Changing the Narrative of the Florida Democratic Party
Lately, a world of pundits thinks Florida has become a permanently realigned “red state.” They say the Florida GOP resembles “Alabama football” in its dominance against a poorly organized Florida Democratic opposition. A Washington Post columnist noted the Florida GOP’s growing support from Latino voters and fundraising prowess and called “recruiting young, quality candidates for local and state positions” a strength of the Florida GOP.
So, apparently I’m the contrarian who thinks the Republican Party of Florida has a whole bunch of structural advantages in this state and that they are *not* in the faintest way the strategic and organizational geniuses that all these pundits say they are.
“Young, quality candidates.”
Um, have you actually seen their MAGA candidates? In Manatee County, our local GOP organization has deeply flawed and unprofessional candidates with weak resumes. They only succeed because they have a local one-party monopoly with a voter base that is a partisan lock for them. Scandals repeatedly dog them, but Republican voters keep returning them to office.
And the local GOP organization? It’s led by a far-right extremist and party meetings are dominated by a much older demographic. They have gone for entire stretches of *years* at a time using social media poorly or not at all.
Their voter turnout operation? They don’t need to do much because most of their voters “automatically” turn out. The GOP’s older voting base gives them an advantage. Richer and older voters are more experienced, more settled, and more likely to have their registration up to date. They don’t need as many nudges or as much help; they turn out on their own. From what I can tell, local GOP organizations don’t do more voter canvassing than the Democrats do.
Party organization and GOTV probably only buys you a couple percentage points at most in elections anyway. In November 2022, Florida GOP candidates at the top of the ticket won by a much larger share than any GOTV operation could deliver. The headwinds facing Democrats in Florida in this cycle were bigger than what even a top-organized state and local party apparatus could have handled.
The Florida GOP has all kinds of unearned benefits built in the system. Here’s one small example: GOP candidate names are listed first for every election on the ballot, which is probably an advantage of a percentage point or two every cycle we have a Republican governor in office, which determines the placement of names. There are some voters who will just choose the first name on the ballot each time.
Governor Ron DeSantis enacted new voter suppression measures with the help of the state legislature and tried to scare people away from voting with his election police initiative.
For Congressional races, DeSantis badly gerrymandered the map to give the GOP an advantage.
If there’s a well-oiled GOP machine, it’s not the state party organization, to which so many give credit, it’s the fact that they already control so many elected offices and wield institutional and administrative power unfairly and unconstitutionally to their advantage.
Have Democrats not done enough? Of course they should do more. Of course they need to be smarter about what they are doing. Of course new thinking and approaches and sources of money are needed. If you are reading this and think you have something to offer, please get involved!
One of the reasons I find narratives about the fecklessness of the Florida Democratic Party so frustrating, even when they do hit the mark in important ways, is that they direct our attention in the wrong places and make people feel that the situation is hopeless when it’s not. This is still a state with close to a 50/50 partisan split in the electorate, which is why the Florida GOP plays hardball in the first place.
MAGA’s day will run out, and Florida Democrats need to hustle to make the most of that opportunity when it arrives. So much of political success lies in good timing and we need to be prepared for when our window opens. We have better ideas, better candidates, and, yes, better local party organizations in many cases than the other side. Florida Democrats need to start believing in themselves and the strengths they have, personally and in the community.