An energized Florida GOP looks to topple two Tallahassee titans, Al Lawson and Loranne Ausley

A Panhandle red wave could sweep out of office two blue Tallahassee titans Tuesday.

Democratic Congressman Al Lawson and Florida state Sen. Loranne Ausley find the political currents, money and odds favor their opponents in races that could decide which party controls the U.S. House and whether the Republicans become a supermajority in the Florida Senate – an achievement that would procedurally neuter the Democratic opposition.

Senate District 3 slugfest:

• Ausley vs. Simon: Amid a GOP ad barrage, Florida Senate Democrats bank on 'personal' touch

• Ausley, Simon debate hot-button issues — immigration, abortion rights, party politics

• Election denialism and 'racist implications': Ausley and Simon on the attack over attack ads

• Ausley vs. Simon: Democrats at 5 to 1 cash disadvantage; GOP Senate supermajority on the line

• Florida Senate, District 3: A voter's guide to the 2022 general election

Ausley is a sixth-generation Tallahassean deeply rooted in Tallahassee politics. A great-great-grandfather served in the Florida House. A great-grandfather served on the county commission and as Mayor. Grandfather Charles Ausley was a state senator and her father, Dubose, lost a 1972 race for the Senate seat Ausley now holds.

Lawson has represented North Florida in Washington and the Florida Legislature for 34 years – a career that spans the Pork Chop Gang era of Democrats' dominance of Florida politics and the rise to prominence of the Florida Republican Party.

Earlier this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis mandated the Legislature approve a Congressional redistricting map that eliminated Lawson’s minority-access seat and pitted him in a race for what is considered a safe Republican seat against Congressman Neal Dunn, R-Panama City.

Painting the town red: How Ron DeSantis is trying to turn Tallahassee Republican

The once-every-decade of redrawing legislative maps also shifted Ausley’s Senate District 3 to the east and reduced in half the Democratic advantage to three points.

Republicans have long eyed flipping the district, where Democratic heavy Leon and Gadsden counties stifle their efforts to capture the seat. Gadsden is the state’s only Black-majority county.

Two years ago, the GOP spent an estimated $5 million in backing a losing bid by Marva Harris Preston, a retired African American law enforcement officer.

Ausley won by 17,000 votes.

This year the GOP could spend even more to elect an African American standout Seminole, a move that challenges Ausley at her base, football centric Tallahassee.

Leon County Republicans think they are on the brink of a historic takeover

DeSantis' recruitment of former Florida State University football player Corey Simon is part of an effort to paint much of the Panhandle red – only Lawson, Ausley, and Rep. Allison Tant, D-Tallahassee, and possibly Gallop Franklin in House District 8 stand in his way.

Tant got a pass this year when the Republican candidate was ruled ineligible due to a last-minute oversight.

Back story: Change in summer plans as Rep. Allison Tant officially re-elected without opposition

“It’s going to be very tight. We think it's going to be within a few hundred votes,” said Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Miami, about the Ausley – Simon race.

Pizzo, along with Sen. Lauren Book, D-Fort Lauderdale, joined Ausley for door-to-door canvassing in Tallahassee and a 10-day barnstorming tour of Senate District 3.

Ausley's call to South Florida for reinforcements delighted local Republicans.

“We feel we are on the verge of some significant victories,” said Evan Power, chair of the Leon County Republican Executive Committee.

It would be a historical victory if the GOP were to defeat Ausley and Lawson on the same day.

Tallahassee has not been simultaneously represented by Republicans in both the U.S. House and the Florida Senate since Reconstruction and the late 1800s.

“And I hope when our leaders deliver for this area the constituents will think, why have they insisted on the same failed leadership for generations,” added Power.

Al Lawson takes it personally

The Congressional redistricting map is under court challenge but in play for this election.

It features Dunn and Lawson in the only Florida Congressional race that pits two incumbents against each other.

Lawson believes DeSantis targeted him to reduce minority representation and hand control of the U.S House to the Republican Party in advance of a DeSantis presidential run.

“He has a problem with people of color,” said Lawson at a get out the vote rally held in the gym of his alma mater, the now closed Havana Northside High School.

Focus on House District 2 race:

• U.S. Rep. Al Lawson: ‘I will always put the people of North Florida ahead of politics’

• A U.S. House race of polar opposites: Lawson, Dunn debate if poverty or China is the problem

• State of the race: Poll by Al Lawson supporters show uphill re-election battle with Neal Dunn

• U.S. House, Florida District 2: A voter's guide to the 2022 general election

“And I don’t understand that. He’s a minority himself,” said Lawson, referencing DeSantis’ Italian American heritage.

While DeSantis did not respond for comment to this article, Lawson told the nearly 200 gathered on a Friday night his political career has been dedicated to expanding rights and denounced DeSantis' use of tax dollars to fly migrants from Texas to Massachusetts.

