Get serious, Broward. Vote like it’s 1992 all over again
The People Of Broward Really Can Do It. If They Care Enough, They Vote In Huge Numbers. I’ve Seen It Happen — and The Stakes Weren’t Nearly As High As They Are Now.
November 1992. Hurricane Andrew had ruined parts of Miami-Dade in August. The monster storm would dramatically speed up demographic change across Southwest Broward.
Despite Andrew’s distractions, people demanded change at the ballot box, and got it. With Broward’s help, Bill Clinton wrested the Oval Office away from George H.W. Bush, and Ross Perot was a serious third-party candidate for President.
It was a redistricting year and long-overdue changes happened. For the first time since after the Civil War, Florida elected Black members to Congress — including Alcee Hastings.
It was the first of what would be many victories for a 26-year-old state House candidate, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. It was last call for the Port Everglades Authority, as voters passed a straw ballot to put the port under county control.
The marquee local race that year was for sheriff, but it never materialized because voters couldn’t wait to make a change.
Everybody in town knew Sheriff Nick Navarro was in serious trouble, but few expected his fellow Republicans to drive him from office in a GOP primary. They did. So what should have been a big showdown in November became a cakewalk for Ron Cochran, a career cop who had to learn to be a politician, as Democrats reclaimed the county’s most powerful office after eight years.
Change wasn’t all for the good. One of the worst ideas in Florida history was on the 1992 ballot. “Eight is enough,” mandatory term limits for state politicians, created a revolving-door Legislature ruled by a handful of power brokers with too little sense of the state’s history.
Nothing could stop people from voting in Broward that year. The result was a Democratic landslide.
The only Republican who won countywide was the folksy Bill Markham, the property appraiser who had stuck around since 1968 by holding down property values (and taxes) on all those Democratic condos.
Back then, the vast majority of voters had to show up on election day. Early voting did not yet exist. You had to ask Supervisor of Elections Jane Carroll for an “absentee ballot.”
Sun Sentinel columnist Gary Stein reported 65 people in line outside First Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale at 6:30 a.m., a half hour before the polls opened. “For one remarkable day,” Stein wrote, “you really couldn’t find apathy in Broward.”
The county turnout that November was
82.5 percent, the highest ever in Broward, just a fraction below the statewide average of 83 percent.
With a month of voting by mail and two full weeks of early voting set to start Monday, it is much easier to vote now.
Some things have not changed. Broward’s significance in statewide politics remains its immense Democratic firepower, but too many times since 1992 it has sputtered, with turnout falling short of expectations. If it happens this time, it will make it easier for President Trump to win again.
The bigger the turnout in Broward, the harder it is for Trump to find as many Republican votes in Destin, Fort Myers, The Villages and dozens of other places. But Florida Republicans have once again proven their superiority at registering voters by narrowing the Democrats’ statewide voter-roll advantage to its lowest point, about 134,000.
There are 1,266,991 voters in Broward this election and 633,795 are Democrats, almost exactly 50%. Simply put, not enough of them are demanding mail ballots. It’s possible most other Democrats will vote in person, but I doubt it.
Early voting has lost a lot of its appeal during the pandemic. Supervisor of Elections Pete Antonacci was asked in a Village Square forum this week if he expects lines at early voting sites, like Atlanta.
“No,” Antonacci said, except possibly the Sunday before election day for a last-minute surge after church known as “souls to the polls.”
As of Friday, 325,941 Democrats, just over half of the county total, had requested mail ballots. That’s not enough. It doesn’t feel like ’92.