South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Florida headed for scary, uncharted territory
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis is right about one thing.
“The stakes have never been higher,” he says in yet another appeal for money, while sitting on nearly $100 million in the bank.
It’s an obvious boilerplate pitch to get people to contribute. But in this case, it’s also true.
If polls and prognosticators are accurate, and voter turnout trends don’t change dramatically, Republicans are headed for overwhelming victories Tuesday, and Democrats would sink to an all-time low in Florida.
No Democrat will hold statewide office. Republicans may seal super-majorities in both houses of the Legislature and retake both houses of Congress. Black representation by Floridians in Congress will diminish. An autocratic governor will tighten his grip on the third-largest state.
More broadly, Florida will be viewed as Alabama with palm trees. It will no longer be taken seriously as a critical battleground state in national politics except for the obvious presence of Trump and the prospect of a DeSantis presidential run. Out-of-state Democratic money will be non-existent, even with a critically important race ahead in 2024: Sen. Rick Scott seeking re-election while audaciously putting Social Security on the chopping block in a state with millions of seniors.
After DeSantis won by four-tenths of a percentage point four years ago, the recount governor ruled with a ruthlessness as if he got 90% of the vote. Based on these four years, how would he run Florida if he won in a landslide? It’s a frightening proposition.
We have a few clues, none reassuring. Expanded abortion restrictions. A slew of new Federalist Society judges. The open carrying of loaded guns. More elected officials likely will be suspended — they just don’t know it yet.
Speaking of four years ago, voter turnout in the last Florida midterm election was 62.6% statewide. The turnout was 61% in Broward County and 64% in Palm Beach.
In this election, an obvious lack of enthusiasm among Democrats, or the sense that a DeSantis victory is inevitable, is reflected in sluggish turnout so far in South Florida and elsewhere.
Among the 67 counties, nine are strongly Democratic, including the four largest. That means when it comes to turnout, Democrats have no margin for error. They need huge turnouts everywhere they are strong, especially Broward, and that’s not happening.
If you want to see fired-up, enthusiastic voters, look north to metro Atlanta, or go to a DeSantis campaign rally.
Florida Democrats are completely lost, and they know it. As Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book, D-Davie, told the Orlando Sentinel: “Where’s the coordinated campaign to text voters? Where are the phone calls? Where are the phone banks? They don’t exist.”
For decades, former Republican political strategist “Mac” Stipanovich has watched the steady decline of the Florida Democratic Party and barely recognizes it today.
“It’s a Star Wars bar scene of special interest groups,” he said. Now retired, Stipanovich’s disgust with Trump hastened his exit from the Republican Party.
DeSantis has so much hubris, and he’s so certain of defeating Charlie Crist, that in the final days of his own race, he’s tweeting about “saving America” by electing Trumpers and election deniers like Kari Lake and Blake Masters in Arizona.
Campaigning in Clay County Friday in his “Don’t Tread on Florida” tour, DeSantis dismissed Crist as a “worn-out donkey.” Other than that, you might not know he was running for office in Florida.
In a nasal voice that every Iowa farmer may soon recognize, DeSantis railed against Nancy Pelosi, “Joe Biden’s open border,” no-cash bail in New York, the “woke mind virus” and “sex change operations on minors.” Health care? Housing? Property insurance? Forget it.
A big DeSantis victory Tuesday sends Florida to a scary, unknown place.
He has almost $100 million unspent for the next campaign. If Republicans retake Congress, they plan to abolish the Jan. 6 committee and impeach Biden. Crist’s replacement in his redrawn congressional district in Tampa Bay could be Anna Paulina Luna, a Trumper and election denier.
And Trump is expected to soon announce — in Florida, naturally — that he’ll run for president in 2024.