To: The Dwindling and Tired Masses
From: Steve Schale, Florida Man and biennial Florida Sherpa
Re: Florida 2024
Date: Who knows.
Well here we go again, the second cycle in a row I said I wouldn’t do this, but here we are. To be honest, I was hoping the Jaguars would be good, and I would be too distracted. But alas, the Jaguars are the Jaguars,
I started writing this piece two weeks (OK, now four weeks) ago, but then a hurricane – and another hurricane – and then jury duty all intervened.
Honestly, I started to shelve the thing all together, but as long time readers of this occasional blog know, writing is how I think through issues, and since I wanted to get my head around Florida – as it stands today – frankly, how it got here, and what my party would need to do to win, I decided to take this on.
If you are reading this because you are a Democrat hoping there is some special tonic in here, you will probably be disappointed. This doesn’t mean I am not intrigued by the state as a Dem, but not entirely for immediate reasons. For my Republican friends, yes, I write these things from the perspective of a Democrat, but I genuinely try to play it straight. Just as y’alls brains are wired to think about how a Republican wins, mine thinks about the math from a Democratic perspective.
I’ve been pretty consistent for 2 years in saying that while yes, Florida has gotten more Republican, I think there is a lot more evidence showing 2022 as an outlier than as a trend. I've also been consistent in saying while I thought Florida was part of the map, it wasn't likely to central to either side's path to victory, and I’ve said I think Florida is more of a 2026 or 2028 play – though I think 2024 is important for organizing.
So with that in mind, I wrote this piece from the perspective of how electorally Florida changed from Obama 08 to Trump 20, and what that means -- particularly for my camp, on pathway to victory.
I think this is still an important topic, even if the 2024 question isn't as interesting as cycles past, for both parties, as neither side can adequately plan for elections in the future without understanding the past.
So with that, let’s just dive in.
FLORIDA AS A MIRROR
As I have said in previous pieces, my view on Florida has evolved. I used to argue Florida was some kind of a microcosm of the nation, but over time, I've come to see it as something different, more of a reflection of the politics, the culture, and the attitudes of the places where people come from than a microcosm of anything.
Before I started writing this, I re-read our 2008 Obama campaign plan for Florida, since so much about how I think about winning Florida was cemented in those days. In the preamble to that plan, I wrote:
“The state’s character is defined by the transient nature of its people. Most people in Florida are from somewhere else, and depending on where that someplace else is can often define the political trade winds of a region... the result is a politics defined not by a statewide identity, but instead by regional niches.”
Former Governor/Senator Graham used to talk about this phenomenon by using the example of the mythical retired couple from Cincinnati, who moved here after saving up their whole life. They came here because it was warm, and had no income tax, but their friends, interests, and at some level, their politics, never left Cincinnati, or as he would say “they might live here now, but they still take the Cincinnati paper.”
(Personal note: This is the first election cycle for me since 2004 that I won’t be on the phone regularly with Bob Graham, and it just won’t be the same. I miss his voice, his wisdom, and his counsel - even if he always managed to time his calls when I was in the grocery store. I think part of my exhaustion of this cycle is frankly, I miss talking to (or mostly listening to) Bob)
I say this in every one of these pieces I write, but Florida isn’t a state, not in the sense of most places. Most states have an archetype - the steelworker of Pennsylvania, the rancher in Kansas, the Texan, New Yorker, Bostonian, Californian – etc. You get it.
But what about Florida?
In her most recent album, Taylor Swift describes Florida as a place you go to forget, a place you go to bury secrets, and a place you use up for your own purposes - and truthfully, she’s not far off. Florida has been more of a destination than it is a community for most of the last several hundred years. And Florida Man, the oft-mocked caricature of our state, is really a collection of all the characters from everywhere else. (Yes America, you too are Florida Man).
On average, around 60% of the residents of a given state are native-born to the state they call home, but Florida is very different: Of the 23 million people who live here, only about a third were born here. The only state in the nation with a lower native-born population is Nevada. Of the remaining two-thirds who found their way here, about a third - or somewhere between 20-22 percent of all Floridians, were born in a foreign land. Our commonality is our border – and not much else.
