Florida battleground county prepares for 2020 election
Les enjeux politiques dans le comté de Pinellas
La Floride a la réputation d'être un État décisif lors des élections. Il n'est pas surprenant que de nombreux candidats soient très attentifs aux sondages effectués dans le 27e État. Nombreux sont les regards qui se tournent vers le comté de Pinellas, qui, comme l'explique le Guardian, a joué un rôle capital dans l'élection de Donald Trump en 2016.
In November 2016, the morning after Donald Trump was elected president, Pastor Andy Oliver put on his clerical collar and stepped outside the Allendale United Methodist church in St Petersburg with a sign he had stayed up late to make. It read: “We Choose Love.” The voters of Pinellas county, the biggest and most significant swing county in Florida, had just helped Trump into the White House after backing Barack Obama in two straight elections, and as the day wore on, Oliver’s parishioners joined him in the street with signs echoing his message.
2. “I knew a lot of people were afraid of what was to come. People of color, LGBTQ people, those that practice a different religion, people who live in the margins of society,” he said. “We had seen some threats, but we didn’t know then what this Trump presidency was going to bring.”
3. With Trump announcing his 2020 re-election bid just 100 miles to the east in Orlando, and with Pinellas set once again to play a pivotal role in that election, Oliver’s church in the historic Allendale neighborhood close to downtown St Pete is a hive of activity.
4. Rainbow-colored Pride banners, Black Lives Matter and Co-exist flags hang outside meeting rooms, nurses gather to discuss collective bargaining rights, affordable housing advocates plot their lobbying strategies - all community groups doing what Oliver calls “the work of the resistance”. “We decided as a church to open our space to any group doing work for justice in the community. Advocating healthcare for all, advocacy work around what people of color are experiencing, gun reform, women’s reproductive rights, all those things that are under threat right now.”
CREATING A DIALOGUE
5. And while the pastor says the activism is social rather than political – “we’d organize equally as hard if a Republican championed these values,” he insists – the target is unmistakable. Even the public messages on the church’s marquee, which have occasionally landed Oliver in hot water, are focused directly on controversies that Trump has fomented: “White Supremacy is the real crisis,” read one, and at Christmas: “We can’t worship the child in the manger while turning our backs on the child at the border.”
6. “The best thing about the Trump presidency is that he has motivated a lot of people to pay
attention and work together and find tangible ways to love each other,” Oliver said. If history is any guide, whichever way Pinellas county voters swing next November will decide if Trump wins another four years in the White House.
7. The heavily populated county at the western end of Florida’s I-4 corridor has backed every winning presidential candidate, five Republicans and four Democrats, since 1980, the anomaly of the 2000 election excepted. It was also the largest of only four Florida counties, out of 67, that swung to Trump in 2016 after supporting Obama in the two previous contests. “Trump won Pinellas by barely 1% so it’s not like we’re in the middle of a red county,” said Barbara Scott, chair of the Pinellas Democratic party.
8. “The county is a swatch of America. In St Pete, you could easily be in California – they lean left big time. In the north part of the county there are a lot of retirees, people who are older, more conservative, and in the middle you have this mix, the older population and young families, who are 30s to 50s. We’ve pushed south Pinellas, I believe, strongly to be blue, and the middle part is now leaning really blue. And we’re going to turn the north part of this county purple. That’s our plan to deliver Pinellas in 2020.”
DEVELOPING STRATEGIES
9. For Democrats hoping to oust Trump, recent developments have been positive. Scott, however, insists there is no room for complacency, and soon after becoming county chair following the midterms called together party leaders of neighboring Tampa Bay area counties to discuss strategy for 2020 and beyond in what she calls the “bay blue bloc”: “I knew we could do more,” she said. “The Democrat is not going to get elected by just commenting on how horrible a president Donald Trump is.” A coordinated campaign focused on ground-level canvassing, Scott believes, will be crucial, and activists are already knocking on doors months before a Democrat is even nominated to challenge Trump.
10. Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist who was Obama’s Florida campaign chair, believes the county is crucially significant. “In 08 and 12, Obama’s first real general election campaigning in Florida was both times in Pinellas, and that wasn’t accidental. I hesitate to say the person who wins
Pinellas wins Florida, but it’s hard to see a scenario where a Democrat loses Pinellas but wins Florida.”
11. “Pinellas now is a very expensive place to live, so there is that squeeze on people. One of the things we leaned into with Obama was his plan to reform the tax code by cutting middleclass taxes.” Republicans locally agree on the importance of the economy and voters’ personal finances when it comes to making a decision, but believe that works in Trump’s favor. “Pinellas proved that you could have a Republican president with a message that reaches the blue-collar, workingclass Democrat,” said Anthony Pedicini, a senior GOP strategist and adviser.
12. “The strategy has to be the proof to those white, male Democratic blue-collar voters that the economy is better, that their situation in life is better, they’re making more money and able to invest in their families and their futures, and that President Trump is the one helping them to do that.”
“In 08 and 12, Obama’s first real general election campaigning in Florida was both times in Pinellas, and that wasn’t accidental."