Valerie StaggsJames Martin, who worked for former Vice President Kamala Harris, and Alex Cooke, an investment adviser, are challenging U.S. Rep. Brian Mast in a district covering northern Palm Beach County.
Two candidates are vying to unseat Republican Brian Mast for U.S. House District 21 in the Nov. 3 election. Mast is running for his sixth, two-year term in Congress.
James Martin, a Democrat, is a U.S. Coast Guard officer from Hobe Sound who worked for former Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House. Alexander “Alex” Cooke, an independent, is an investment adviser, founder of Optimist Capital and the former mayor of Juno Beach.
Both say that Mast is not doing enough to address the concerns of residents in the district, which includes all of St. Lucie and Martin counties and portions of northern Palm Beach County including Tequesta, Jupiter, Jupiter Inlet Colony, Juno Beach, North Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, Palm Beach Shores, and parts of Riviera Beach and West Palm Beach.
The district is home to 769,221 residents.
In 2024, Mast carried the district with 61.8% of the vote against Democrat Thomas Witkop.
Money and endorsements
Mast’s campaign accounts have accrued $4.9 million as of Oct. 17.
Martin has raised $772,560, and Cooke’s account stands at $27,157.
Two-thirds of Mast’s campaign contributions come from out-of-state, and 47% come from large individual contributions. PAC money accounts for $1.2 million. Ideological PACs aligned with Republican and Pro-Israel, and transportation and defense PACs account for 57.5% of Mast’s PAC money.
Mast is endorsed by President Donald Trump, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Animal Wellness Action, Combat Veterans for Congress, Campaign for Working Families, and the National Federation of Independent Business among others.
Seventy-three percent of Martin’s campaign account comes from in-state sources with individual donations comprising the majority. Military and defense industries make up 10% of total contributions. Martin has contributed $150,000 to his campaign.
Some of Martin’s endorsements include former Vice President Harris, Democratic Environmental Caucus of Florida, Democratic Hispanic Caucus, Democratic Veterans Caucus of Florida, West Palm Beach Democratic Club and Veterans for Responsible Leadership. He is also a Moms Demand Action Gun Sense Candidate and an End Citizens United Unrig Candidate.
In-state contributions make up 73% of Cooke’s campaign account, and total contributions are all small individual donors. His company, Optimist Capital, donated $1,000 to his campaign.
Neither Cooke nor Martin has accepted PAC money.
Meet the candidates
Brian Mast, Republican incumbent
Mast, 46, is running for his sixth term in Congress. He was first elected in 2016.
He is from Grand Rapids, Mich., the son of James, a homebuilder and Army veteran, and Timoxena, the daughter of Mexican immigrants.
He joined the Army Reserve in 2000 and enrolled in Palm Beach Atlantic University, where he was a student until 2002. In 2006 he transitioned to active duty, serving as a bomb disposal expert.
In 2010, Mast lost both his legs and his left index finger when he stepped on an IED in Afghanistan. Following retirement from the Army, he worked in counter-terrorism at the Department of Homeland Security before election to his first term in Congress.
Mast is a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and serves as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
He lives in Fort Pierce with his wife, Brianna, and four children.
Mast did not respond to Stet News’ requests for an interview. His positions are from his websites.
James Martin, Democrat
Martin, 33, is a fourth-generation Floridian.
His great-grandfather, James “Jim” Diamond, was a well-known figure in the Hobe Sound area in the 1920s who built a business delivering goods from the train station to local residents..
Martin’s father, Pat Martin, now runs the business, which provides concierge car rental services and car restorations. Martin’s mom is a schoolteacher.
When Martin graduated from South Fork High School in Martin County, he was drawn to a career in the military.
“It was the right mix of academics and athletics,” he said.
After earning his high school diploma, he went to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and graduated with honors in 2015.
Martin served for 10 years at bases in the United States, the Middle East and as the commanding officer of an 87-foot Coast Guard cutter in Fort Pierce. He rose to the rank of captain. He moved to Key West in 2020 to work for the Joint Interagency Task Force South, overseeing the interdiction of drugs.
In 2021, he was recruited for a position under then-Vice President Harris. He served as chief of staff for national security affairs and executive secretary before leaving in 2025.
Martin is married and the father of two daughters. He lives in Hobe Sound.
He decided to run in December.
“We were driving past my dad’s business, and that was the moment where I knew I had to do something,” Martin said. “I told my wife: ‘We have to be the change we want to see.’”
He won the primary by 362 votes against firefighter Bernard Taylor in August.
Alex Cooke, independent
Cooke, 49, was born in Connecticut and moved to Seattle as a teen. He experienced homelessness at a young age.
