Lloyd Dunkelberger
Buoyed by a win in a special election for a state Senate seat last month, Florida Democrats are using a three-day party conference to prepare plans for the critical 2018 election year when they hope to retain a U.S. Senate seat and reclaim the governor’s mansion.
“Winning is so good. Let’s get used to it,” Stephen Bittel, chairman of the state party, told delegates and activists in a Saturday afternoon meeting at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort.
Sen. Annette Taddeo‘s Sept. 26 victory in a special election for Miami-Dade County’s Senate District 40, which was previously held by a Republican, is being taken as a sign by Democrats that they can compete in a non-presidential election year when Democratic turnout has historically lagged.
Former state Sen. Jeremy Ring, a Broward County Democrat who is running for state chief financial officer, said the Senate win has helped counter some of the traditional mid-term “apathy” the party has faced in past elections.
“The Taddeo race for the first time since I have been in Florida demonstrated enthusiasm in the midterms,” Ring said.
One of the factors in the race was the ability of Democrats to tie Taddeo’s Republican opponent, former state Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, to President Donald Trump. And while cautioning the 2018 general election is still a year away, Democrats say Trump may be a motivating factor for their party.
“Trump, plus 20 years of Republican control of this state,” said former state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink about what factors could make next year a “wave election” in favor of Democrats.
“We’re not addressing transportation issues. We’re not addressing public education issues. Look at where we are on environmental issues. Our state could be so much better off,” said Sink, who narrowly lost the 2010 governor’s race to Republican Gov. Rick Scott.
Sink, who helped found the Ruth’s List organization that recruits women to run for local and state offices in Florida, said she is finding more highly qualified candidates willing to challenge Republicans, pointing to candidates ready to run against GOP incumbents in congressional districts in the Daytona Beach and Sarasota areas.
“We’re optimistic,” Sink said.
Ring, who is the most visible Democrat running for a state Cabinet seat, said it is too early to say if the majority of next year’s electorate will tilt toward Democrats.
“We know the liberal Democratic base is engaged like never before. We know the Trump supporters aren’t going to change their minds. So what is the other 80 percent going to do?” he said. “They’re still disengaged.”
But he said if Republicans remain unable to pass major legislation in Washington, D.C., it could turn the election in the Democrats’ favor. “But I’m not here to predict 12 months out,” he said.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, who addressed the conference in a luncheon speech, cautioned party activists that they have to do more than just oppose Trump’s policies. Nelson is the only current statewide elected Democrat.
“It is our responsibility not just to criticize them, not just to criticize the president,” Nelson said. “It’s our responsibility, not only as Democrats but as Americans, to do what we can to right the ship.”
Asked about a potential challenge from Scott for the U.S. Senate seat, Nelson said he is taking nothing for granted.
“I approach every race like it’s going to be the toughest,” he said, adding that he is not ready to embrace the theory that an anti-Trump wave will help Democrats next year. “Anything can happen in that time.”
The defense of Nelson’s seat is one of the many challenges facing the party next year.
The governor’s race, which the Democrats have not won since 1994, remains muddled, with three major announced candidates but with more expected to join the race.
Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum was the most visible candidate for much of Saturday, talking to delegates and attending meetings. He was scheduled to be joined by former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham of Tallahassee and Winter Park developer Chris King in an evening forum.
Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine is expected to join the governor’s race next week, while Orlando trial lawyer John Morgan remains another potential candidate who may not make a decision until next year.
Another challenge for the Democrats is a lack of prominent candidates, other than Ring, for the three open state Cabinet seats for attorney general, agriculture commissioner and chief financial officer.
“I think there is impatience, which there always is with that inside-baseball crowd. But we’ve got a year to go,” Ring said, noting recent talk about state Rep. Sean Shaw possibly running for attorney general.
