Republican Aaron Bean is seeking re-election in the 4th Congressional District, which covers Duval County west and north of the St. Johns River and all of Nassau County and Clay County. He faces no challengers in the Republican primary, and will meet the winner of the three-way Democratic primary, as well as a no party affiliation candidate, and a candidate with the Florida Forward party, in the general election.
News4JAX sent a questionnaire to each party candidate asking about their background and their views on several issues. Scroll down to read the responses of those seeking your vote -- in their own words.
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Note: Responses are sorted alphabetically by party and are published exactly as submitted, with no editing by News4Jax staff.
| DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES |
LaShonda “L.J.” Holloway
Occupation: Supreme Court Mediator and Arbitrator
Age: 56
Family: Fourth of six generations in Duval County.
Education: Juris Doctorate-University of Florida Levin College of Law
Post graduate studies at Harvard University School of Public Health (Epidemiology and Biostatistics)
Political experience: (No answer)
What do you see as the top three issues in this race, and how do you plan to address them?
(No answer)
How can you help voters in a way that others running for this office cannot?
I am the ONLY CANDIDATE who has FEDERAL EXPERIENCE and the work and scope of the U. S. House of Representatives from Member to Constituent Services to make laws and control spending.
I not only worked for Congresswoman Carrie Meek who was on the Appropriations Committee. I also worked for the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency in both the Clinton and Reagan administration(s).
Further, I negotiated the largest deal in history at U. S. Customs (at the time) as an Account Executive at Lexis Nexis and served as a Director in the Executive Office of the Mayor in Washington, D. C. during the Fenty Administration further enhancing my skills and abilities in Government.
What would you hope to be remembered for accomplishing after serving in this office?
I hope to be remembered as the Representative who served the will of the PEOPLE and did NOT accept PAC money.
As the Member of Congress who made the lives of Americans better and more affordable for working families.
Campaign website: www.hollowayforcongress.com
Campaign social media: Facebook | Instagram | TikTok
Michael Kirwan
Campaign website: votekirwan.com
Campaign social media: Facebook | X | Instagram | TikTok | BlueSky | YouTube
The Democratic candidate is in the process of completing the News4JAX candidate questionnaire. When responses are received, they will be promptly posted in this space.
Brit Robinson
Occupation: I am an interior designer and tailor by trade. The Department of Veterans Affairs hired me in 2024 to be a GS-11 Interior Designer, but with the new Trump administration, my offer was rescinded. I’ve worked since the age of 14 in a variety of fields, including food service, retail, legal & tax services, fine arts and interior design. Now, my only job is to fight for the people of District 4 to ensure the needs and desires of the district are properly represented in Congress, and create the desperately needed changes to make life not just comfortable, but joyful too. The People deserve stability and happiness.
Age: 31
Family: Husband
Education: BA in Textile Arts, Maryland Institute College of Art - focused on garment-making & costuming and earned through my dad’s GI Bill benefits. A lot of my studies were about social justice and advocacy and gave me the foundation of knowledge of the systems of exploitation and cruelty in our country that we desperately need to fix.
Political experience: None.
I got into this race as a military spouse and working-class candidate because I saw a small window of opportunity rapidly closing to protect our communities and resist an authoritarian government. The majority of Americans can’t afford their basic needs while the rich get richer, the Trump administration is dismantling our government for it’s own financial gain, and our Representative, Aaron Bean, is not working for his constituents considering his primary donor is AIPAC, followed by various corporate interests. Our district deserves to have a Representative who prioritizes its people – not greed and foreign interests.
What do you see as the top three issues in this race, and how do you plan to address them?
1) Free Universal Healthcare - Healthcare is a human right. No one should struggle to see a doctor. We must expand Medicare for All to provide free universal healthcare for all Americans, including dental, hearing & vision care; Protect reproductive freedom & bodily autonomy for all; Expand social programs like SNAP & universal free school meals to ensure healthy food is available for all.
2) Get Money Out of Politics / Hold Trump Administration Accountable - We must work to overturn Citizens United, curbing corporate financial influence in our elections and throughout the government; strengthen anti-corruption laws & ban stock trading for lawmakers; Abolish & prosecute ICE; release the Epstein files; and prosecute all of Trump administration for their crimes.