“We lived in and out of cars, and I basically brought up my younger brother,” Cooke said. His brother, Richard, is eight years his junior.
Cooke was awarded a lacrosse scholarship at Fairfield University in Connecticut but got injured and couldn’t play. He went to work for a financial firm while studying finance at the university.
After graduation, Cooke worked in finance on Wall Street, before moving to Juno Beach and founding Optimist Capital in 2017. The company’s management includes the politically influential local political powerbroker, John R. Smith.
Cooke was elected to the Juno Beach Town Council in 2022 and spearheaded measures to protect against “unchecked development.” He was appointed mayor and served for two years before the town moved to an elected mayor position. He ran for the seat in 2024, losing to Peggy Wheeler. Cooke moved to Jupiter in 2025 where he lives with his wife, Bianca, and two sons.
A former Republican, Cooke said he sees more opportunity as an independent candidate.
“I had problems with both parties because in my experience, they worked together and they set themselves up to benefit themselves and the party, not to benefit the voter,” he said. “My view is if ever there was a time to show that people can actually have individuals that are not beholden to a party, this is the time to do it.”
THE ISSUES
Costs of living
Mast
Mast advocates “reducing government interference in everyday life and slashing government-imposed costs.” He voted in favor of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, which increased the standard deduction and doubled the child tax credit while eliminating the requirement in the Affordable Care Act for people to have at least minimum qualifying health insurance.
Mast also voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. On a campaign postcard mailer, Mast references this bill as an example of how he is “cutting costs for all families by passing one of the largest tax cuts of all time.”
Mast also supports a balanced budget amendment.
Martin
Martin said he would work to bring property insurance down. He supports addressing the issue federally by providing a backstop for the Florida-based Citizens Property Insurance.
Martin supports legislation to stop investors from competing against individual homebuyers. He said middle-market investors are buying investment properties or flipping homes, which makes home-buying harder. “There is housing in Florida, but it is not attainable.”
Martin said President Trump’s tariffs are reckless, and the reality of trade deficits is unclear to many people. “When you unpack the arguments about trade deficits, they don’t make sense. I have a trade deficit with the ice cream shop and my barber, too.”
Cooke
Cooke said ending the war in Iran would help with costs of living. “The moment we stop spending on Iran, you’d be surprised how quick affordability changes because when thousands of your tax dollars are being sent elsewhere and not used to help your life, it does change things.”
Subsidies paid to defense contractors also contribute to the problem, Cooke said. “A lot of these big corporations and defense contractors, they get massive subsidies. There is a few thousand dollars of the average taxpayer’s money that goes to subsidizing large corporations. We don’t need to do that.”
Cooke also supports more efficient approaches to transportation and subsidies for local agriculture.
“Fuel is an issue, and it’s going to be an issue going forward,” Cooke said. “So how do we combat the issue of transportation costs? Well, we probably shouldn’t be transporting food all around the country. Farms should be producing more locally for delivery locally. That’s something that can be done at the federal level by creating subsidies … to focus on better farming locally.”
Health care
Mast
Mast voted to repeal and replace major parts of the Affordable Care Act in 2017 and opposed a 2021 Democratic effort to expand ACA subsidies.
“There’s no doubt the rising cost of healthcare caused by Obamacare has burdened American families and created a massive increase in bureaucracy resulting in less choice. We need healthcare in the United States that increases choice and enables Americans to choose the doctors and plans that fit their specific needs while still protecting individuals with pre-existing conditions and drastically lowering costs,” he said.
Last year he voted for a bill that would lower marketplace premiums by 11%. It is in committee in the Senate.
Martin
Martin supports a government-backed option for health insurance.
“I believe health care is a basic human right. People should have access to quality healthcare. If you like the insurance you have, you should be allowed to keep it, and if it stinks, you should have a public option.”
Martin is advocating a crackdown on pharmacy benefit managers, who operate as middlemen between drug manufacturers, wholesalers, pharmacies and insurance companies. “They upcharge for medications and drive up costs.”
Cooke
Cooke said ACA should not be repealed without a plan to replace it.
“Whether you like Obamacare and the ACA system or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s been operational for some time now, and if you don’t have a better plan to replace it, you can’t just strip something and create a vacuum. It creates turmoil and bigger problems.”
Other countries have a better approach to health care, Cooke said. “We don’t need to go completely public health care. There are ways to keep the privatization and better control things so that insurers don’t have the upper hand.”
Clean water
Mast
“There is no greater crisis facing our state than that of polluted waterways, eroding ecology and the destruction of public lands like the Everglades,” Mast said.