In fact, there are 50 countries who have more than 10,000 foreign-born residents living in Florida. To give a sense of scale, there are 7K more Florida residents born in South Korea (22K) than there are residents of the state’s oldest city, St. Augustine (15K) – and South Koreans are only the 28th largest foreign born population.
One other comparison: the 20th largest foreign-born population, Vietnam, has about 54,000 Florida residents, roughly compared to the population of the first city in Florida to fail as a city, Pensacola.
(I always want to know if certain people read these!)
Back during the Obama years, that mirror reflected back directly into the coalition that he built to win: core Democrats, immigrants, African American and Caribbean voters, suburban women, and a large share of blue collar, non-college midwestern white voters. Because Florida over indexes on a lot of these groups, his coalition fit very well into Florida.
But parts of that mix is today the challenge my side faces.
The issue facing Dems this cycle in Florida, isn’t alone the COVID-migration into Florida, the voter registration trends, or any of the things that seem to be the simplistic media pundit industrial complex likes to lean into.
Rather, from my perspective, the problem in Florida right now is the Democratic coalition nationally has evolved, and the areas where Democrats are struggling - at least as compared to the Obama coalition, and that is acutely problematic for my side here.
Just to put an emphasis on this, the GOP has added about 370k more newly registered voters than the Dems since Jan 1, 2021 out of about 2.5 million new voters. That isn’t insignificant – but that number doesn't come anywhere near explaining the whole story of Florida's current political lot.
For example, there is little argument that Democrats are not doing as well with Hispanic voters as we were during the Obama and even Clinton years. We can argue whether it is a lot or little, but the numbers are what the numbers are. Moreover, Florida Hispanics have always been a bit more GOP-leaning than other states. What is the fastest growing segment of the Florida electorate? Hispanics.
To put some numbers on it. Let's say nationally, Democrats do 5 points worse with Hispanics than a a few years ago, meaning say you go from winning Hispanics in FL 55-45 to splitting them 50-50. The net impact on your margin, at a minimum, is 200,000 voters. Finding 200,000 votes in Florida might be harder than Trevor Lawrence trying to find a receiver who can catch a ball that lands in his hands or bounces off his facemask.
We can do the same thing with non-college educated white voters, and even Black men, especially Caribbean voters (though with the recent messaging from the Trump campaign, this may bounce back to my side). These things add up to a lot more people than the internal migration - in the same way that Republican gains with white voters in 2016 added up to way more votes than any gains that my party assumed would come from Hurricane Maria migrants from Puerto Rico.
The argument I tend to make to donors and anyone who will listen: we need to fix the coalition to strengthen our national hand – and by making gains with the coalition, we will improve Florida overnight.
There is another thing I struggle with in this cycle: how to model the state. It isn’t just that Florida’s registration has gotten more Republican - it is that the state has changed how it accounts for active and inactive voters.
Despite the state’s growth since 2020, there are nearly a million FEWER “active” voters on the rolls today than there were at election time in either 2020 or 2022, as several million voters now occupy space on the state’s “inactive” voter list – voters who can still vote, but just aren’t listed in the public numbers.
On the active rolls, Republicans have a 7% advantage in registration, but including the inactive voter lists, that margin is under 4%.
And this is where it gets tricky. We know Florida’s population is up about 1.5 million since 2020. And we know that in 2020, about 1.6 million more people voted for President than voted in 2016. So let’s say conservatively, 750,000 more people vote in 2024 – based on the active rolls, that would be an 85% voter turnout.
And that’s not gonna happen. So we know some segment of that inactive list is going to show up. And we know the inactives are disproportionately Dem and NPA voters - so where that turnout model falls can be tricky to figure.
Then there is the whole question of how much either side is really going to invest - how much will turnout be impacted by that - and how much will the amendments impact things.
Not to mention the question of whether Doug Pederson will even make it to Election Day before he’s fired.
If your head is spinning, imagine mine…
In the past, I have written really in depth sections on each media market - this year, this piece will be tighter.
For those interested, here are the 2020 and 2022 versions. This year, I am going to approach it more as a hypothetical question – what would need to happen for a Harris win (one of you republicans can write the GOP one).
