Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Expect parade of hopefuls to begin
Democratic primary could be a free-for-all
One year from now, Florida’s Democratic presidential primary could be a free-for-all featuring scores of candidates seeking voters’ support. And the political positioning has already begun.
Having endured $229 million in political ads during the heated campaigns of 2018, Florida residents can also expect another surge in ads and personal appearances over the next 12 months, especially in Democratic-leaning regions such as Central and South Florida.
Florida Democrats are petitioning the party’s national committee to hold one of the first debates in the state in either Miami or Orlando. The state party has launched a program for this sum-
mer called Organizing Corps 2020 designed to train and identify political talent.
The crowded field for Florida primary on March 17, 2020, is reminiscent of the 2016 Republican race, said Tallahassee GOP operative Mac Stipanovich, but there’s one key difference.
“What you don’t see in the Democratic field is a Trump,” said Stipanovich, an outspoken “Never Trump” Republican. “Trump was random and unexpected … someone just off the hook in terms of being nontraditional. Bernie Sanders was unusual in 2016 – but he’s not so unusual today. He’ll have to fight for his lane.”
But even as the state prepares, Florida’s importance in the presidential race might be in danger of slipping.
Democrats are focusing on winning back Midwestern states such as Wisconsin and Michigan, snubbing Miami to hold its 2020 convention in Milwaukee.
Florida’s primary also is scheduled on the same day as Illinois and two weeks after Super Tuesday and its 10 primaries, including delegate-heavy California and Texas.
Jeff Weaver, senior advisor for U.S. Sen. Sanders, I-Vermont, told Buzzfeed that the Sanders campaign is focusing on the first five states of California, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada as his path to victory.
Sanders volunteers in Florida, however, say they’re not going to wait for the national campaign this time around.
“We have to take it upon ourselves,” said Stacey Bucek, of Winter Park, who led Sanders’ grassroots efforts in Orlando in 2015 and 2016. “We have to take the initiative and not sit around and wait. The [national] campaign delayed extremely long last time, waiting until essentially two weeks or less before the primary before opening an office.”
Sanders ended up losing to Hillary Clinton by a margin of 64 to 33 percent in Florida, despite being bolstered by a surprise win in Michigan the week before.
“A lot of things went wrong,” Bucek said.
Already this year, Bucek and fellow organizer Ricardo Williams have held a watch party at Graffiti Junktion in College Park for Sanders’ town hall on CNN last month. Organizers have also planned biking meetups for Sanders and a presence at Earth Day at Lake Eola.
Williams compared the early Sanders activity with Clinton supporters who had worked on her campaign in 2008. “When 2016 came around, they were ready to go,” he said.
So far, Sanders has held sizable leads in recent polls of announced candidates, usually with about 25 to 27 percent of the vote over other hopefuls including U.S. Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker.
But when Joe Biden is added to the mix, he takes the lead over Sanders. The former vice president still hasn’t declared despite reports he was telling lawmakers he would soon announce.
Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, announced he was running on Wednesday. Also in the field so far are South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam, former Cabinet member Julian Castro, U.S. Reps. John Delaney and Tulsi Gabbard, western governors John Hickenlooper and Jay Inslee, and entrepreneurs Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang.
Florida political staffers, with no candidate from their home state except for Messam, also have spread out far and wide.
Sanders’ new national campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, is from Melbourne, while Klobuchar’s press secretary, Carlie Waibel, worked for both U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum in Florida in 2018.
Two more Nelson alums, Greg Goddard and Stefanie Sass, are working for Klobuchar and Harris in the South, respectively, while former state party data director Alex Barbieri works for Warren in Iowa.
Klobuchar planned to be in Tampa on Sunday for a climate change roundtable, while Harris visited South Florida last weekend after having campaigned for Nelson in the state in October. Booker also campaigned for Nelson and Gillum last year, including a rally at the University of Central Florida.
Many candidates have joined Sanders in backing some of his key issues, including Medicare for All, climate change policies such as the Green New Deal and minimum wage increases.
Sanders supporter Ricky Ly, a food writer from Orlando, said Sanders was the only candidate with consistency.
“My question is, where were you in 2016?” Ly said. “What were you for if you weren’t for [those issues] then?”
But Democratic consultant Dick Batchelor said Sanders was too far left to win in Florida, especially after Gillum, who was backed by Sanders, failed to bring out voters in key areas such as Broward County despite conventional wisdom that his popularity among young and African American voters would help the more moderate Nelson.
In the end, Nelson, who lost his Senate seat to former Gov. Rick Scott, ended up outperforming Gillum statewide.
“In fact, most Democrats are looking for somebody more moderate,” Batchelor said.
He raised the adage that general election campaigns are like football games, fought and won in the middle of the field, “but now the right has moved so far right and the left so far left you can’t get back to the middle of the field. We’re at the 10-yard lines now.”
More than ideology, Batchelor said, Democrats want to know, “Can you beat Trump?”
Williams said polls show the economic issues Sanders espouses are popular with voters across the spectrum, even Republicans. He said Sanders is the candidate who can best sell them – despite the “Democratic Socialist” label.
“Yes, he identifies as a Democratic Socialist, but there’s a huge difference between a Democratic Socialist and a Socialist,’’ Williams said. “People are hurting economically, and there’s a lot of economic injustice.”