National, state Democratic leaders say they have a plan to break the GOP lock in Florida

Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried on Tuesday in Tallahassee laid down a marker for the 2024 election, saying Democrats will break out of superminority status at the Florida Capitol.

Backed by more than a dozen first-time legislative candidates and with Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison at her side, Fried described what she called a perfect storm of politics that will benefit Democrats this fall:

• Consumer complaints about the affordability of property insurance and housing

• 'No party affiliated,' or NPA, voters breaking Democratic by a 60% to 70% margin

• Democrats recruiting legislative candidates for every legislative race

• Loss of abortion access continuing to promote interest in campaigns

• Democrats main talking point being that Republicans have made Florida unaffordable

“No Republican should be able to walk into office without having to answer for the failures of Republicans here in Tallahassee,” Fried declared.

Harrison was national chair during the 2022 election. That's when analysts say the national party provided few resources to the state party that collapsed when confronted by Gov. Ron DeSantis' juggernaut reelection campaign.

DeSantis won by a historic 19 percentage points and the GOP swept all statewide races, racking up a supermajority in the House and Senate.

Fried was then elected state chair, and last year Democrats flipped the Jacksonville mayor's office and this year an Orlando-area House seat.

In June, for the first time since the 1960s, the Democrats became the first Florida political party to field candidates in every legislative race.

Harrison, without mentioning any dollar amounts, pledged to assist the state party with a coordinated campaign through 12 Joe Biden-Kamala Harris reelection offices that will open across the state this summer.

“Florida is important to us in in this equation. And so we're going to try to do what we can to compete and win in this state,” Harrison said.

Twenty campaign workers are now deployed across the state and Fried said Florida has the largest coordinated campaign effort in the country.

Florida Democratic candidates getting ready for the election

Charlie Browne, a director of the Boys & Girls Club of Clay County, is a candidate for House District 11. He said he is a community-minded candidate who answered Fried’s call to help rebuild the Democratic Party.

“I just didn’t think Garrison should get a free ride,” Browne said, referring to incumbent state Rep. Sam Garrison, R-Fleming Island.

Browne – dressed in blue, including his shiny leather shoes – has a couple hundred dollars in a campaign account to take on an incumbent with a six-figure campaign war chest. But he said he has "a million-dollar name," one people won’t forget, and a compelling story about Florida when he talks to voters.

“We're feeding kids (daily) and their families once a week. We literally give them clothing and access to health care. We need funding. We need to have a conversation about this,” Browne said.

While Democrats fielded candidates in every legislative race, the GOP did not put up candidates in 17 House and three Senate seats. Those seats collectively represent more than 3.1 million Floridians.

November is expected to be a “turnout election,” as opposed to a "persuasion election," in which voters are undecided about policy issues, according to former Democratic National Committee member Jon Ausman of Tallahassee.

“With voters almost evenly split, and about 4% of the electorate unwilling to state their choice, that makes turnout the key to winning in November,” Ausman said.

Are Florida Democrats 'engaging in a kind of political magical thinking'?

On the day the New York Times wrote that Florida Democrats who are “flirting” with being relevant are “engaging in a kind of political magical thinking,” newly elected progressive state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, returned to Tallahassee after having lost a state House seat in the Democrats’ 2022 debacle.

The GOP did not recruit a candidate to oppose Smith in Senate District 17 after Republican legislative leaders redistricted Smith out of a House seat in 2022 and no other candidates qualified to run. Tuesday, he told Browne and others the key to defeating the "DeSantis machine" is to organize a community.

Smith was a leading progressive in the Florida House for six years but opposition to the GOP agenda for school choice, abortion access and LGBTQ+ issues made him a top target and led to his University of Central Florida-centric House district being split into sections of Orange and Seminole county seats.

The path Smith followed back to Tallahassee, he said, is a guide for Democrats across the state. He claims his campaign fielded 2,300 individual donations, recruited 200 volunteers, and knocked on 10,000 doors to explain differences between the two parties.

“And now I’m Sen. Smith and that sends a very powerful message: We're doing the work on the ground that is needed to break the supermajority and elect Democrats up and down the ballot,” Smith said. “When we organize, we win.”

James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com and is on X as @CallTallahassee.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: National, state Democratic leaders pledge to break GOP hold on Florida