Mast introduced legislation that called for federal research into the causes and effects of harmful algal blooms and a plan to reduce them across the Everglades. It became law in 2022.
He introduced three water bills in 2025. The first mandates that the Army Corps consider the impacts its operations and initiatives have on public health. Another bill would prohibit discharges from Lake Okeechobee at the Port Mayaca and St. Lucie Locks and Dams when the water exceeds certain levels of toxicity. The third bill would require the Army Corps to notify the public if water contaminated with cyanobacteria, which can manufacture dangerous toxins, is released. The three bills remain in House committees.
Martin
Martin said that Mast’s record on Florida’s water issues is inconsistent and that he has been ineffective in addressing the problem. “You shouldn’t have to wonder how your representative is going to come down on environmental issues. I care about this issue viscerally, not because someone threw a policy book at me.”
Martin supports restoring the natural water flow from Lake Okeechobee and cleaning up the lake. He backs maintaining bedrock environmental laws and would work to negotiate with sugar farmers to purchase more land in the Everglades Agricultural Area.
“I also think there is a strong case to be made for making the St. Lucie Estuary into a national park.” National Park status would offer more environmental protection.
Cooke
Cooke said he believes that restoring the flow of Lake Okeechobee is only one of the factors contributing to Florida’s water issues.
“Lake Okeechobee does need to be cleaned up. We do need the flow to go south. It does need to go into the Everglades,” Cooke said.
“So you get past that, and you get to the catastrophe situation, which is Lake Okeechobee overflows from a hurricane, a storm, it floods the area, and property insurance goes up.”
Cooke supports a plan to work with other states with similar issues to create a federal backstop fund. “Louisiana has waterway issues and so does Texas and California,” Cooke said. “You have to create a federal backstop fund that brings the insurance companies in to compete more for business. This is not a freebie for the insurance companies. This is a catastrophic backup because the insurance companies view all of us as too high risk.”
Cooke said Mast doesn’t think big enough. “He just throws a bill out there saying, ‘Hey, let’s get funds for Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie and the Indian River.’ You don’t get people to come on board at a federal level unless you’re drawing in the other states and the other communities because then they say, ‘Yes, we have that same problem.’”
Education and jobs
Mast
“To create an economic environment that allows for job growth, we also need to reduce regulations on small businesses,” Mast wrote. “Excessive red tape makes it harder for small business owners — the true backbone of our economy.”
In 2025, Mast voted for a bill that connects employers with skilled graduates. It passed the House and is in committee in the Senate.
Martin
Martin supports tax incentives for employers who offer health insurance and other benefits to their employees. He also would work with local officials to expand industries such as aerospace and marine. “We have some of the best boatbuilders in the world here.”
Cooke
Cooke is a supporter of trade schools and vocational programs in schools. “I believe that not every student wants to or needs to go to a traditional college. If you don’t offer these things at high school level and then trade school level, sometimes people don’t see what they really are capable of and what they want to do.”
Supporting small businesses and leveling the playing field for them is crucial to job growth, Cooke said. “The small business world is actually the biggest employer in our country. It is not large corporations. Large corporations get the greatest benefit in making deals and setting up contracts, even at the government level.”
Immigration
Mast
Mast supports the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“After years of the Biden administration dismantling our border security, President Trump has made his message clear to all illegal immigrants: Leave now on your own, and you may get the chance to return, but force law enforcement to remove you and you will never be allowed to come back,” he said in March 2025 on his website “The days of our border being overrun by criminal illegal aliens have come to an end.”
Martin
Martin favors creating an orderly and transparent asylum process with set time frames. He supports hiring more judges to handle more cases. “Immigration has unfortunately gotten politicized. We need to reframe how we think about immigration.”
Martin said he is the only candidate who has been on the front lines of immigration enforcement and has experienced both sides of the issue. “I have seen what people go through to come here. We are a nation of laws, but we can treat people humanely. We now have deportation methods where cruelty is the point.”
Cooke
Cooke does not support the Trump administration’s immigration policy but said the country needs firm immigration policies. “Here’s the simple fact. If we better controlled our borders, if we better funded the Coast Guard and the actual border patrol, and we had the judges in place to do appropriate immigration, we wouldn’t have this lunacy now where people who are actually doing the right thing and going to the court meetings get arrested. That doesn’t help anyone. That’s just a flawed system.”
Cooke supports a path to citizenship for people brought to the country when they were children. “These are people that haven’t known another country and from what I’ve seen, the majority of them are upstanding citizens. There’s got to be a way to work them into the system because they are part of our system,” he said.
Overseas conflicts
Mast
Mast says he is a strong supporter of the state of Israel and criticizes Democratic administrations’ approaches to the Middle East.