3) End the Iran War & Israel’s Genocide in Gaza - Reclaim Congress’s power to instigate military action; Reduce military budget, force DOD to pass their audit to limit military industrial complex, & end American imperialism; Stop sending all aid to Israel & label AIPAC as a foreign agent unable to donate in American elections.
How can you help voters in a way that others running for this office cannot?
We need representatives who are not career politicians and will not prioritize corporate interests over constituents. When only 2% of our Representatives in Congress come from working-class backgrounds, it’s time for serious change.
I have the personal experience to have seen both the best and worst part of the American government and its systems. I have experienced firsthand the catastrophic effects of a family member not having health insurance. But I also have utilized socialized programs throughout my life through military family benefits and understand how essential it is to have quality healthcare, education, and housing, and am fighting for everyone to have the same access.
A huge focus of my campaign thus far has been coalition building with people and organizations within Jacksonville, throughout Florida, and across the country. We are stronger together and we can create monumental positive change if we focus on uplifting the voices of the People.
What would you hope to be remembered for accomplishing after serving in this office?
That the needs of the People are my sole priority and that I can’t be bought or intimidated to be quiet – even by our own Democratic Party. That I call out all hypocrisy and prejudice, and that I am fully dedicated to improving everyday people’s lives through systemic change.
Campaign website: www.brit4congress.com
Campaign social media: Facebook | X | Instagram | TikTok
Aaron Bean
Occupation: U.S. Representative, Florida Congressional District 4
Age: 59
Family: Wife, Abby, who is a fifth-generation Clay Countian, along with three now-grown sons, and one grandchild with a second grandchild expected in November.
Education: Jacksonville University, B.S. Finance
Political experience: I was elected to Congress on November 8, 2022. Prior to being elected to Congress, I spent 10 years in the Florida Senate after serving eight years in the Florida House of Representatives. Early on, I also served my hometown, while raising a family and running a small business, as a city commissioner and mayor of Fernandina Beach.
What do you see as the top three issues in this race, and how do you plan to address them?
Inflation and the cost of living; patient access, affordability, and transparency in health care; and securing our borders and keeping our communities safe.
I’ll continue working to lower costs and make life more affordable for American families. That means getting government spending under control, promoting policies that help our economy grow, and making sure Washington lives within its means. We’ve already delivered real relief for working families through the Working Families Tax Cut – the largest tax cut in American history – so workers can keep more of what they earn, including no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security benefits. We also took another important step by passing the Rescissions Act of 2025, which was signed into law and rescinds $9 billion in unnecessary and wasteful federal spending. I’ll continue fighting for commonsense, fiscally responsible policies that strengthen our economy, protect taxpayers, and help ensure every dollar goes further for hardworking Americans.
Our health care system is too costly, too complicated, and too often leaves patients waiting longer and paying more for the care they need. If we’re serious about improving health care, we need to put patients first by expanding access to doctors, increasing price transparency, and making care more affordable. That starts with strengthening our health care workforce by expanding medical residency opportunities so more physicians can serve communities across the country. We also need to do a better job of promoting preventive care, because helping people stay healthy is better for patients and helps lower costs over the long run. I’ll keep fighting for commonsense solutions that improve access to care – like the HSAs For All Act that I introduced to expand access to Health Savings Accounts and give hardworking Americans more control over their healthcare dollars – increase affordability, empower patients with greater transparency, and deliver better outcomes for the American people.
Keeping our border secure is essential to our national security and helps protect communities here at home. I’ll continue working to strengthen border security while ensuring law enforcement has the resources they need to do their jobs safely and effectively. That commitment also extends to the officers who serve in our own communities, as well as their four-legged partners, which is why I introduced the LEO K9 Protection Act to strengthen protections for the police dogs and horses that work alongside law enforcement every day. I’ll also continue fighting for our veterans and ensuring they receive the benefits they’ve earned. Whether it’s supporting those who protect our border, keeping our neighborhoods safe, or standing up for those who have served our nation, I’ll continue fighting for commonsense policies that put the safety and well-being of Americans first.