For the sake of finishing this, I am going to spend a decent amount of time on four regions: North Florida, Tampa, Orlando, and Miami – and while I will touch on West Palm and Fort Myers, I will honestly never finish this piece if I do much more than give them a passing glance. Blame the aforementioned hurricanes and jury duty.
Quick refresher - I break the state down by media markets, and for the purposes of this, group some of them for ease and length reasons. I get the limitations of thinking about Florida this way, and I get some of the groupings – IE, the Waffle House corridor, groups together very different markets. If you have issues with this, I welcome you to start your own blog 🙂.
THE WAFFLE HOUSE CORRIDOR
Florida is nearly 400 miles wide at its widest point, but visitors to Florida who enter the state at one of its westernmost points, Perdido Key, only have to travel 315 feet into Florida to find the first Waffle House.
if you choose to come by sea, when you land in Jacksonville Beach - just south of the first Thanksgiving in America -- some 60 years before the pilgrims decided to force future generations to eat dry turkey and dried bread following their "feast" at the pebble-sized "Plymouth Rock", and just north of where the Germans landed in 1942 (yes, the Germans landed in North Florida - try out the ole google) - you will find one just ¼ mile from the inland.
And yes, this is the one Trevor Lawrence goes to. You'll find him there after we beat your team in the playoffs.
Over these 400 miles, one will find more than 90 Waffle Houses, anchored by Pensacola on the west – home to some 19 of these glorious 24 hour diners that Anthony Bourdain once called “beacon of hope and salvation...safety and nourishment” for “the hungry, the lost, the seriously hammered all across the South,” to Jacksonville, home to another 17. And surrounding these fine establishments, some 18% of the likely statewide vote.
Side note: you want to know when Florida Man takes a hurricane very seriously? When the Waffle House clsoes.
The old saying about Florida is to go south, you go north, and in most ways, this still holds. This part of Florida is the original Florida. Go back to statehood, and at that time, 97% of the population lived in this region, which explains why the state capitol is located so far from the current population center (how it remained in Tallahassee in the 70’s a whole other – and frankly, amazing story).
But the old way of thinking about North Florida isn’t as clear cut as it used to be. Take Duval County – the gritty, aging, town that reeked of a paper mill of my youth, is now ranked as one of the top places for young professionals in the country, and home to one of the nation’s hottest job markets. And as Florida growth has started to level off, Jacksonville is one of the few Florida towns that remain in the top 25 in the nation for move-ins.
That being said, the region does still have a lot of “throwback” Florida characteristics. Much of the Gulf Coast coast between Panama City and the Big Bend looks and feels like it did decades ago. Drive US-90 – and not I-10 from Pensacola to Jacksonville, or drive any of the 2 lane highways through the southern counties in these markets, and you will find places where time has seemingly stopped, communities completely missed by the prosperity that has hit Florida over the last three decades or so.
Florida has 67 counties, and just over half of the counties in Florida are in the Waffle House corridor. Most of these counties are small, rural, and feel very different than the modern view of "Florida."
Of these Democrats will win 3 - maybe 4 or 5 on a really good night: Alachua and Leon, two classic southern college/government towns; Gadsden, the only county in the state with a majority African American population; and potentially Duval, home to Jacksonville – a town that is getting more metropolitan, and as such likely more Democratic – though Duval isn’t quite as solidly “Bluval” as some of my Democratic friends like to think. DUUUUVAL.
Nor is it home to a competent football franchise.
(Mr. Khan, if you are reading this, on behalf of one fan who is a former NEZ season ticket holder and who has spent thirty loyal years on the Jaguars’ shitwagon, please fire Trent Baalke, and bring in a coaching staff that isn’t going to further ruin Trevor. Thank you.)
In 2016, President Trump carried the region by 20 points – or 350,000 votes. What is interesting - for as much as the media makes of the area as the reason for Trump’s strength in the state, the reality is the raw vote margin Republicans carry out of North Florida has been pretty consistent, going back even to 2008.
In 2020, President Biden cut the Trump margin to 16 points – or some 330,000 votes. Despite losing Florida by 3 points, Biden’s 41% in North Florida nearly matched President Obama’s 42% in 2008 – a year my side won by 3 points. Interestingly enough, the top 8 counties where Biden improved, as ranked by how much he cut the Trump margins from 2016, are all in North Florida.