“We cannot let Israel face its enemies alone,” he said. “While the Obama administration devalued America’s standing in the Middle East and held our Israeli friends at arm’s length, I worked to strengthen the relationship between our two countries, as both a private citizen and as a soldier, because the national security of the United States is directly tied to the strength of Israel.”
As for current conflicts, he said, “I believe that America’s endless wars must be brought to an end. Congress has a responsibility to take back the constitutional authority to declare war and define what our specific objectives are overseas. We should not be writing a blank check of American taxpayer dollars and sending it overseas.”
Martin
Martin’s viewpoint on many of the world’s current conflicts is shaped by his military background. “I have a strong view that whenever service members are put in harm’s way, there should be a clear strategy and end game.” He said he does not support war, but the president doesn’t have any good options in Iran right now.
Martin said he favors continued support for Ukraine. “I was in the White House when Russia invaded Ukraine, so I had a front-row seat. I believe supporting Ukraine is in our national interests. The way of the world cannot be taking borders by force.”
He also said the United States needs to look at the subsidies it gives to Israel. “I think the conversation about Israel now is to agree that they probably don’t need subsidies. Then it becomes, ‘Should we sell arms to them as long as we are keeping with U.S. laws?’”
Cooke
Cooke supports ending the war in Iran. “We have created this problem 100%. At some point, we have to accept that there is no winning here for us,” Cooke said. “I’m not going to keep sending $7.5 billion a month to the middle of nowhere to waste on ammunition and soldiers who desperately would prefer to be home. Winding it down is not going to be easy and there’s no happy outcome here, but we messed up and it’s time to accept that and start moving things back.”
Cooke said humanitarian aid programs are a valuable asset for U.S security. “From my line of work, there are a lot of things that don’t have an actual dollar amount to them, but they create value somewhere else. USAID is a perfect example,” he said. “Locals, let’s just say middle of Africa, they get injured and the doctors helped them. Then they share that 20 miles that way, there’s a warlord moving in. That is invaluable information. I can’t put a dollar amount on that, but I can tell you it’s worth a lot of money. That’s not information we would have had.”
Trust and transparency in politics
Mast
“At the end of the day, we need to restore power to the people, reduce government interference in people’s lives and increase transparency,” Mast said.
Martin
Martin said he is committed to a strong anti-corruption platform, and his campaign does not take PAC money. “We need to get big money out of politics.”
He supports banning members of Congress from trading stocks and making bets on insider information.
Martin plans to hold quarterly town halls and roundtables with local officials and make his schedule public. “Only one member of Congress — Mark Kelly — keeps a public schedule. So, let’s make it two.”
Cooke
Cooke said people can look at his record as mayor of Juno Beach to see his history of transparency. “I don’t have a problem being open and outward with everything I do and what I plan for. Transparency exists by bringing other people in to work with you because that means one more set of eyes and one more group that gets to pass things on.”
Cooke’s campaign does not accept corporate or PAC money. “I will do everything in my power to end Citizens United (a 2010 Supreme Court case that allowed for unrestricted campaign spending and gave rise to super PACs),” Cooke said. ”I don’t believe that allowing all these groups to create corporate entities that can control a vote was ever appropriate. It basically created a situation where money could be used to take away the average person’s vote.”
How to unseat a popular incumbent
People are ready for change, Martin said, and his background gives him an edge against Mast.
“The keystone to winning this race is going to be winning independent voters. National security professionals, particularly those with military backgrounds, are able to win independent voters at rates up to six points higher than generic Democrats.”
His background is a big differentiator in this race, he said. “My military experience combined with my experience actually making policy at the National Security Council and understanding how policy moves within Washington is critical.”
He said he is the best candidate to affect change quickly. “If Democrats do take back the House and particularly if we flip this seat, it is going to be because a lot of independents and Republicans went out on a limb and said, ‘I trust you.’ We need to deliver real results quickly.’”
Cooke said his track record in Juno Beach shows he is willing to stand up for what he thinks is right. “I was invited to a party after the town of Juno Beach wised up and did a clean sweep of the council members who voted for all these developments. I walked in holding my 3-year-old and everybody started clapping for me. They said: ‘You were right all along, and we appreciated everything you stood for.’”
He said his background in finance gives him better insight into the long-term effect of policy decisions.
“I can see very clearly where we’re going with oil and diesel. We’re getting a slight pullback in the oil at this moment, but that’s because a lot of people don’t understand how the markets work and the refineries work,” Cooke said. “What’s going to happen on the backside of that is the refineries can’t fire back up and oil shoots through the roof and next thing you know we’re at 200 bucks a barrel. That’s coming.”
