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Florida elections gave Republicans big wins as Democrats scramble : NPR


Lee County voters line up to cast their ballots at the Wa-Ke Hatchee Recreation Center in Fort Myers, Fla., on Election Day, November 8, 2022.

Rebecca Blackwell/AP


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Lee County voters line up to cast their ballots at the Wa-Ke Hatchee Recreation Center in Fort Myers, Fla., on Election Day, November 8, 2022.

Rebecca Blackwell/AP

Florida Republicans have won the up-and-down elections by a staggering margin this year. Some political experts say the election could mark the end of Florida’s long run as the nation’s biggest swing state, but Democrats and third-party groups say they don’t believe Florida is officially a Republican stronghold.

They say there is a more complicated explanation for what happened in Florida during the midterm elections.

Dwight Bullard, a former state lawmaker and senior political adviser to the social justice advocacy group Florida Rising, said this year’s election will always be a tough one for Democrats. . He said that he and other groups who primarily work with Black and Latino voters in Florida – key voting blocs for the Democratic Party – are dealing with constituencies that are not active. well-funded and well-organized opposition forces and opposition.

“You know, a lot of political wind has been formed,” Bullard said. “If we’re going to use the analogy of an athletics meetup, people were already running a few meters ahead by the time the large-scale Democratic organization started. So that would be a really big one. game of catch.”

And they haven’t caught up, he said.

Anthony Verdugo, founder and chief executive officer of Christian Family Coalition Florida, says conservative advocacy efforts like his have worked hard over the years. He said they really caught on a lot of momentum over the past year.

“The governor’s office and the Republican Party have focused on a very active voter registration campaign,” he said. “Florida has always been — since its inception — a registered Democratic majority state. Last December, we crossed the threshold.”

Verdugo said his team registered about 1,300 conservative voters in just a three-week period last fall. He also credits Republican Governor Ron DeSantis – who he says has done a great job of rallying the party’s base by addressing a variety of cultural issues. The result, Verdugo said, is that Republicans have a more consistent and clear message to their voters than Democrats.

“I think that combined with everything the Republicans did right that turned it off course and made all the difference in the world,” he explained.

Florida Republican incumbent Governor Ron DeSantis holds his son Mason as he celebrates his re-election victory, at an election night party in Tampa, Fla., November 8, 2022.

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Florida Republican incumbent Governor Ron DeSantis holds his son Mason as he celebrates his re-election victory, at an election night party in Tampa, Fla., November 8, 2022.

Rebecca Blackwell/AP

DeSantis was re-elected by nearly 20 percentage points. Up and down the ballot, other Republicans did the same.

Joshua Karp, a Democratic strategist, said he doubts that this leads to a huge political victory led by DeSantis.

“He won about 4.1 million votes four years ago,” Karp said. “This time he won about 4.6 million votes. So he’s definitely added a few hundred thousand people to the size of his coalition. In a state like Florida, that’s a few hundred thousand. percentage points. What really happened was that the Democrats didn’t show up in the polls.”

It’s all about money

Voter turnout statewide was down by more than half a million votes compared to 2018. Karp blamed a lot of the money on Democratic voters in Florida’s lack of motivation.

Tessa Petit, executive director of an immigrant advocacy group called the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said her group’s election division is begging national donors to help them quit. promissory note. But she and other groups fell short of millions of dollars in fundraising.

“Investment has dropped a lot,” Petit said. “The sponsors pulled back because I think they’re something like that – I don’t know maybe they’ve completely lost faith in the party.”

Four years ago, Petit said, money was flowing into Florida for groups like the Florida Immigrant Coalition. That year, DeSantis won the governor’s race with just 0.04% of the vote.

Petit said this lack of funding is why Miami Dade County in particular has seen turnout drop 10 percentage points this year compared to last midterm elections. Because of diversity in the state, she said, it takes a lot of money to get votes in communities of color. Petit said this is why national donors should not pick and choose the years to invest here if they want to see results.

“Florida is not a state where you can date,” she said. “You have to have a relationship that you know – you have to have a relationship, a committed relationship with Florida.”

Voting rights laws may have had an impact

In reviewing the results of the election, voting rights groups and Florida Democrats say there is a toxic environment around voting this year created by the Republican Party.

Over the past two years, Karp said, DeSantis has signed two ballot bills, ranging from making it harder for third-party groups to register to vote, to “making it harder to collect absentee ballots, and send them out to people who may have difficulty accessing the polling place.”

However, Karp said he was most worried about Desantis’ announcement earlier this year that his new electoral crime unit had arrested 20 people who voted in 2020. In interviews, individuals that said they thought they were allowed to vote because the state gave them a voter. Registration card.

This has had a “chilling effect” on some voters, Bullard said, who were at times in trouble with the law.

“What we heard at the scene was that people with the right to vote felt like, ‘if I do that, I could really get arrested again’.

Still, Bullard and other Democratic and left-wing groups say none of this stops them from continuing their work in Florida. They say they hope the 2024 election will show Democratic donors that Florida is still a state worth investing in.

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