Mitch Perry
Among the headlines of a just-released review on what happened to Florida Democrats in 2014 is a familiar woe: a lack of financial resources to compete with the Republican Party.
The report from the Leadership Expansion to Advance Democrats (LEAD) task force is scheduled to be released to the public on Sunday, but the Florida Democratic Party released it to select reporters on Friday.
“We raised more money in this last election cycle than we ever raised,” Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Allison Tant said Saturday afternoon about the party’s $55 million in the off-year election. “Clearly that still wasn’t enough, (not) when you have someone can write checks from his own checkbooks.”
Her reference was when Gov. Rick Scott‘s tapped his own resources during the final 10 days of the race. Some analysts (and many Democrats) maintain enabled his narrow defeat of Charlie Crist in November.
The report says the party spent $5 million last year on grass-roots organizing, but probably needed to spend $12 million.
“Where we had field, we were able to get the vote out,” said Tant, elected party chair in January 2013 on the campaign pledge of her prowess as a fundraiser. “We had 130 field operators vs. 800 for the presidential election. We had offices in key areas of the state but not in every part of the state, like the Obama campaign was able to have.
“This is a clear example of how grassroots are critically important, but we also have to have the fund the grassroots,” Tant said. “We were outspent 4-to-1 in the northern part of the state on television … when you have that messaging going out with nothing coming back, it’s very difficult to overcome, and that’s another fundraising issue.”
Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the DNC intends to help states hire field directors, something that hadn’t been among their staffing concerns. “We’ll be able to provide resources to build out their found game.”
The two women talked with a handful of reporters a few hours before the Florida Democratic Party’s Leadership Blue Gala began. More than 1,200 were attending the annual summertime fundraising event held in South Florida. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, Hawaii U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, and Maryland U.S. Elijah Cummings were scheduled as keynote speakers.
Tant and Wasserman Schultz dismissed the notion that the FDP is rallying around South Florida U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy as their standard-bearer for the nomination for Senate in 2016.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Tant said when asked whether the party wants to clear a path for Murphy. To a question whether the same was done for Charlie Crist last year, Tant said that wasn’t accurate either. “We didn’t do anything for Charlie that we didn’t do for Nan (Rich).”
Warner, present at the news conference, said he thinks very highly of Murphy. He refused to comment about Alan Grayson, the firebrand Orlando congressman, said to be entering the race soon.
