Florida GOP surges toward Election Day as Democrats struggle

ORLANDO, Fla. — It’s been a remarkable midterm election in Florida, with months of campaigning and millions of dollars of ad spending soon coming to an end as voters go to the polls Tuesday to determine the future of the state.

But as that final day draws near, the two parties appear to be headed in opposite directions.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is looking to win reelection and cement his status as a national figure and possible presidential contender, while Democrat Charlie Crist seeks to shock the country by taking DeSantis down.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Demings of Orlando has tried to stay within striking distance of GOP U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, even raising more money than him, in a race that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Although Democrats have said this is the most critical midterm election for the nation’s future, there has been noticeably less enthusiasm among the party faithful than in previous years.

That’s especially so compared to the campaign of former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in 2018, whose support from progressives, young people and minorities put him within half a percentage point of the Governor’s Mansion.

Republican voters, by contrast, appear energized by the man who barely beat Gillum four years ago, as DeSantis leads his “Free State of Florida” re-election campaign.

Political scientists and pundits alike are predicting a red wave in Florida that would kill any lingering notions that the third-largest state in America can still swing either way politically.

It’s a scene playing out across the country as Republicans appear poised to regain control of the U.S. House and possibly the Senate.

Many of the GOP’s candidates falsely claim that former President Trump won in 2020. And more Florida candidates, chosen in redrawn districts designed to give Republicans the edge, have been among them.

Democrats’ hopes rest in a big wave of their most dependable voters, African Americans, and their less dependable voters, people under age 25.

Dems lack excitement

DeSantis is leading a campaign juggernaut against a repeat candidate in Crist, a former Republican governor turned Democrat who already lost one gubernatorial election in 2014.

“There’s just a huge enthusiasm gap” between DeSantis and Crist, said Democratic consultant Evan Ross, president and CEO of the Miami-based Public Communicators Group.

And that lack of zeal among Democrats affects the other candidates on the ballot, Ross said, where several Democratic incumbents are in for the fight of their lives as Republicans aggressively invest in candidates to gain a supermajority in the Legislature.

Democrats have also basically conceded the three statewide cabinet seats to the Republicans, Ross said.

“Democrats have failed to do what’s necessary,” Ross said, by not constantly canvassing for more registered voters. Republicans now outnumber Democrats, 5.26 million to 4.96 million, according to the Florida Division of Elections, the first time in Florida history the GOP has gone into an election with any advantage in numbers.

The party has failed to turn out the base and engage voters who normally sit out midterm elections, said Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book of Plantation.

“Where’s the coordinated campaign to text voters?” Book asked. “Where are the phone calls? Where are the phone banks? They don’t exist.”

Daniel Smith, head of the political science department at the University of Florida, said when a party has “no party infrastructure, when you have no money and when you have no message, it’s difficult to overcome national conditions — the economy and inflation.

“[State] elections have become nationalized, and even if many Floridians are not enamored of Ron DeSantis, they don’t see any alternative that’s viable.”

Democrats have been campaigning on abortion and gun control, issues that don’t resonate as much as the economy and inflation that the Republicans have hammered away at, he said.

“Those don’t put food on the table or gas in the tank,” Smith said.

Hard-right Republicans

As Florida appears on its way to being a fully Republican-controlled state, it’s also becoming the spawning ground for extreme right-wing candidates.

Cory Mills, the GOP candidate in District 7 in Seminole and Volusia counties, is favored to join the Florida delegation with U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, as a 2020 election denier in Congress.

Mills, who has told supporters the election was “America versus anti-America,” has called for a halt all immigration and wants to “redefine birthright citizenship.”

“I think some of the extremes we see at the congressional and legislative level are because some of those districts are just safe Republican,” said Aubrey Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida. “So it’s really a matter of which Republican wins the primary.

“And In today’s political climate, to win a Republican primary you have to take pretty strong extreme stances or stances that would have been deemed extreme not too long ago, but now are much more mainstream within the Republican Party,” Jewett added.

Republican Laura Loomer, a self-described “proud Islamophobe” who was scheduled to speak this month before a group that decries “mass immigration of non-whites into white homelands,” also finished much closer than expected to U.S. Rep. Dan Webster, R-Clermont, in the August primary, despite not being from the district. She falsely claimed fraud.

Young voter apathy

At a news conference Tuesday, Orange County elections supervisor Bill Cowles said the early voting site at UCF had the lowest turnout of all 20 early polling sites in the county. By Thursday afternoon, less than 1,000 people had voted there compared with more than 8,000 at the busiest site at the Alafaya library.

“The youth [are] not connected to the importance of this election,” Cowles said. Young voters “have been trained that we vote for president of the United States, and they’ll turn out [every] four years.

Matt Isbell, a Democratic elections analyst who runs the MCIMaps website, said that while Democrats may have put their hopes in strong turnout among voters 18 to 24, that does not appear to be happening.

“Young turnout is incredibly low right now,” Isbell said. “It’s like 5% for people 18 to 24 versus 40% for those above 65.”

Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida, said the huge bump in youth turnout during the last midterm in 2018, in which 37% of the state’s 18- to 29-year-olds voted compared to 22% four years earlier, was probably not going to carry over to this year.

”When you see a decline in turnout, usually it’s not [among] the super voters, the older voters who vote every election,” McDonald said. “It’s going to be younger voters. They’re going to see steeper declines.”

Callynn Johnson, 20, a politically active sophomore at the University of Central Florida, said Wednesday she had seen an increase in early voting on campus over the first half of the week. But there was only so much she and others could do to encourage their fellow students to vote.

“The people that are politically engaged have already voted and are definitely using that space,” Johnson said of the polling location. “But I think people who are less politically involved are less likely to know about it and just weren’t gonna vote in the first place.

“A lot of it is apathy,” she said. “And I can’t fix that.”

Black voting lags so far

Gillum, who is Black, got 86% of the African American vote in 2018, according to exit polls. Democrats have been hoping that Demings will be able to draw similar numbers in her bid to become Florida’s first Black U.S. Senator.

But Isbell said Black turnout has been lagging so far, but there should be an increase over the weekend as churches hold their popular “Souls to the Polls” events. Black churches rent buses to take voters directly to early voting sites immediately following services, a practice that had to be curtailed in 2020 because of the pandemic but is starting up again this year.

Other groups are holding voting events as well, including “The Divine Nine” Black sororities and fraternities at UCF.

“Probably 30 of us all went at once,” said Torris Bethea, 20, a junior. He added that he hadn’t heard too much about others voting on campus, “I just know that I already voted, and I don’t regret my decision.”

GOP’s big campaign bucks

When it comes to campaign dollars, Florida Democrats couldn’t touch the amount raised by Republicans this election cycle.

DeSantis has become wildly popular with the Republican base, who gave him over $247 million through Oct. 31. Millions of that money poured in from wealthy conservatives and corporate interests.

That is eight times more than the $31.4 million Crist raised.

The financial advantage allowed DeSantis to outspend Crist in every media market and contribute to the campaigns of other Republicans running for office this year.

Florida Democrats were used to big money from outside the state, said Susan MacManus, a consultant and retired political science professor from the University of South Florida.

Michael Bloomberg pledged to spend $100 million of his own money in 2020, and George Soros contributed more than $1 million to Gillum’s gubernatorial political committee in 2018.

But when they saw how much DeSantis could raise, those out-of-state donors stayed out.

Likewise, the national party, with its limited resources, decided to invest in other races where they were sure to have a better chance of influencing the outcome, said Ross, the Democratic consultant.

“Forty million goes a lot farther in Oklahoma than in Florida,” when it comes to buying media, he said.

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