What does a Democrat need to do to win here (again, keep in mind, these aren’t predictions, they are vote goals if I was running a campaign trying to get to 50%+1 in FL in 2024)?
The statewide share of vote from these markets dropped from 18.5 to 18% from 2016 to 2020 - so assume it settles in somewhere between 17.8 and 18 in 2024, a night where Harris/DMP was really in the game would see them hit 42%, which would put the vote margin at a number similar to 2016 - around (or in this case, just north of), 350,000. Anything south of this and the math gets hard.
TAMPA
“We win here, we win Florida. We win Florida, we win the White House” – Tampa section of the preamble to the 2008 Obama campaign plan.
In 2004, President Bush, when winning Florida by 5, carried an 8.1% margin in the Tampa media market. In a market that made up just under a quarter of the statewide vote, roughly 40% of Bush’s margin came out of this one media market.
Winning in 2008 required flipping the script there – and we did, narrowly carrying the market in 2008 and narrowly losing it in 2012 – both times with margins that largely took away the GOP math to winning Florida.
Fast forward to 2020 – President Trump, in winning Florida by 3 points, carried the same 8.1% margin in the Tampa media market that Bush did - and in this cycle, earned nearly 60% of his final statewide margin in this one market.
In just 12 years, all of the gains made by President Obama in 2008 in the Tampa media market had reverted back to the Bush 2008 margins. For Democrats, it really doesn’t matter what happens elsewhere if my side loses the Tampa market by 8 points.
If a wealthy person said to me “Hey Schale - I am going to give you a ton of money to research what Democrats need to do to address the parts of the coalition we we’ve lost in the last decade” - I would start in the Tampa media market. Let’s break down why.
For the sake of this exercise – and hang with me, there will be a point to this), let’s compare the high water marks for both parties in the last four Presidentials in Florida: Obama 2008, and Trump 2020.
If we just look at the change in the vote margins (Obama +236K and Trump +372K), the margin shift to Republicans is roughly 610K votes.
About 85% of the change happened in four media markets: Fort Myers, Orlando, West Palm, and Tampa. Tampa, Orlando, and West Palm can account each for about 15-16% of the total change - but Tampa stands out. Nearly 40% of the total margin shift from Obama 08 to Trump 20 happened here.
There are two things that stand out about the market: It has a larger share of white voters than any other major market in Florida (Tampa 69%, Orlando 61%, Miami 29%) – and it is home to massive exurban counties that have a lower than the statewide average college attainment rate.
Much has been written about my party’s struggles with working class white voters in rural areas of the Midwest – but to see how it plays out on a large scale, one only look at the 4 exurban counties north of Tampa, one east, and one south:
Pasco (North of Hillsborough):
2008: McCain 51, Obama 48. (McCain +7,687)
2020: Trump: 59. Biden 39 (Trump +60,548)
Hernando (North of Pasco):
2008: McCain: 51, Obama: 48 (McCain +3,135)
2020: Trump: 65, Biden: 34 (Trump +32,393)
Polk (East of Hillsborough)
2008: McCain: 53, Obama: 47 (McCain +15,013)
2020: Trump 57, Biden 42 (Trump +49,537)
Manatee (South of Hillsborough)
2008: McCain 53, Obama 46 (McCain +10,687)
2020: Trump: 58, Biden 41 (Trump +34,821)
Another way of looking at this - the Republican margin increased by 141,227 votes in just these four counties. That is more votes than both Obama in 12, or Trump in 16 carried Florida. Nearly a quarter of the entire margin change between Obama 08 and Trump 20 is in these four counties that add up to about 8.5% of the statewide vote.
And yes, growth does play a factor here, but for my Democratic friends, it can’t all be explained away by growth. Take Hernando County for example: Joe Biden received 4,000 fewer votes than Barack Obama – despite 21,000 more ballots cast in 2020 than 2008, despite the growth in the county.
But if you wear my jersey, there is a bigger blinking light here than just growth: all four counties have college attainment rates lower than the statewide average – and three of the four have a larger non-Hispanic white population than the state average. And where has my party struggled? White voters without a college degree.
