Democrat Leonard Spencer bucked Florida’s red wave. Now comes the hard part.

Shortly after winning a seat in the Florida Legislature, Leonard Spencer tried to tell someone he wasn't a politician. He was quickly corrected.

"'Nope,'" he said, laughing, as he told the story. "'You've been elected. You're a politician now.'"

Spencer, 53, of Gotha, is that rare unicorn in Florida politics in 2024 — the only Democrat who flipped a seat in the state House from red to blue in a GOP wave year.

Now the question is what the political newcomer can accomplish amid a Republican supermajority in Tallahassee, and whether he'll be able to build a long career in a district that this year narrowly supported President-elect Donald Trump.

"He will have to work really hard over the next two years if he wants to keep this seat," said Aubrey Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida.

Spencer's victory came against one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Tallahassee. Then-state Rep. Carolina Amesty was indicted in September on four felony charges related to the alleged forgery of a man's signature on an employment form she notarized as an administrator for her family's small school.

Still, Spencer's victory was a narrow one, as he received 50.8% of the votes cast for a 1,600-vote margin in his first bid for elective office.

Spencer doesn't think Amesty's indictments ultimately made the difference.

After all, he said, President-elect Donald Trump won reelection after being convicted of felonies.

"What we've seen from a national level is that folks don't care." Instead, he said, "I think it's more about, 'Are you focused on the issues that matter to me?'"

Amesty, who won the seat in 2022, had become a prominent culture warrior, lambasting the "extremists" at Disney who "pushed far-left narratives and lies," though Walt Disney World is in her district.

"When you're focused on these fringe issues, things that aren't addressing the core of what folks are concerned with?" Spencer said. "That's when folks get a little bit upset."

As Democrats sought someone to challenge Amesty this year, Spencer recommended some potential candidates, but then those party officials circled around to gauge his own interest. The first thing he did was ask his "advisers": his wife, Tanya, his son Leonard, Jr., a former Naval officer, and his daughter Taylor, a Washington attorney.

"When they said yes," he said, "then that's when I said, 'Okay. I'll throw my name in the hat."

Spencer is a Florida native, but his route to Central Florida was circuitous. A Navy brat born in his dad's last posting in Jacksonville, he had a "typical childhood in the South" growing up in Mobile, Ala., before heading off to study finance at Tuskegee University and earn his MBA from the University of Alabama.

As a businessman, he considers himself fiscally conservative and has looked up to leaders in both parties. But he became a Democrat in part because of "the rhetoric that has come from the Republican side of the aisle, relative to inclusivity, relative to abortion rights, relative to a lot of things."

He currently works as a senior manager with Amazon, but it was a job with The Walt Disney Company that led him to move to Central Florida in 2005.

His time with Disney, where he began as a financial analyst and left as a supply chain director, gave him a unique perspective of what he called Gov. Ron DeSantis' "bewildering" battle with the company.

DeSantis dissolved the special district that ran government services in Walt Disney World after the company's former CEO criticized the so-called "don't say gay" law, which bans instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in schools.

"Why would the governor pick a fight with Disney for really just making a statement supportive of the folks who work there?" Spencer said. "You wound up with a contentious engagement with the largest employer in the state. And think of all the companies that supply Disney, and all the employees of those companies."

In the Legislature Spencer said he wants to work on making housing more affordable, including addressing the homeowners insurance crisis, expanding access to health insurance, and safeguarding women's reproductive rights.

Those were issues that all the Democrats taking on Republican incumbents had campaigned on this year. But Spencer is now the only one able to act on them.

"The first thing I've been able to do is at least win a seat, so I can have a seat at the table," he said. "It might not be the strongest seat at the table, but at least I can have a voice and can put forward ideas."

The wealthy suburban district fits the profile of seats that have been trending blue over the last few elections, and would have been won by President Joe Biden by about 4.5 points in 2020, according to elections analyst Matt Isbell.

But this year, Trump won it by a little less than 1 percentage point. The question for Spencer is what the electorate will look like in 2026.

"He'll be the incumbent, so he'll have the ability to increase his name recognition throughout the district," Jewett said. "He'll have the ability to raise more money potentially than he did as a challenger."

Importantly, Jewett said, Spencer and his staff need to follow the lead of fellow Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani in focusing heavily on constituent services. The Orlando representative won her fourth term on Election Day.

"He and his staff will need to reach out to the constituents in his district over and over again during the next two years," Jewett said. "And if he does that, he certainly has a decent chance of getting reelected."

But for now, Spencer is preparing for the upcoming legislative session, which starts in March.

"I don't take it lightly," Spencer said of his new duties. "When I was younger, my grandmother and my parents always used to tell me, 'When you walk out that door, you represent me. Don't make me look bad.' That's the responsibility I feel like I have."