Unopposed politicians coast back into office

Marty Kiar, Josh Levy and Heather Moraitis all had reasons to pop the champagne for June celebrations. So did the Geller brothers, Steve and Joe.

They’re among the elected officials from Broward County who are already savoring their 2020 election victories — even though voting doesn’t take place for months.

From the County Commission chambers to city halls throughout the county to the state Capitol in Tallahassee, a slew of Broward leaders — along with a handful from Palm Beach County — have been returned to their jobs without the rigors of a campaign. They were automatically re-elected last week when the mid-June deadline for candidates to qualify for the ballot arrived, and no opponents came forward.

The new coronavirus is a major factor.

“The virus has so drastically changed the way people campaign that incumbents are finding less opposition,” said political

consultant David Brown. “In general, the dramatic change in the ability to campaign personally has thwarted a lot of opposition.”

In the era of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s harder than normal for newcomers to attract attention and raise money. And with social distancing, even candidates running in small districts or towns have a challenge when it comes to a mainstay of elections: campaigning by knocking on doors or meeting voters at political clubs, community festivals and parades.

“Once COVID came along, that kind of froze things in place,” said Steve Geller, a Broward County commissioner and former Democratic leader in the Florida Senate. “Because of COVID-19, all of the traditional ways that candidates can run grassroots campaigns aren’t there anymore.”

If political clubs and civic organizations are even meeting these days, it’s through online video, which Geller said means it’s impossible to stop by to meet people and say a few words.

Geller is one of the elected officials who just won another term when no challengers emerged; his brother, Joe, just won another term in the state House of Representatives.

Even public discontent doesn’t always produce challengers — especially this year.

Before the pandemic, Fort Lauderdale was constantly in the news for its deteriorating infrastructure and regular sewer-line breaks that fouled various neighborhoods and waterways. But a majority of the City Commission — Moraitis, Robert McKinzie and Ben Sorensen — didn’t draw challengers. Mayor Dean Trantalis does have a challenger, Kenneth Cooper, and Commissioner Steven Glassman is being challenged by Kyle Gibson.

Door-to-door out

A vital element of campaigning, walking neighborhoods knocking on doors is

out. Even in a large, urban county like Broward, it’s used by many successful candidates.

In 1992, when Debbie Wasserman Schultz first ran for office, a seat in the state House of Representatives, she did it in large part by going door-to-door in Broward’s retiree-filled condominium communities. Now a senior member of the U.S. House, Wasserman Schultz said in 2011 she had “knocked on literally tens of thousands of doors in this community.”

In 2006, when Kiar unseated an incumbent state representative, he did so in large part through months of door-to-door campaigning. Through re-election campaigns, then a successful run for County Commission and his first election for property appraiser, Kiar never stopped door-knocking.

And in 2012, when the late state Rep. Kristin Jacobs unsuccessfully ran for Congress, she used a Segway, the two-wheeled, battery-powered scooter, to visit as many people as possible in various neighborhoods.

Money is scarce

All candidates need money — especially if they can’t campaign in person.

“You need to either be able to raise a lot of money or be able to self-fund your race,” Geller said. Unless there’s a sense an incumbent has done something wrong and is somehow vulnerable, raising money is difficult.

And this year is tougher than usual. It’s harder to raise campaign funds because money is tighter for everyone and in-person fundraising events are out the window.

People paying for their own campaigns, he said, are reluctant to spend $500,000 or $1 million to be called “commissioner,” Geller said, adding a self-funder “wants a sexy title like ‘mayor’ or ‘senator.’”

Hard to beat incumbent

In 2016, when then-Hollywood Mayor Peter Bober decided not to run for re-election, Levy ran for the open seat. In an often-contentious race, he defeated a longtime city commissioner and another candidate who’d served in the state Legislature and on the School Board. This year, Levy won a second term without opposition.

It’s almost always difficult to unseat an elected official running for re-election. Incumbents are known by voters, who have put them in office before, and they have an easier time than raising money.

Broward County, for example, is so populous that each county commissioner represents about 240,000 people, Geller said, which is more than any of the county’s cities.

It’s much easier for someone who isn’t already in the office to wait until term limits force the officeholder to leave or the person who decides to retire. Sometimes that takes a long time. State Attorney Mike Satz, who isn’t running again, was first elected as the county’s prosecutor in 1976. Public Defender Howard Finkelstein was first elected in 2004.

At the same time, Broward has large fields of candidates running for key countywide offices. But they share a common factor: no incumbents. Brown said there’s been a “pent-up demand to run for state attorney or public defender because those offices had been blocked, if you will, for so long.”

There are 10 candidates running for state attorney, 10 running for sheriff, seven running for supervisor of elections, and four running for public defender. None of those offices have incumbents seeking to return to office.

Brown and Geller both said coronavirus, and the resulting inability to do traditional campaigning and raise money, had the greatest effects on people who hadn’t committed to running early on. For people who had decided long ago to run for a particular office, Brown said, “once they got in the race and started raising money, they were going to run.”