How can you help voters in a way that others running for this office cannot?
Serving Northeast Florida has always been about people, not politics. I have a servant’s heart, and I believe the best way to represent this community is to show up, listen, and be accessible to the people who sent me to Washington. That’s why I’m constantly meeting with families, small business owners, veterans, law enforcement, seniors, and community leaders to hear what’s on their minds, so that I can take those priorities with me to Congress. My job is to be your voice, to fight for the issues that matter most to Northeast Florida, and to deliver results. I’ll continue working every day to listen, stay engaged, and be a strong voice for the people of Northeast Florida—because serving this community is the greatest honor of my life.
What would you hope to be remembered for accomplishing after serving in this office?
I hope I’m remembered as a representative who was present, accessible, and never forgot who I worked for. From day one, my goal has been to listen, stay engaged, and fight for the people of Northeast Florida, regardless of party affiliation. I also hope our office is remembered for providing outstanding constituent service—because helping people navigate the federal government and solve problems is one of the most important parts of this job. Most of all, I hope people remember that when I made a promise, I worked hard to keep it. Whether it’s delivering results on issues like addressing patient access, affordability, and transparency in health care, promoting fiscal responsibility, or strengthening our nation’s security, I’ve always believed that public service is about earning people’s trust through action.
Campaign website: aaronbean.com
Campaign social media: Facebook | X
| FLORIDA FORWARD CANDIDATE |
Mike Sell
Occupation: Mike is a certified operational excellence professional with more than two decades spent fixing complex, broken systems, most of that work inside the U.S. healthcare industry. He built his expertise through rigorous professional certification, earning master’s-level credentials including his Six Sigma Black Belt and Shingo Operational Excellence Assessor designations.
Over his career, Mike has led projects that generated more than a quarter of a billion dollars in documented savings for major organizations in healthcare and human resources. He did it not by cutting services, but by cutting the waste, redundancy, and dysfunction that drain those systems. He has sat at the executive tables where decisions affecting millions of people get made, and he has seen firsthand how complexity gets used to hide fraud, waste, and extraction from the people who can least afford it.
Alongside that work, Mike spent fifteen years building and leading organizations focused on bringing people together and widening opportunity, well before he ever considered public office. He is also the founder of a not-for-profit built on the belief that access to information is a right, and that technology should open doors rather than close them.
Age: 42
Family: Mike is a devoted husband and father. He and his partner have been together for more than two decades and raised three children, now grown and setting out on their own paths. Family is at the center of why he is running. He often says he is doing this for his own kids and for everyone else’s, so the next generation inherits a country that still works for them.
Service runs three generations deep in Mike’s family. His grandfather served 26 years in the Navy as a Lieutenant Commander, completing four submarine tours. His father served 20 years and retired from Naval Air Station Jacksonville as an Instructor Flight Engineer on the P-3 Orion. Both of Mike’s brothers served as well, one as a Marine and one in military law enforcement and security. Mike grew up inside that culture of duty and sacrifice, and it shaped everything he understands about what military families carry and what this country owes the people who serve it.
Education: Mike originally went to school for political science, but he found his real calling in operational excellence, the work of fixing broken systems and making them serve people better. He built master’s-level expertise in that field through rigorous professional certification, earning his Six Sigma Black Belt and Shingo Operational Excellence Assessor credentials, along with years of continuing training in leadership and continuous improvement. In a way, this run for office brings both halves of that path back together.
Political experience: Mike has not held elected office, and he sees that as part of what he offers. His experience is on the organizing side of politics rather than the career-politician side. Over the past year he has helped lead a local Indivisible chapter, where part of his work has been finding and supporting good candidates who will fight for their communities. He has spent two decades in community and civic organizing, building coalitions and bringing people together across differences, and he completed formal training as a community organizer. His approach to politics comes from that grounding: start with the people closest to the problem, listen first, and build the solution around them rather than around the interests already in power.
What do you see as the top three issues in this race, and how do you plan to address them?