There’s a lot of revisionist history about Barack Obama, particularly on the left, but here is one thing often forgotten: Obama understood how to get to the mind of the median voter - at the time, much to the frustration of some of my friends on the left, but it got to a win in Tampa, which led to a win in Florida, and a win nationally.
Win Tampa. Win Florida.
In 2020, Biden earned 44.5% of the vote in the market, losing Tampa by 8.1%
A win number for Harris/DMP is going to need to be in the range of 49%.
Figure out how to do that, and the national election won’t even be close.
ORLANDO
Back in 2008, I was on a bus tour across Florida with then Senator Joe Biden, and Senator Bill Nelson, led by legendary Democratic advance guy, the "GOAT" of motorcade advance, Western Tennessee’s famous “Motorcade Tim Sneed” (If you have ever been on one of Tim's trips, you know this is true)
We were working our way through secondary county targets – Pasco → Marion → Volusia → Brevard → St. Lucie (take note of these places, young Democrats – we will return to a recurring theme here), and eventually end up in West Palm and Broward. And as America now knows, when you are on a bus tour with Joe Biden, you are going to get ice cream.
So we found a Kilwins between Ocala and Daytona, in the downtown area of The Villages. Sitting behind Motorcade, complete with his ubiquitous Stetson hat, I lean forward and say “Tim, this is one of the strangest places you will ever visit.”
Sure, Schale, he glances back at me, as he dons his hat and quickly follows Biden and Nelson into the ice cream shop.
In the 45 minutes or so we were there, like drawn to a bat signal, they came from everywhere. Golf carts, driven by men in golf shirts and blazers, or women in casual fall attire. Before we knew it, the motorcade was surrounded – ok, not literally surrounded – but we kind of pinned in by golf carts until the police could clear a route out for us. What started out as about a dozen people in the ice cream shop turned into what seemed like a sea of thousands, just curious to see what the commotion was all about.
As Motorcade gives a tip of the hat to signal the all clear for us to move on down the road, he slides back in the van and said, “Schale - pretty sure I’ve never seen that before.”
When people think about the evolution of Florida politics, and its Republican trend, the stories often start and end with The Villages, and honestly, who can blame my national media friends. This theme park for Midwestern retirees is easy fodder – golf courses, and golf cart dance troupes, a population that looks like it walked out of a Brooks Brothers ad, and of course, the legend of its STD rates (which is a legend more than fact).
Sure Schale, my DC friends will say, it is all The Villages.
But is it?
The Orlando market is the third largest, as well as the fastest growing market in the state. More than likely, sometime in my lifetime, it will surpass both Miami and Tampa in terms of population. The region, once known as Mosquito County (for reasons obvious to anyone outside in the afternoon), has a lot of space to grow - and growing it is.
That growth here is both rapid, and dynamic. The one-time oldest, and whitest media market in Florida is today one of the youngest, and the second most diverse.
You don’t have to go back too far to an era when the Orlando metro area was home to some of the most Republican counties in the state – whereas today, it makes up the core of the Democratic base in Florida. And exurban Orlando - places like Brevard, Volusia, and Marion counties were home to Democratic luminaries like Bill Nelson and Karen Thurman. Today they are universally Republican.
Barack Obama was the first Democrat statewide to really take advantage of the demographic shifts in the Orlando metro area. For example, in Orange County (Orlando), he took a county that split between Bush and Kerry and won it by 20 points. in doing so, he changed the map for Democrats in Florida -- as all of the sudden there was this new pot of votes in Central Florida, a pot of votes that a lot of my Republican friends thought would change the math of Florida forever.
The Orlando market is basically two regions. Metro Orlando, and everything else. Metro Orlando would be Seminole, Orange, and Osceola counties (from north to south), with the rest of the market having a more exurban flair, starting with Sumter County to the north and east of Orlando, and working like a crescent around Orlando through Marion, Lake, Flagler, Volusia, and south to Brevard Counties.
To be very simplistic, Democrats live in the urban counties, Republicans in the exurban ones. For example, between 2008 and 2020, the share of the total Republican vote in the market that comes from the six exurban counties has grown from 60% to 63%, while Democrats have seen the share of their total vote that comes from the urban areas grow from 50-55% over the same time.