“Let me tell you, Florida and this country is for everyone,” said Lawson, who then told a story about a thirsty 16-year-old basketball player at a segregated water fountain.

Lawson was a star basketball player for Northside, leading the team to the state finals.

But there was a day in 1964, when after practice he and other players had stopped for water at a public fountain along U.S. Highway 27, about a quarter mile from their high school.

A man told them they couldn’t drink from the fountain – after all, there was a sign that said, “Whites only.”

Lawson paid the man no attention.

He took a drink, and a gunshot rang out, scattering the boys.

Lawson fled into downtown Havana to find the town’s only police officer.

The audience laughed when Lawson remembered the officer as Gooseneck because he didn't recall his given name.

He does remember Gooseneck dismissed Lawson’s complaint and told him to go home and forget about it.

“I could never forget something like that,” said Lawson. “I said that ain’t right. Someday I’m going to do something about it.”

Voting rights

The next year Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, a federal guarantee of access to the ballot box, and Lawson accepted a basketball scholarship to Florida A&M University.

Seventeen years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, an NBA career and coaching at Florida State University, Lawson said he tracked down the only Black registered voter in Apalachicola to ask him for his vote in a Florida House race.

In 1982, Lawson won a Florida House race to become the first African American post-Reconstruction elected to a Panhandle legislative seat.

Lawson was also instrumental in forming a coalition with Cuban Republicans  during the 1990 redistricting to create congressional minority access districts for African Americans and Hispanics - six in all.

The 1992 election of Congresswoman Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, marked the first election to Congress of a Black Floridians since the 1890s.

Lawson challenged Brown in 2016 after she became ensnared in a financial scandal and won the seat that DeSantis erased in 2022.

That night in his old high school gym, Lawson called out by name old friends in the audience and ask them to remember who they are, "the championships we won ... and promise to go out and vote."

Bus Tour meets a rolling Red Tide

“The Republican legislative redistricting was artfully drawn to make it very difficult for either Al Lawson or Loranne Ausley to win,” said Jon Ausman, the retired chair of the Leon Democratic Executive Chair.

Ausman was part of Lawson’s 1982 campaign effort and managed former Congressman Pete Peterson's 1990 defeat of incumbent Congressman Bill Grant, R-Madison.

Ausman and Peterson had a functioning Democratic Party outside of Tallahassee to help them. Ausley and Lawson don't.

Neglect by the national and state parties have left no infrastructure to help campaigns in the countryside surrounding Tallahassee, Ausman maintains.

Column: Good, bad news for incumbents: Three Tallahassee general election predictions | Jon Ausman

Under DeSantis leadership, the GOP erased the Democrats' advantage in voter registration and now outnumber Democrats by more than 290,000 voters statewide.

Thirty years ago, Democrats led in voter registration in all of the counties that are included in CD 2 and SD 3. This election, outside of Leon and Gadsden counties Republicans lead in 13 of 16 counties and in handful have increased registration by 9% since 2018.

“Ausley needs to go after non-primary voting voters to motivate them to turn out and to educate them as to why they should vote for her,” said Ausman.

The message that Ausley and a corps of volunteers are taking to voters in a 35-stop ten-day bus tour supplemented by door-to-door canvassing and phone calls, is basically the same one she ran on in her first campaign in 2000.

That year, Ausley told voters advocating for state workers was job number one when she and former Leon County Commissioner Manny Joanos competed to succeed Rep. Marjorie Turnbull, D-Tallahassee.

Ausley would spend her first six years in the Legislature battling former Gov. Jeb Bush’s plans to reduce the state workforce. She worked to boost funding for early childhood education and fought Bush’s effort to repeal what he called “an insidious” intangible tax.

Term-limited in 2008, Ausley challenged former Senate President Jeff Atwater to be Chief Financial Officer in 2010.

In that campaign, she continued to rail against the GOP support for corporate tax loopholes and cuts to the state budget at the expense of social services.

Atwater outspent Ausley 3 to 1 in a race he easily won.

Ausley spent six years in private practice as an attorney and child advocate before returning to the public arena in 2016 with a successful run for the House District 9 seat.

The pitch to voters remained consistent with her earlier campaigns. Ausley promoted child welfare programs, especially early childhood education, protection for springs, and benefits for state workers.

Tallahassee is Ausley's base.

She picked up more than 55% of the vote in seven House races for a district wholly contained in Leon County. Her lowest vote total in eight general elections was the 53% she received in the 2020 Senate campaign, which included 12 counties in addition to Leon.

But that was before DeSantis took up map making and energized North Florida Republicans.

Clarification: This story has been edited to reflect Lawson attended Havana Northside High School, not Northside Havana, and that Gadsden County is the only Black-majority county.  Also, it was Lawson who said he tracked down the only Black registered voter in Aplachicola. James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on him Twitter: @CallTallahassee

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Republicans may topple Tallahassee titans Al Lawson and Loranne Ausley