SARASOTA, Fla. (SNN TV) — Over the past three months, we’ve chronicled on SNN how the Florida Democratic Party lost their power in the 1990s and how Republicans have expanded their power since.
It led to the 2022 midterm elections, where Republicans won statewide by nearly 20 points and shut Democrats out of all statewide offices.
For the final part of our series, we’ll look at what the Democratic Party is doing to rebuild, their recent smaller successes, and what the state looks like politically in the near future.
THE CASE OF FLORIDA BEING A RED STATE
Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist with Florida roots, now tries to help Democrats win against what he considers is a dangerous ideology from former president Donald Trump’s and other Republicans. He had a message for Longboat Key Democrats when he visited the Suncoast last spring.
“To dig in a little bit on Florida, you have a lot of work to do,” Wilson said. “Democrats have a lot of work to do because Republicans have super majorities in the state legislature, all statewide offices, and elected officeholders.”
Has Florida ceased to be a swing state for the time being?
“Are we a purple state anymore? No way,” said Sarasota County Republican Chair Jack Brill. “We are truly a red state. I can only see that for the next foreseeable future.”
Brill has plenty of reasons to think so considering the successes of Florida’s Republican Party. People moving to the state now are, on average, much more Republican that decades ago.
“Migration is coming from a wider base and other countries,” Brill said. “I think that is a sign of the pent-up frustration by a lot of those voters because of those taxes, the bureaucracy, all the regulation they have in those states, and they felt they didn’t have a voice. Well, here in Florida, they have a voice. Everybody’s got a voice.”
Republicans are now competing for voters who Florida Democrats have historically been strong with.
“The other thing that dramatically changed is 11% of Sarasota’s population is Latino. More people in that community are voting Republican candidates,” Brill said.
THE CASE THAT FLORIDA REMAINS A SWING STATE
However, Florida’s Democratic Chairwoman Nikki Fried disagrees that Florida has turned red.
“All of our elections including Jeb were smidgens of percentage points. Historically, people always said we were a swing state, which we are a swing state,” she told SNN.
She pointed to statewide votes that Democrats supported which won by 60%+ of the vote: legalizing medical marijuana in 2016, restoring the voting rights of felons who served their time in 2018, and raising the minimum wage to $15 in 2020.
She thinks two things contributed to the 2022 midterm swee, the first being alleged Republican overreach.
“You had a Republican Party who gerrymandered districts. That has happened since Jeb,” Fried said, which is a point UNF professor and pollster Dr. Michael Binder agreed with.”
“And they’ve changed some of the rules of how to vote, when to vote,” Fried added, referring to changes in voting laws approved by Governor Ron DeSantis.
REGARDLESS OF COLOR, DEMOCRATIC PARTY STRUCTURE CITED AS CONTRIBUTING FACTOR TO REPUBLICAN SUCCESSES
The second reason Fried discussed, a reason echoed by multiple interviews for this series, is a failure in the Democratic Party’s efforts to register voters since the COVID pandemic.
Republican voters now outnumber Democratic voters for the first time in history.
“That advantage was critical,” said Sarasota Herald-Tribune political editor Zac Anderosn. “You can only get people to vote who are registered, so there is a finite pool of voters. And if Republicans have more registered voters than Democrats, then they have a bigger pool of voters to draw from for their turnout.”
“If you wake up in the morning and go, ‘What should we be doing today?’ and the answer is not registering voters,” Wilson told Longboat Key Democrats, “then I want to see that you’ve got like a 15 point pad in your voter registration in the district because you don’t.”
In an earlier episode, Wilson talked about Republican strategist Tom Slade’s efforts in the 90s. He ran Republicans all the way down to mosquito control to gradually gain power in Florida.
Wilson thinks Democrats need to stop thinking only about the big races and follow that strategy.
“A lot of times, the Democrats, god bless y’all, you think, ‘We’re going to have this guy at the top. It’s going to be like Obama again,” Wilson said. “‘We’re going to have this magical thing at the top that fixes all our problems.’ The way to fix your problems is to register voters and elect people locally first.”
“You cannot hope to take back state House and state Senate in this state until you have the nuts-and-bolts operational stuff going,” Wilson said to applause from the audience.