From the Democratic perspective, this means that for every vote our candidates received in the Orlando market in 2008, 50% of the votes came from the urban counties, and 50% from the exurban ones – and today, that is 55 and 45% respectively.
“But Schale, of course that is what is happening – all the growth is in places like The Villages, right?”
Well, here’s what's interesting – the urban core is actually growing faster than the exurban core. In 2008, 55% of all of the votes in the Orlando market came from the exurban counties, a number that dropped to 53.5% in 2020.
So if the market is getting more urban – and Democrats are doing better in the urban areas, how did the market go from Obama +1 to Trump +3 in 12 years.
If you read the Tampa section, this won’t take long…
There is another way to look at the Orlando market. Counties where more than ⅓ of adults have a college degree (Sumter - which is a decent chunk of The Villages, Orange, and Seminole), and the other six counties.
Between 2008 and 2020, the Democratic nominee has seen their vote share grow from 54% (+9) in the higher educational attainment counties to 56% (+12) - meaning in real numbers, President Biden carried these counties by roughly 56,000 more votes than President Obama.
But in the other six counties - President Trump carried these six counties by 155,000 more votes than John McCain – even though these six counties as a proportion of the market, are a smaller share than they were in 2008.
There are two places here I want to highlight: Volusia County, and Osceola County – Volusia for reasons that are obvious to longtime readers, Osceola for reasons that might not be.
If anyone read Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen’s book "Shattered" about the 2016 Trump/Clinton race, you might remember a chunk of a chapter featuring your erstwhile blog author, who was following the election returns in a bar in Orlando with a visiting group of Turkish political hacks. Early returns in Florida looked good for Clinton, in part because some big counties dumped their early and absentee returns quickly, but I wanted to see more, and one of my computer tabs was locked on Volusia County.
Volusia is basically Daytona Beach and surrounding areas. Home of NASCAR, it was for many years a swing, if not leaning Democratic county. It had a blue collar workforce, as well as a sizable African-American population – and a growing Puerto Rican one. Obama had woven together that coalition in 2008 to deliver a narrow win. But when I hit refresh on Election Night 2016, the bottom had fallen out. Trump wasn’t just going to win Volusia - he was going to absolutely crush Clinton there – and if he was cruising there, he was probably doing so in similar places in a state like Pennsylvania. The book recalls the warning flare calls I made that night, as I pounded another IPA or two.
Good memories. Good times.
In 12 years, Volusia went from a county that Obama won by 6, to one Trump won by 12. Of that aforementioned 155,000 vote gain in the counties with a college attainment rate of less than 33%, roughly 60,000 of it came from Volusia alone - a single county change that wiped out all of the gains in Orlando area counties where more than 1/3rd of the population has a college degree. To kick this horse one more time - another way of looking at it, 1 in every 10 votes Republican gained between 2008 and 2020 came from Volusia, a county that will make up about 2.7% of the total statewide vote this year.
That’s what happens when your brand craters.
It is also important to look at Osceola County, in part because I think it is an important warning flare for my side.
Osceola County is one of the fastest growing counties in America, and is also one of the fastest growing Hispanic populations in the nation. The 2000 census found the county was roughly 29% Hispanic. Today, that number is 56%. If you bought into the demographics are destiny argument, Osceola should be delivering margins for Democrats that far outpace even President Obama’s 19 point margin in 2008.
Yet from 2008 to 2020, the margin for Democrats fell from 19% to 14%. I have plenty of opinions on why for another time, but increasingly there is evidence that the same challenges my party is having with non-college whites is spilling over to non-college Hispanics. A recent Pew study pointed to this fact, finding that Hispanic voters with a HS degree were supporting Harris by a 14 point margin, while Hispanics with a college degree were supporting her by 22 points.
And Osceola? Its college attainment rate is about 1 in 4.
Want to win Florida in the future my Democratic friends – we have to first fix the challenges we have with Hispanic voters. Want to fix that? Start in Osceola.
