After several days of insider talk and speculation, Republican Rico Smith, previously a candidate for a Hillsborough countywide commissioner’s seat, has announced he will leave that race and challenge state Rep. Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa.

The move will give Driskell, a rising Democratic star and leader of the Democratic state House caucus, a potentially significant opponent.

Challenging a legislative party leader is an aggressive move in Florida politics. Smith, who made the move after conferring with Republicans in Tallahassee, said he believes he’ll have the financial backing to mount a serious race.

Also, the switch will leave two Republicans, Jim Davison and Christine Miller, running for the commission seat, the only countywide seat on the 2024 ballot, possibly making that GOP primary less contentious.

The county seat is currently held by term-limited Democrat Pat Kemp. Former Democratic Commissioner Mariella Smith had planned to run, and Democrats were counting on her to hold the seat and with it their third seat on the board, preventing Republicans from gaining a 5-2 supermajority.

Mariella Smith, however, had to withdraw because of her husband’s illness, and former state Rep. Sean Shaw has replaced her on the ballot.

In an interview, Rico Smith said he made the move because “I didn’t want to have such a contentious primary — that’s the last thing we wanted. We have to stop the cannibalism against other good candidates.”

He noted that Driskell won her 2022 reelection by only 8 points against Lisette Bonano, who he said “lacked the proper resources,” raising only $15,267 to Driskell’s $337,943.

Bonano has filed again for the House seat, but Smith is likely to have backing from local GOP leaders.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district — 38,892 to 25,335 as of the 2022 election — but the state Republican Party is likely to be able to far outspend Democrats in fighting for this and other legislative seats.

Smith, 27, an engineer, Air Force veteran and a first-time candidate for office, had raised $47,158 and spent $25,415 on the county race as of Dec. 31. Formerly of North Hyde Park, he said he recently rented an apartment in the district in New Tampa.

Driskell, an attorney now in her third term, has been considered by Democrats a potential candidate for statewide office.

In an interview she said, “As Dems, we’re always prepared to be outspent. I have honorably served my district for the past six years and I think my work will speak for itself.”

If Lee runs, he’ll have big bucks

With Hillsborough Republicans vowing to field solid candidates against Democratic constitutional officers, there’s been speculation that Tom Lee would return to the political field, possibly as a clerk of court candidate.

In an interview, Lee, a former state Senate president, played down the possibility but didn’t rule it out.

If Lee did run, he’d have one major advantage — access to a big stash of political campaign money, likely more than $700,000.

In the 2010s, including his time as Senate appropriations chairperson, Lee built up a fund of about $3.4 million in a political committee, aiming for a statewide campaign that never came to fruition.

About $2.3 million remained in 2018, about $1 million of which was used to boost the 2022 congressional campaign of his wife, Rep. Laurel Lee.

But according to reports of his committee, The Conservative, and other committees that received some of its money, more than $700,000 remains in a committee controlled by a Lee political ally.

Although there could be restrictions on how the money is used, that would constitute a huge campaign fund for a local office.

Lee said he’s not aware of exactly how much remains in the committee, Restore the Trust, but added, “I’ve never had any difficulty raising money for a political campaign — I don’t even think about it.”

In 2020, Lee resigned from the state Senate and filed to run for Hillsborough clerk but withdrew. He has occasionally acknowledged considering a return to local politics but hasn’t mounted a campaign.

Name recognition from his long political history and access to a ready-made campaign funds mean Lee could be a formidable candidate.

Not needing to raise much money, he could wait until late in the race to decide whether to run — an obstacle for other Republicans who might fear starting a campaign and then finding themselves facing Lee in a primary.

Dem obstacles in school board races

In two Hillsborough County school board races, Gov. Ron DeSantis has targeted incumbents — Jessica Vaughn and Nadia Combs — for defeat.

In one of those, for Combs’ seat, Republican-backed candidate Layla Collins is swamping two other candidates with fundraising — $67,741 as of Jan. 1.

In the other, two Democrats, Vaughn and Bonnie Lambert, have been feuding with each other, although each denies causing the antagonism and blames the other for it.

Collins’ fundraising haul more than doubles that of any other 2024 school board candidate. Combs has raised $9,005 and Julie Magill, also in the District 1 race, $1,355.

Magill, whose Facebook page proclaims her a Donald Trump ally, advocates parents rights in schools and opposes what she calls pornography in school libraries.

Collins is the wife of state Sen. Jay Collins, who won a state Senate seat in 2022 after being recruited into the race by DeSantis and heavily funded by statewide GOP interests.

Layla Collins has received dozens of legal-maximum $1,000 donations from Republican-oriented political committees, PACs run by GOP legislative leaders and Tallahassee lobbyists.

Vaughn and Lambert have squabbled over Vaughn’s initial reluctance to run for reelection — which Lambert said is one reason she filed — and also over what Vaughn claims is Lambert’s denigration of her previous teaching career, as well as other issues.

Vaughn, who said she was originally hired as a full-time Hillsborough teacher in 2011 but became a substitute because of the demands of raising her special-needs son, acknowledges her career was nearly all as a substitute.

Vaughn said last year she preferred not to run but would stay in the race if no candidate filed whom she wished to support. Lambert accused her of wanting “to be the one to choose who should be in that seat.”

Contact William March at wemarch@gmail.com.