Jennifer Webb, Jennifer Daunch Win Gulfport City Council

Gulfport voters sent two women named Jennifer to City Hall on Tuesday, electing former state Rep. Jennifer Webb and former emergency dispatcher Jennifer Daunch to seats on the Gulfport City Council in a municipal election that also put 10 local referenda before residents.

Webb claimed the Ward 3 seat by a wide margin, pulling 71% of the vote against opponent Keri Nelson. The victory gives Webb a return to elected office after she served in the Florida House of Representatives as a Democrat for House District 69 from 2018 to 2020. She has lived in Gulfport for years and currently leads Live Tampa Bay as its executive director. Before that role, she worked on community health initiatives including Project Opioid Tampa Bay and founded a public affairs consulting firm.

Her campaign pushed themes of transparency and community engagement, with a particular focus on helping Gulfport recover from recent hurricane damage while managing long-term growth in a way that makes room for both longtime residents and newcomers.

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried wasted no time offering congratulations Tuesday night.

“I could not be more proud of councilwoman-elect Jennifer Webb on this victory,” Fried said. “Jennifer has planted deep roots in Gulfport and that love of community has called her faithfully into service.”

Fried credited the party’s Take Back Local program with supporting Webb’s campaign, saying the initiative provides candidates with resources and on-the-ground support as part of a broader Democratic effort to reclaim ground in local races across Florida.

Nelson, Webb’s opponent, brought a substantial resume to the race. She spent more than two decades working in government at local, county, and state levels, starting as a marine biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission before moving into policy, natural resource management, and coastal permitting. She later worked in Gulfport’s own City Clerk’s office and most recently managed a human resources information system modernization project. Her campaign prioritized operational efficiency, responsible budgeting, and government decision-making grounded in professional administrative experience.

Daunch’s win in Ward 1 was tighter. She defeated Joe Guenther with 54% of the vote to secure her council seat. A Gulfport resident, Daunch currently works in code enforcement in St. Pete Beach. Her background spans community development work in Treasure Island and years as an emergency dispatcher with the St. Pete Police Department and an agency in Cleveland, Ohio.

Her campaign platform zeroed in on improving how the city communicates with its residents, streamlining permitting processes, and making city government more accessible to everyday people. That pitch clearly resonated with enough Ward 1 voters to edge out Guenther.

The twin Jennifer victories come at a critical moment for Gulfport. The small Pinellas County city, known for its arts scene and tight-knit neighborhoods, has been working through recovery from recent hurricanes while simultaneously confronting the longer-term pressures of coastal development and population shifts common to communities throughout South Florida and the broader Gulf Coast region.

Both incoming council members will step into that work with backgrounds that give them different but complementary angles. Webb brings legislative experience and a network of connections across Tampa Bay. Daunch brings ground-level knowledge of how permitting and code enforcement actually function at the staff level, an understanding that could prove useful when residents push for faster and clearer responses from City Hall.

Tuesday’s election also saw voters weigh in on 10 separate local referenda, signaling that Gulfport residents came to the polls with more than just council races on their minds.

For Florida Democrats, Webb’s comfortable margin carries some symbolic weight. The party has struggled to hold ground at the local level across Florida in recent election cycles, and a 71-point showing in a municipal race gives Fried something concrete to point to as evidence that the Take Back Local strategy can deliver results. Whether that translates to momentum in larger contests is a separate question, but Tuesday night gave the party a clean win in a community that clearly knew what it was getting with Jennifer Webb.