FLORIDA’S THE VILLAGES: In important races for governor and the U.S. Senate, Republicans are feeling more and more confident as they take advantage of controversial cultural issues and demographic shifts. This has Democrats worried that Florida, long the nation’s top swing state, may lose that status this fall and beyond.
The worry was evident this week at The Villages, a retirement community just north of the Interstate 4 corridor, during a golf cart parade of Democrats featuring Senate candidate Val Demings. Some Democrats claim that they now feel more alone in what was once a politically diverse area of the state where elections were frequently determined.
77-year-old Sue Sullivan bemoaned the state’s rightward movement and stated, “I am afraid.” “Democrats are scarce in this area.”
Demings, a congressman and former chief of police for Orlando who is running against Sen. Marco Rubio, said in an interview that her party’s messaging for the midterm elections isn’t having the desired effect.
We must do a better job of communicating our stories and establishing who is genuinely on the side of those who must report for work each day, she said.
The discontent is the result of nearly ten years of Republican gains in Florida, where candidates have honed social and economic ideas that are radically conservative to create a kind of coalition that includes rural voters and Latinos, notably Cuban Americans. The victory of Donald Trump here in 2016 marked a turning point after the state twice favored Barack Obama. Trump also won Florida by more than 3 percentage points, a surprising victory in a state where elections were sometimes determined by less than a percentage point, even though he lost the White House in 2020.
To support Democrats, President Joe Biden will travel to the state on November 1, precisely one week before election day. Demings claimed to have spoken with the president twice about running campaigns together, but she was unable to confirm any appearances. On the day of the event, Biden will attend a private fundraiser with Charlie Crist, the Democratic candidate for governor, but he is unsure if they will appear together in public.
In an interview, Crist said: “If we could squeeze in a little public airtime, that’d be a fantastic thing I would welcome.”
The GOP is yet confident that it can keep winning, even in longtime Democratic strongholds. Some Republicans believe they can win Miami-Dade County, a once-impossible scenario that would make it nearly impossible for the Democrats to win statewide elections, including the presidency.
And in Lee County, southwest Florida, a significant Republican stronghold, not even a catastrophic hurricane seems to have slowed the GOP’s progress. Republicans and Democrats actually concur in private that Hurricane Ian, which claimed more than 100 lives, may have aided Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in gaining support. He’ll take part in a debate against Crist on Monday, and he’ll probably emphasize his management of the state during a dire crisis.