“Somewhat in 2018, we filled all our seats in campaigns down ballot, but in 2022, we left open a substantial amount of seats both in the House and Senate and didn’t have contested races, which hurts overall voter turnout,” Fried said. “Because you need that energy even if you’re in red areas. Having down-ballot candidates talking about the Democratic message.”
WHAT FLORIDA DEMOCRATS ARE DOING TO BE COMPETITIVE AGAIN
Fried says running more Democrats in local races is one of the steps to turn things around in Florida. And by running candidates in local races, it would help them in one crucial way.
“Democrats need to start stacking some wins,” said Dr. Michael Binder, a professor and Director of the Public Opinion Research Laboratory at the University of North Florida.
“Win some local races, build on that. See if they can get a bench where they can have some people who are credible candidates who have experience can appeal at a statewide level,” Anderson said.
And stacking wins is what Fried says she’s working on.
“We’re making progress to be competitive in 2023, 2024, and future cycles. It’s going to take time,” Fried explained. “All eyes are on [the 2023 Jacksonville mayoral race]. I’ve had significant conversations with people from outside the state. I know that if we are able to pull out a win in Duval [County], it does change the conversation going into 2024.”
And the Democrats did flip the Jacksonville mayoral seat from Republican hands this year. They also won both Venice City Council seats that were up for grabs, which even Brill told SNN in our interview that the Republicans were focused on this year.
“Again, that’s not turning a state blue at the presidential level by any stretch, but you really got to go back to basics when there’s nothing in the tanks,” Binder said.
So how can the Democrats improve turnout? Dr. Binder says they have to strengthen the voters who have historically voted for them and grow out their base.
“They need to consolidate [the] non-white community. The problem is that’s hard particularly with Republicans going for culture war stuff,” Binder said.
Black churches are vital part of the Democratic base but some of them find themselves in some of the culture issues siding with Republicans.
Then there’s the Hispanic community in Florida, which is varied and different, and it’s hard to broad brush and swoop up into one side of the aisle.
“Particularly with a lot of the immigrants where they have histories of socialism that are different than what maybe a Sweden socialism looks like,” Binder said. “They think socialism, [and] they think dictator. You say socialism as a Republican, [they] say, ‘I don’t want that.”
And then there’s the white vote.
“There’s only so many college-educated white folks that are maybe liberal-leaning. There’s not enough of them. You have to marry those groups in one tent,” Binder said.
So if Democrats are able to compete again, it won’t be overnight. Even Fried admits this. She thinks there were fundamental problems with the state Democratic Party’s organization, and Dr. Binder agrees.
“The organization for the state party is nonexistent, the resources aren’t there, and because of that, they’re going to underperform in a situation where they are disadvantaged,” Binder said. “You can underperform and still win if you’re advantaged. If you’re disadvantaged and you underperform, you end up with what we had in fall of 2022 for the Democrats.”
As far as state Republicans go, Anderson thinks there are possible pitfalls for them. He doesn’t think most Floridians support the six-week abortion ban DeSantis signed into law this year, which is borne out by the 60% support for legalizing abortion via the statewide amendment supporters are trying to get on the ballot in 2024.
“I think the danger of having so much power is that they go so far in one direction that it alienates voters,” Anderson said.
Unless Republicans do alienate voters, or fracture, or unless the Democratic Party successfully rebuilds, Republicans are in firm control of the Sunshine State, at least until 2024.
“We may not be Alabama in terms of our Republican Party-ness, but we sure as heck aren’t a battleground state,” Binder said. “Am I saying a Democrat can’t win in Florida ever again? No, I’m not saying that, but we’re Ohio where it’s going to take a unicorn Democrat to win as opposed to a purple state where a ‘good’ Democrat can win.”
IN CONCLUSION
We’re not making predictions for future elections, but at SNN, we feel it’s much easier to understand the current political climate if you understand the past, because “past is prologue.”
We hope you enjoyed the journey. We thank everyone we interviewed for their time: Dr. Michael Binder, Zac Anderson, Nikki Fried, Rick Wilson, Jack Brill, and Ed Chiles.
And if you missed any episodes, you can watch all parts on this website. Hover over ‘News’ at the top of the page and click ‘Politics.’