County, Boca Raton, a seat widely rated Democratic-leaning going into that election — elected Republican Peggy Gossett-Seidman 51.7–48.3. The same night, Miami Beach's Democratic-leaning HD 106 flipped Republican by 242 votes (50.23–49.77) after a recount. Blue-leaning coastal Florida seats are exactly the ones that moved in the last midterm. District 90's math is comparable — and its registration gap is now smaller than it was then.
Run it through the same path-to-win arithmetic we publish on The Data page. On a major-party-plus-NPA basis, the July numbers come to D 40.7% / R 32.3% / NPA 27.0%. Hold the Republican base, win the independents on affordability and competence, persuade a modest slice of Democrats who are just as squeezed by insurance and taxes as everyone else — and a D+8 seat is winnable. Not easy. Winnable. That's the honest word, and it's why every vote in this district carries real weight this year.
A state representative's job is leverage. Florida's House runs on a Republican supermajority — currently 83 Republicans to 34 Democrats, with three seats vacant, per the chamber's official roster. In a chamber where the majority decides which bills get heard, a freshman member of the minority has very little leverage over what reaches the floor. That's not a character judgment about anyone; it's arithmetic. A vote for me is a vote to put District 90's priorities — insurance costs, property-tax relief, clean-water funding — inside the majority that writes the budget and decides what gets heard.
And this November, your ballot does double duty. The property-tax amendment (CS/HJR 1F, "Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes") — which would phase in a $150,000 homestead exemption in 2027, rising to $250,000 in 2028, and tighten the cap on non-homestead assessment increases — is on the same ballot and needs 60% to pass. One trip to the polls, two direct votes on your cost of living. I'm voting yes on the amendment, and I'm asking to be in the room when the implementing law gets written.
Per the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections calendar:
The warning, and please share it with your neighbors regardless of party: under current Florida law a vote-by-mail request only covers elections through the end of the calendar year of the next regularly scheduled general election (Fla. Stat. §101.62), so a request made before the 2024 general expired on December 31, 2024. Even if you have voted by mail for years, that standing request is gone unless you renewed it in 2025 or later. Check your status at votepalmbeach.gov — and if you are not certain, request again. Either way, before October 22.
These dates come from the Supervisor of Elections' published calendar. Calendars can change; before you rely on any of them, confirm at votepalmbeach.gov or by calling the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections.
I won't tell you this seat is a lock, because the data doesn't say that. It says something better: this is a genuinely contestable race, decided by a midterm electorate of roughly 63,000 neighbors, in a district where the deciding bloc is 26,601 independents and the registration gap just shrank while nobody was looking. In races like this — a Democratic-leaning seat next door that flipped in 2022, a 242-vote flip in Miami Beach — the margin is a few voters per precinct.
That's you. Register by October 5, request your ballot by October 22, and vote — early, by mail, or on November 3. Check every number in this post against the sources below, and if you find one wrong, tell me and I'll fix it. That's how an engineer runs a campaign — and how I'll represent District 90.
— Ionel
Every figure on this page is sourced. Find an error? Send me the source and I will fix it.
Updated: 2026-09-06