Florida not a battleground, Biden campaign chair says

President Joe Biden and Democrats have been insisting that Florida’s gettable for them in November.

But not everyone seems to have gotten the memo. In a podcast interview with Puck News’ John Heilemann released Monday, Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon responded bluntly when asked if Florida was a battleground state: “No.” Heilemann then joked that he “was afraid you were going to lie” about Florida’s status.

The comments seemed to throw Florida politics into a tailspin, with even many Democrats viewing them as contradicting an April memo from Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez that declared Florida “winnable.”

“Not a lot of staffers, consultants or organizers are in a position to say it, but this was such an unnecessary, demoralizing gut punch,” Florida-based communications consultant Kevin Cate wrote on X about the comments, while urging fellow Democrats to keep up their work “and one day, we will flip it.”

Democrats have spent months pointing to signs of change in a state that has raced away from them since former President Donald Trump carried it by a bit over 3 points in 2020. They won the mayorship in Jacksonville last year and flipped a state House seat in a special election in January. The party got candidates to run in every forthcoming legislative race and the Biden campaign hired roughly two dozen state-level staff. Florida’s Democratic-led effort to enshrine abortion rights is far out-fundraising the opposition.

Despite O’Malley Dillon’s comments, Dan Kanninen, Biden-Harris battleground states director, maintained in a statement that Florida was “in play for President Biden and Democrats up and down the ballot” and that the campaign “continues to scale up our presence and investments into the state.” Abhi Rahman, a deputy communications director for the Democratic National Committee, said the state party was “undergoing a resurgence,” while Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried urged people not to “count Florida out” and said the party was building for the long term.

But Florida Democrats haven’t seen a surge in voter registrations in the time that the Biden campaign said it was expanding its footprint there. And while a recent Fox News poll has Trump leading Biden by only four points, Ryan Tyson, who’s done polling for Gov. Ron DeSantis and has a track record of accuracy in the state, recently had Trump ahead by 10 points, Florida Politics reported. Neither side is spending much money in Florida, a key indicator that it’s not competitive.

Separately, some of Biden’s policies toward countries like Cuba risk undermining Democratic overtures in the state, given that they threaten to turn off South Florida Hispanics — a crucial, influential voting bloc.

Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes told Playbook that he saw O’Malley Dillon’s comments as “a noteworthy and rare bit of honesty” and took issue with news stories elevating “the bogus Biden narrative of the state being ‘in play’ for months.” At another point in the podcast, O’Malley Dillon said she had “a point of view on Florida” but didn’t return to it, instead calling herself “bullish on North Carolina” and going into detail about why.

To Evan Power, Republican Party of Florida chair, her interview “just confirms what the Florida GOP has been saying all along.”

Republicans in the state have a 900,000-active voter advantage over Democrats and Trump’s campaign team also has an edge in Florida, where he is a resident.

Hughes was Trump’s Florida director during the primary and was hired in August of 2023. Trump campaign co-chair Susie Wiles has a long record of success in Florida that has earned her deep connections in the state. And while the Biden campaign has done several splashy events featuring the president, the vice president and surrogates, members of the Trump campaign have also been on the ground at grassroots events quietly building the base while not publicizing it.

Even before the O’Malley Dillon line on Monday, some long-time Democratic analysts and consultants in Florida had grown weary of what they viewed as an all-too-optimistic viewpoint coming from Democratic leaders such as Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair who was in Tallahassee last week.

“Democrats are gaslighting Democrats about Florida,” said Fernand Amandi, the South Florida communications and political consultant well known for his cable news appearances.

But Steve Schale, who was state director when then-candidate Barack Obama won the state in 2008, cautioned against writing off Florida, given that Georgia and Arizona had not been in play at this point in 2020 either. He insisted Florida was in a tier below the core battlegrounds and said for Biden campaign officers to really invest here they'd need to see positive trends in polling, voter registrations and vote-by-mail applications. A decision about whether to “double down,” he added, might not come until August or even September.

“Hopefully it can get in play,” he said. “We have to earn our place in the program — make it impossible not to be here.”

Gary Fineout contributed reporting. A version of this story first appeared in POLITICO's Florida Playbook newsletter. Sign up for Florida Playbook here.