AP Photo Top GOP congressman laughs his way to possible defeat Florida's John Mica is battling a young Democratic challenger and a new district — and top Republicans worry he's underestimated the threat.

ORLANDO, Fla. — John Mica is facing his toughest reelection bid in more than two decades, as he's buffeted by Donald Trump headwinds, a well-funded Democratic challenger and a redrawn voting district.

But at a canvassing kickoff just over two weeks before Election Day, the Florida Republican wasn't fretting. Instead, he was cracking jokes.


“I don’t have a campaign manager,” he chuckled during a speech that was supposed to inspire volunteers to get out the vote. Just a few minutes before, he highlighted his "terrible press operation” — a single, part-time press secretary who’s actually a Democrat.

And after noting the more than $3 million worth of attack ads Democrats have aimed his way, Mica laughed it off, saying "we haven’t had that kind of money … nor would we waste that kind of money,” before shifting gears to highlight an unusual strategic advantage: "I do have my secret weapon: my wife, Pat. She’ll be driving the getaway car today!”

The 12-term incumbent may be in denial, but his political future is no laughing matter. After sailing to easy reelection for more than two decades without a serious Democratic challenger, the ex-chairman of the House Transportation Committee has suddenly found his congressional seat in serious jeopardy.

Thanks to a new congressional district, about a quarter of his constituents don’t know him. A good chunk of those new voters are Democrats, turning the 73-year-old conservative's formerly red district into one evenly split between the two parties for the first time ever.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Washington — who for years were unable to recruit a solid candidate to contest the popular lawmaker known for earmarking favors for his district — have finally found themselves a formidable challenger in Stephanie Murphy. The 38-year-old daughter of Vietnamese refugees is young and dynamic, a polished presence on the campaign trail.

The left is pulling out all the stops to get her elected, flying in big-name Democrats to support her, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and gun-control advocate Gabby Giffords. President Barack Obama endorsed her in a video released Monday. Democrats are also spending millions on TV ads that have been running for nearly two months now. Mica, conversely, just went live with his about a week ago.

The Cook Political Report changed Mica’s district rating from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican” to “tossup.” And the last-minute frenzy forced the National Republican Congressional Committee to come to Mica’s rescue with an influx of cash just two weeks before voters headed to the polls.

Senior Republicans, meanwhile, aren’t happy with Mica, grumbling that he should have done more to get to know his new district months ago — or at least sensed a threat in Murphy much earlier.

Mica, however, still isn’t taking his challenger seriously — which could be his undoing.

“You walk down the street, and you’ll see: They know me; they greet me. They wouldn’t know her from Adam’s house cat,” he said, intentionally refusing to name his challenger, Murphy.

While they live in the same neighborhood just north of Orlando, the two candidates are polar opposites.

Mica has a reputation for being something of an oddball. He obsessively hordes throwaway coffee cups in his office and home, insisting that his companions reuse the same paper or Styrofoam carries because “it’s recyclable!” He’s known to offer candid comments, telling one reporter several years ago that the journalist looked homeless and like he "slept on a grate" the night before. During a ride-along interview with POLITICO on Saturday, he noted that the local county Republican headquarters was across the street from a strip club. ("It’s kinda a local joke.")

In Washington, he's famous for his colorful news conferences. During one protesting Amtrak food subsidies, hosted outside a McDonald's near Union Station in 2012, Mica waved a hamburger in the air while yelling at a train zipping by. At another, held in Florida a few years ago, he dared local budget officials to walk the rail of a busy four-lane bridge — just as pedestrians had to because the structure lacked a sidewalk.

By contrast, Murphy, a mother of two, is laser focused on message. She has a moving backstory: When she was 6 months old, in the 1970s, her family fled communist Vietnam on a tugboat. When they ran out of fuel and were stranded at sea, a U.S. Navy vessel rescued them.

"I’ve been frustrated with the gridlock and partisanship that has locked down Washington," she said in an interview at her upscale campaign headquarters, located inside a fancy architecture firm building with floor-to-ceiling windows. "They just aren’t producing legislation, and when they’re not doing that, they’re not serving the country."

On a brisk Saturday morning in mid-October, the candidates' sharply different styles were on full display. Mica — who went 20 years in office without having a press secretary — hustled by himself from door to door in a middle class Orlando-area neighborhood. He passed out black-and-white leaflets that he bragged are “cheap” and “printed from the copy machine.”

When people weren’t home, he scribbled little personalized messages on the back of each pamphlet. And when they were, he just thanked them for their support — notably forgoing an opportunity to ask a single person to vote for him.

Just a few hours later, Murphy attended a vegan festival with a posse of a half-dozen campaign staffers in purple “Stephanie Murphy” shirts. As they passed out colorful, glossy leaflets to people eating at picnic tables, Murphy made a pointed effort to ask attendees for their vote.

“I’m running for U.S. Congress against Congressman Mica,” she told Kristine Iverson, a 38-year-old yoga teacher and longtime Mica constituent. “He's voted against common-sense gun-safety measures. He's taken a check from the gun lobby two days after the Pulse nightclub shooting ... and he's voted against equal pay for equal work; the Violence Against Women Act and ... he doesn't believe that climate change is real!”

Iverson, who only knew Mica before the exchange, now intends to vote for Murphy.

Gun-control has become a central pillar of Murphy's campaign, in part because the gay nightclub shooting last June,in which a gunman killed 49 people, occurred just minutes away in downtown Orlando.

Murphy's also trying to label Mica as anti-woman, tying his votes against the Violence Against Women Act to Trump's lewd comments about women. (Mica notes that he has indeed voted for VAWA several times and only opposed it when the bill was "weaker" than he believed it should be.)

In one of the most talked-about DCCC ads, the narrator tells Floridians to vote for Murphy because Mica believes “marital rape should be legal.” (Mica, who voted in the early 1980s against a bill that would have made marital rape a crime, says there were loopholes in the bill that would have made it harder to prosecute rape in other circumstances. He says he's voted for legislation protecting women dozens of times and views marital rape as a crime.)

Nursing a cup of coffee at a local cafe in his hometown, Mica’s wife, Pat, says these kinds of ads have made the race “very tough on the family.” She’s doesn’t watch TV anymore because of them. And while she's battling colon cancer, she grimly jokes that “I don’t know which is worse: chemotherapy or this.”

“‘Make rape legal, that’s what Mica said!’” she mimics one DCCC ad. “‘Mica may be more dangerous than Trump!’” she says as she echoes another. “I’m very appalled at what they’ve done ... the way they’ve gone about destroying him and his record, and not even just his record, but who he is.”

Asked how he’s countering Murphy’s message, Mica admits he hasn't really been able to.

“We haven’t had the money to do much countering!” he explains. He said he had been "holding fire" before the last two weeks of the race, when he planned to go up with last-minute ads defending himself. “When you don’t have the money, you can’t just dribble out your message. I have enough money to be somewhat competitive the last two weeks, so that’s where we’ll do most of our countering.”

Even though fellow Republicans here are worried about him losing, Mica says “we’re doing extremely well considering the battering we’re taking.” During the ride-along interview, he pointed to a dozen infrastructure projects he helped build in some way, shape or form: a commuter rail system, highway and overpass improvements, airport renovations.

He’s counting on work like this to carry him across the finish line.

“I’ve represented the general area for 23 years. … I walked all of these areas in the past and I know folks, and I think I have a good reputation,” he said. “You’ll see.”