Palm Beach Chamber's season-opening breakfast meeting draws sellout crowd to The Breakers

The Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce's first in-person membership meeting of the season drew a capacity crowd Wednesday morning to The Breakers.

More than 450 guests attended the event, which kicked off a slate of 10 monthly breakfast meetings that will run through June.

"We were sold out," Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce CEO Laurel Baker said of the event. "Seems everyone wants to be back on track with regular schedules, and who doesn’t want to start their day at The Breakers Palm Beach?"

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The meeting featured presentations by the Florida Outreach Center for the Blind, which sponsored the event, and Rick Asnani, president of Royal Palm Beach-based public affairs and political consulting firm Cornerstone Solutions & Communications.

Asnani, along with pollsters Adam Goodman of the lobbying and public relations firm Ballard Partners, and Neil Newhouse of the political survey and polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, discussed the upcoming fall elections as well as voter turnout and trends.

They began their presentation with a look at state and local races, including those for U.S. and State Senate, U.S. and State Representative, Florida governor, Palm Beach County Board of County Commissioners, and Palm Beach County School Board.

Asnani noted that there are more than 14 million registered voters in Florida, including nearly 1 million in Palm Beach County.

Of those, approximately 40% are registered Democrats, 31% are registered No Party Affiliation or Other, and 29% are registered Republicans.

Statewide, however, the number of active registered Republicans outnumber Democrats, though that margin is less than 1%, according to the Florida Division of Elections.

"Florida's voter registration, for the first time in about 20 years, has moved from the Democratic side to the Republican side," Asnani said.

However, he added, the number of voters registered as No Party Affiliation continues to rise and remains the largest-growing population of registered voters in the state.

In Palm Beach County, there are more than 310,000 voters registered as No Party Affiliation, which eclipses the number of registered Republicans (288,606). There are more than 398,000 registered Democrats in the county.

"Palm Beach County is a Democratic county, and that hasn't changed much," Asnani said.

Asnani was followed by Newhouse, who discussed November's elections from a national perspective, and Goodman, who talked about what to expect in the 2022 mid-term elections.

National polling has indicated that the United States continues to grow more polarized, Newhouse said, while voters don't think the country is headed in the right direction.

"This is the longest period of sustained pessimism that we've had in this country since January 2004," he said.

Other issues raised by Newhouse include voters' concerns that the media is biased; President Joe Biden's approval ratings and how they could lead to big Republican gains in November; the U.S. Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade and how it could change the midterm outlook; and control of the Senate running through a handful of states, including Florida.

Goodman said the 2022 midterms would be a referendum on a number of different issues, including the performance of President Biden, and the presence of former President Donald Trump.

"The election is a referendum on the president of the United States," Goodman said. "It's a referendum on the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, and it's also a referendum on inflation versus choice. I think those are the two big issues of the day."

The Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce will hold its next membership meeting Oct. 11. The featured presentation is slated to be on "Downtown Development," given by Ken Himmel, CEO and president of Related Urban, and Gopal Rajegowda, a partner of Related Southeast.

Upcoming presentations include: Civics (Nov. 10); The Fourth Estate (Dec. 12); Innovation in Palm Beach County (Jan. 5); Finding Your Purpose (Feb. 13); Conscious Capitalism (March 8); The Arc of Solidarity (April 11); Robotic Surgery (May 17); Awards Breakfast sponsored by The Breakers Palm Beach (June 8).

Membership meetings take place at The Breakers, 1 South County Road.

For information, visit www.palmbeachchamber.com or call 561-655-3282.

Jodie Wagner is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at jwagner@pbdailynews.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach Chamber's season-opening breakfast meeting is a sellout