South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Hoye announces run for chair of Florida Democratic Party
Rick Hoye, chair of the Broward Democratic Party, said Wednesday he’s running for chair of the Florida Democratic Party, which is looking for new leadership after disastrous 2022 midterm elections.
“I feel that I am uniquely qualified to move our party forward after the disappointing losses that Florida Democrats have incurred since President Obama won the state twice,” Hoye said in a written statement.
Key to reversing the party’s downward spiral, Hoye said, is a focus on electing Democrats at the local level. “I believe that the Democrats’ long-term success begins with building a bench to strengthen our party.”
Democrats in Florida have huge problems.
They hold no statewide elected offices. From 2002 through 2022, Republicans have won 30 statewide elections and Democrats have won six. Republicans hold huge majorities in the state’s congressional delegation and in the Florida Senate and Florida House.
Fewer candidates at lower offices mean few candidates with the experience to move up the ladder.
With prospects bleak in Florida, national donors who could have helped finance voter registration and turnout efforts in the state put their resources elsewhere, spending in places where Democrats had more of a chance. Their political calculation was proven correct. Unlike Florida, there was no nationwide Republican wave, and Democrats performed much better than many analysts had expected.
Hoye, the first Black elected chair of the Broward Democratic Party, said Florida Republicans have employed “voter suppression in our Black and brown communities,” and said that’s a reason “why we need a fighter as chair of the Democratic
Party.”
(Broward Democrats had a Black interim chairwoman who served briefly a quarter-century ago, but Hoye’s 2022 election was the first time the party elected a top leader who isn’t white.)
“Overpromising is not how I wish to be elected to this position. I am committed to increasing turnout for Democrats statewide in our Black and brown communities and re-engaging with voters in our rural counties that share our Democratic values,” Hoye said.
If elected chair, Hoye said he would work to get Democrats whose vote-by-mail ballot requests have expired re-signed up for local elections this year and the 2024 elections, work with elected officials on a “coordinated effort effort to fund local and statewide voter programs,” develop year-round canvassing and voter registration efforts concentrating on young and minority voters and implementing a “datadriven outreach program that will engage Democratic voters” who haven’t voted in recent years.
Hoye, 43, of Sunrise, is a social studies and American history teacher and has ties to organized labor. He’s a member of the executive board of the Florida State AFL-CIO. He’s a past Broward Democratic Party first vice chair and has served as president of both the Broward Young Democrats and the Greater Sunrise Democratic Club.
Broward has more Democratic registered voters than any other county in Florida, and was one of only five Florida counties, out of 67, won by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist in November.
Though Crist won the county while Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis won statewide, some of the Democrats’ broader problems were on display in Broward. Crist received fewer votes than the 2018 Democratic nominee while DeSantis received more votes than in 2018.
Democrats control all nine County Commission districts, all four congressional districts that take in all or part of the county, and 14 of the county’s 15 state senators and representatives are Democrats, all the countywide elected officials are Democrats.
The state party job is open after Manny Diaz, who’d been under pressure after the 2022 Democratic debacle in Florida, announced he had decided to “retire.”
Democratic leaders could elect a new chair at party meetings later this month in Maitland.