Democrats pursuing blue wave in Florida

Party, other organizations target millennial voters

The sweeping victories won by Democrats in Virginia this month were spearheaded by a spike in turnout among one group in particular — millennials.

Now, local and national political organizations have targeted Florida as one of the next battlegrounds to energize that younger generation to vote — or even run for office.

“Young voters are more likely to turn out when there’s people like them on the ballot,” said Olivia Bercow, a spokeswoman for the group NextGen America. “Young and diverse and talking about issues they care about.”

NextGen was founded by billionaire Tom Steyer, who also has funded TV ads and billboards pushing for President Donald Trump’s impeachment. The group is also one of several progressive organizations focused on turning out young voters, including Flippable, Mobilize-America and Run For Something.

Turnout in the Nov. 7 election in Virginia among 18- to 29year-olds, Bercow said, was up 10 percent from 2013. Those young voters came to the polls, she and others said, in part because of

strong down-ballot candidates — those running in local and state house races — and in turn created what one called “reverse coattails” that helped the gubernatorial candidate at the top of the ticket.

“I’ve been in politics for 25 years, and one thing I can say with wisdom is there is no ‘conventional wisdom’ anymore,” said Ross Morales Rocketto, co-founder of Run For Something.

The group hopes to follow up its successful 2017 campaigns by recruiting 50,000 people nationally to run in 2018, with the goal of ultimately getting 1,000 candidates on ballots across the country on Election Day.

Already, the group has endorsed state House District 47 Democratic candidate Anna Eskamani, 27, running in the central Orange County district to succeed outgoing state Rep. Mike Miller, R-Winter Park.

Veterans of the Virginia election also agreed on another strategy for Democrats — leaving no election uncontested.

Democrats flipped at least 15 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates thanks to running serious candidates in many seats they hadn’t contested before. That’s a notable difference from Florida Democrats’ current strategy of defending the one-third of state House seats they already have.

In a special election in October for state House District 44 in Orange County — where Hillary Clinton won handily in 2016 — Democrats, for example, only fielded one little-known candidate who then withdrew after the ballot deadline.

That left final Democratic candidate Eddy Dominguez’s name off the ballot entirely. But he still did better than any Democratic state House candidate in years.

“Virginia showed the potential for a blue wave, if people have candidates to support,” said Catherine Vaughan of Flippable. “I do think people have to run everywhere.”

Rocketto called 2018 “the year of the down-ballot campaigns,” saying Democrats need to run local candidates knowledgeable about local issues.

“If we as a party are going to do well nationally, the way we’re going to do it isn’t investing in fancy TV ads,” he said. “It’s investing in

really local races, including city council races and school boards.”

Issues important to millennials according to surveys, Nercow said, include health care, college affordability and immigration — many of the same issues, she said, as older voters.

And sometimes, issues can be really local. In Virginia, Danica Roem, the first transgender person elected to the state House, ran on one issue — “Traffic,” said Rocketto. “Traffic was the only thing she talked about.”

Ricardo Williams, founder of the Orlando chapter of the Bernie Sanders-affiliated group Our Revolution, stressed the need for Democrats to reach out to voters in every county.

“There’s a lot of young progressive voters in red states or what are considered red counties” who could turned out to vote or recruited to run, he said. Though he did acknowledge there were issues where they could differ with mainstream liberal positions, such as the pro-gun rights progressives who ran in several states including Montana and Kansas this year.

“People progressive in some areas are not that progressive in other areas,” he said. “But there are folks who, if you speak to them, there is some common ground.”

While the surge in millennial voting helped Democrats this year, Central Florida Republicans counter that their message appeals to the age group as well.

“I think both our organization and the College Republicans in the area do a really great job marketing to that 18-40 demographic,” said Anna Taylor, vice president of the Orange County Young Republicans.

Taylor pointed to former presidents of her Young Republicans chapter who have gone on to run for elected office, including John Newstreet, Eric Eisnaugle and Eddie Fernandez.

But in Florida, with so many Republicans already in office, getting young GOP candidates to run isn’t always easy.

“Here our seats are kind of filled,” she said — noting incumbents including Bob Cortes and Rene Plasencia. “It’s hard in the state of Florida with the way leadership is run to run against an incumbent. If there were more open seats, we’d definitely be pushing people to run.”

One of Taylor’s counterparts, Rasha Mubarak, president of the Young Democrats of Orange County, said the level of engagement following Trump’s election boded well for her party’s future.

“In the first meeting right after the presidential election, we probably had the largest turnout we’ve ever had,” she said. “People were unhappy, disenchanted, saying, ‘I want to do something about it. I want to step up.’

“One day we’ll be running their campaigns,” she said.