Cost of living. Families here are squeezed by housing, insurance, healthcare, and grocery prices rising faster than paychecks, and homeowner insurance in particular is pricing people out of homes they already own. Mike would fight to raise wages, take on price gouging, and treat the insurance crisis as the federal problem it is.
Healthcare access and cost. Too many families in this district are choosing between a prescription and groceries, and the Northside and Westside carry the highest concentration of uninsured and Medicaid-dependent residents. Mike would fully fund the community health centers that serve as the front door to care, protect Medicaid, and let Medicare negotiate the price of every covered drug.
A government that has stopped listening. This district has changed, and its representation has not kept pace with the people who live here now. Mike takes no corporate money, so he answers to this district and no one else, and he would measure success by whether life actually got better for the people he serves.
How can you help voters in a way that others running for this office cannot?
Mike takes no corporate money and answers to no party machine, so he is free to represent this district and no one else. He brings 20 years of fixing broken systems, the exact skill this job actually requires, and he is demonstrating a new way to run: a fraction of a normal budget, reaching voters directly, proving a qualified person can win without selling access first. Voters get a representative whose time and loyalty already belong to them, not to donors he owes before taking office.
What would you hope to be remembered for accomplishing after serving in this office?
Mike hopes to be remembered as someone who helped shift the trajectory of our nation back toward something future generations can be proud of. Not one bill or one term, but a turning point, where we started fixing broken systems instead of managing their decline, and where government began answering to people again instead of money. He wants his kids and everyone else’s to inherit a country that works, and to know it bent back in the right direction because ordinary people decided it had to.
Campaign website: www.mikesell.org
Campaign social media: Facebook | Instagram
| NO PARTY AFFILIATION CANDIDATE |
Todd Schaefer
Occupation: Retired USN
Age: 47
Family: Son-24
Education: (No answer)
Political experience: None
What do you see as the top three issues in this race, and how do you plan to address them?
1. We can argue until we are blue in the face that we need to get money out of politics, but in light of the most recent SCOTUS decision giving more power to donors through parties, that isn’t going to happen overnight. For now we need to get back to the basics and understand that politics IS money, as Congress controls the purse. My bill, the American Prosperity Card Act, will bring transparency back to the creation of money and how we benefit from or pay for it.
2. Housing prices are out of control. The bipartisan housing bill, 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, that is sitting on Trump’s desk is a good step in the right direction, however it still has loopholes so that it just addresses some symptoms of the larger problem. Bean even voted against that mild fix. I’d propose legislation to close the straight line depreciation loophole that landlords use to enjoy tax benefits on appreciating assets. Another angle I’d approach is reigning in the lax lending standards that allow mortgages for investment properties as opposed to small business loans. A small business would kill for a 30yr fixed rate loan. This subsidizes and provides an explicit guarantee which has inflated home prices over decades.
3. We need healthcare reform. Obama ran on a public option and instead we got the ACA. This has put us in a position where health costs can continue to rise and our government is simply forced to continue to raise subsidies to pay for it. The industry understands they can continue to raise costs unimpeded, because it has become political suicide to take away healthcare. Even Republicans agree that a larger healthcare pool reduces risk and therefore costs. The logic of that leads to a national public option, since the largest possible pool is the whole country. Any legislation to continue subsidies has to include language to expand Medicare to a public option.
How can you help voters in a way that others running for this office cannot?
You cannot apply to a party first and then tell voters you are going to serve them. Anyone who doesn’t fall in line in recent years has been cast aside by their party. The Republicans were just as happy to rid themselves of Massie and MTG as the Democrats were to ditch Bush and Bowman in ’24. The SCOTUS ruling this week unleashed the parties in their ability to spend unlimited money for loyalty. That isn’t governance. That is control by two for-profit private corporations that call themselves ‘parties’. I’m running to represent the people of FL-04 first and only.
What would you hope to be remembered for accomplishing after serving in this office?
My APCA bill getting passed. We have the tools in place to reverse five decades of failed fiscal policy. We just need the will to utilize them. That will give Americans a little breathing room and clarity on spending so that we can have honest conversations about what we demand of our government. Not big or small, but exactly the size we collectively agree to pay for.
Campaign website: toddforfl4.com