Trump won the market by 3 points in 2020, roughly 51-48. For Harris or DMP to have a winning night, a win in the market is critical. I’d want to see 51% to make the statewide math work.
(And much love to you, Motorcade. Miss seeing you this cycle brother.)
MIAMI
Early in my career, I ran the State House Democratic caucus in Florida, and I became obsessed by one of my goals: electing a Cuban Democrat to represent the district that reached from Miami Beach to Little Havana.
My boss at the time, Dan Gelber, thought this was nuts, but the data suggested otherwise. Finally, he had an idea: Luis Garcia.
Luis was a retired firefighter who had served on the Miami Beach City Council. A fiery guy by nature, Luis had another thing going for him: He had triedm unsuccessfully to sign up for the Bay of Pigs when he was like 14 by putting risers in his shoes. His opponent, a mild-mannered Republican from an elite Cuban family, so for once as a Democrat, there was no way Luis was going to be out anti-Castroed. His life gave him permission to talk to voters that would often turn off Democrats just from the label.
Luis ran an smart race – calling out the corruption in Miami, talking about lowering taxes and property insurance rates, carving out a smart position on immigration, all while avoiding social issues and reminding voters of his core conviction, proven by life, that he though Castro was a SOB. On Election Night, Luis became the first Cuban Democrat to represent Little Havana in the Florida Legislature.
Two years later, then Senator Obama followed a similar playbook in Dade. He leaned into his own story, the son of an African, in many ways, he himself a first-generation American living the dream every immigrant has for their children. He recognized people came here to seek safety and opportunity. And he sure as hell didn’t wax on poetically about European style socialism, or suggest reducing funding for law enforcement among voters who largely came here to escape socialist autocracies where they often feared for their own personal safety.
Nor did he duck the question when asked if he was a socialist.
Nor did he drop the “n” from Latin and add an “x” to describe a group of people that has never used that word to describe themselves.
That screaming sound you hear coming from the words on the screen? Yup, that’s me.
I love Miami – and by Miami, I mean both Dade and Broward. Ok, I hate the traffic, and the fact that time is a construct that no one actually believes in. But I love the culture, the people, the food, and the vibe.
Dade County on its own is arguably the most diverse place on the planet.
Over 50% of the population is foreign born, and between 85-90% of the population would be considered ethnic minorities in the US – and within that population is a kaleidoscope of nations and cultures.
If New York was the beacon for immigrants from the old world, it is today Miami who lifts her lamp to those huddled masses yearning to be free from the dictatorships in new one. And it isn’t just Hispanics and Caribbeans, you can find a corner of Miami that is home to populations from every corner of the world. She truly is a global capital for those who live to her south. Honestly, if I had ever had a chance to work for a Governor, that is the portfolio I wanted – how do we make Miami truly the Singapore of Latin America.
The diversity of Miami is rapidly spilling northward, Broward County, the one-time “Sixth Borough of New York,” looks almost nothing like it did during the heyday of political condo commandos ike Amadeo “Trinchi” Trinchitella.
From the 2020 census to the 2020 census, the share of Broward made up by ethnic minorities increased from 42% to 67%. The “Del Boca Vista” of Seinfeld-fame is now more likely to be home to thousands of middle class, 2nd generation Hispanic families than it is to folks who look like George Costanza’s parents.
As Miami got younger, more diverse, and more metropolitan, it also got more Democratic. Our 2008 vote goals in Miami seemed absurd to many, but we reached them - and even more in 2012, before Hillary Clinton set a new bar in 2016: winning the county by nearly 30 points, and setting a margin that if Democrats could have gotten a few other things right in the state, could have provided a base for statewide wins.
But then, my side – in the parlance of political hackdom, did some really stupid dumb shit, and that dumb shit has been acutely felt in Southeast Florida.
Just how bad?
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade by 29 points, and Broward by 35 points. The result: a 580,000 vote margin out of the two big SE Florida counties.
These are numbers that blew away what Obama did either time.
In 2020, Donald Trump cut those margins to 30 points in Broward, and 7 in Dade. The result, Joe Biden’s vote margin was just under 370,000.
What if Biden could have maintained the Clinton margins (yes, I know Clinton’s were historic, but just play along with me for a minute)? With the population growth, Biden 2020 with the Clinton margins would have won Broward and Miami-Dade by 675,000 votes. The difference between that and what he got? Nearly the entire Trump statewide margin of victory.
I could write papers on this (and depending on what happens in November, I might). I also might need counseling, to be honest.
What do Harris and DMP need to do?
They probably need to at a minimum split the difference between Clinton and Biden - 61% as a floor, to get enough votes to give themselves a chance statewide. This means winning Dade with Obama 08-type margins.
The other markets
Again, this isn’t a prediction, this is a model (and ok, maybe a prayer that some young hacks on my side might use it as road map going forward)
West Palm Beach: Biden got 52% of the market. Realistically, Harris would need to get around 54% to win. Want to get to 54%. Figure out how to win St. Lucie and the rest will fall in place.
Fort Myers: Biden got 38% in 2020, and I think 39% would be a reasonable goal. I do think this is a market that if Democrats are going to have success in Florida in the future that we need to find ways for improvement.
Landing this plane.
When I started writing this, I didn’t plan on it taking this long, or being this long. If you read to the end, I am truly grateful.
And honestly, I don’t know if this one I wrote for you all, or for myself. I’d be lying if I didn’t say, as a Democrat, that the last few cycles have been frustrating. As I said in a piece I wrote last summer, it is hard to spend your career building something, only to see it – partially by circumstances, but at least in a small part, by decisions, get ripped back to the studs.
I wish I still had the memo I wrote to some party leaders in 2004, immediately following my side's double digit defeat in the 2002 Governor’s race, followed by a 5-point loss in the Presidential, because I could have just cut and pasted that into my blog, and changed the date. The line in that memo – a line I also used with reporters in those days: “we can’t win if all we do is bleed out in red parts of the state.”
That is still true today. My side won’t win here anytime soon unless we fix that. Again.
At my core, I am a median voter guy. For me, elections only have one purpose: winning them – and if you want to win them, you have to figure out where the median voter lies and meet them there - both physically, and politically. . And it doesn’t matter where you want the median voter to be - it only matters where they are.
In Florida, the median voter is a retired accountant from Cicero, IL living in Sarasota. He was a consistent Republican voter in Illinois, but thinks Republicans have lost their way, though he doesn’t trust Democrats to not raise his taxes. She’s the 45 year old Cuban mother that couldn’t tell her Dad she voted for Obama, who goes to church every week and is worried both about her health care, and about her kid’s safety going to and from the bus stop. Or the 28 year old Puerto Rican, who came to Osceola when her parents moved there when she was 7, and who has no idea how she’s going to afford to make it as the cost of everything in Florida increases all the time. Or the 22 year old African American man from West Palm, first in his family to go to college, and now wondering if the world is going to give him a fair shot at this thing called the American Dream. They live in places we won in 2008, but don't win now. It is really that simple
Win those voters, and win elections.
This is a weird election for me. Florida has been at the center of the political universe my entire career, until this year. I kind of feel like Ricky Bobby in “Talladega Nights” saying “I don’t know what to do with my hands" this cycle.
Truthfully, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat – if you are a Floridian, you should want Florida to be in play. When Florida matters to the Presidency, Florida issues matter to those who run for – and who are elected President. Period.
Can Democrats win here this cycle? Well, can the Jaguars make the playoffs? I mean, Blake Bortles did take my team to the precipice of the Super Bowl (Myles Jack was not down, full stop), and as thus, the math says it is possible. As Senator Blutarsky once reminded us, it was not actually over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor (sorry, I had to bring that German invasion thing in for a landing).
But here’s the larger deal for my side: After the 2030 census, the blue wall will likely be no more, meaning the math and map will change. Those changes are going to force us to play in states we don’t win that often - and survival means we will have to modify our approach to some voters – just as Obama did after my party lost 2 national elections in a row – and just like Trump did after his did the same. Every election cycle is a reset button.
And in the end, if I know one thing to be true, Florida may stray from time to time, but more often than not, Florida will, in the end, Florida.
After all, as Taylor Swift said about La Florida, she is one hell of a drug.
Thanks again for reading.
Friday, April 25, 2025 at 9:27AM 