The Taddeo victory was an indicator that Democrats could work to further reduce the Republican majority in the state Senate, where the GOP holds 24 of the 40 seats. But that effort hit a setback, at least temporarily, when the next leader of the Senate Democrats, Jeff Clemens of Lake Worth, abruptly resigned his seat Friday after apologizing for having an affair with a lobbyist.
Democrats had been talking about making a serious bid for a half-dozen Senate seats next year, along with defending Taddeo’s seat. But former state Sen. Steve Geller, who is now a Broward County commissioner, said that is unrealistic without an influx of national money in the state races, where Republicans have a major financial edge.
“We’re going to have to concentrate on two or three seats unless we get national money,” Geller said.
But state party leaders are working to draw national attention to even local contests and state legislative races, making the pitch it will help in future presidential campaigns.
“We have worked hard to make sure the races and the wins that we have here in our state are being recognized throughout the country,” Sally Boynton Brown, president of the Florida Democratic Party, told the delegates.
She said victories like Taddeo’s Senate win help the party convince national donors that Florida is not “too big, too hard, too expensive” for the Democrats.
“We’re proving them wrong,” she said.
2 comments
Christopher M. Kennard
October 29, 2017 at 7:50 am
As a long time civil rights, environmental, Labor Movement, and Peace Movement activist involved for nearly 50 years on the ground in the grassroots level of organizing voters to elect good, honest people who retained their personal, professional and political integrity, how in the world are these so-called corporate Democrats going to convince me to vote for their distasteful choices to be elected to our already corrupt government?
The larger task that had been ahead of the Florida Democratic Party is to “sell” the shift made over the last couple of decades, from being “South Florida” Democrats, long a powerful minority group, and the “Dixie Democrats” who ruled Florida and the State of Florida since the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War, with few exceptions over the years, to the new corporate-industry-financiers establishment wing Democrats as has been exemplified by the notorious Hillary-Billy Clinton clan. The names changed, but not very many of the policies or political ideology of “controlling” the American people to keep them working to serve the interests of the powerful, mega-wealthy few.
This is the so-called new “Democratic Party” of Florida who were fully involved and guilty of election fraud during the 2016 presidential primary against the old fashion Democratic Party’s progressive wing’s candidate, Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who would have likely been elected as President over Trump faction the Democrats helped put into power by their election fraud.
Do the new “southern” corporate Democratic Party so-called “leaders” really believe Florida voters are going to elect more corrupt politicians who follow the same corrupt policies as their political bedfellows, the Republican establishment wing?
I know far too many Florida voters who remain registered Democrats who will not fall in line, but rather, we will create our own political movement, the people’s peaceful political revolution, and elect people like Bernie Sanders on the local, state and federal level in the years to come.
This is the group who continues to oppose legalizing cannabis and hemp crops once again, by ending the immoral “Prohibition of Marihuana” which was a scam pulling the wool over the eyes of voters back in the 1930’s to earn billions of dollars for the petroleum and plastics industries by making hemp, the earth friend, biodegradable safe choice to use, illegal in America. The same group that facilitated smuggling cocaine into the United States to distribute in the inner city communities heavily populated by black folks when Billy Clinton was Governor of Arkansas, working with George sr. Bush to raise money for the Iran-Contra scheme to topple the Sandinista government in the 1980’s and taking this operation over when the Bush-Clinton teams of establishment politicians switched places and Billy became President.
Christopher M. Kennard
October 29, 2017 at 7:56 am
Christopher M. Kennard
October 29, 2017 at 7:50 am
As a long time civil rights, environmental, Labor Movement, and Peace Movement activist involved for nearly 50 years on the ground in the grassroots level of organizing voters to elect good, honest people who retained their personal, professional and political integrity, how in the world are these so-called corporate Democrats going to convince me to vote for their distasteful choices to be elected to our already corrupt government?
The larger task that had been ahead of the Florida Democratic Party is to “sell” the shift made over the last couple of decades, from being “South Florida” Democrats, long a powerful minority group, and the “Dixie Democrats” who ruled Florida and the State of Florida since the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War, with few exceptions over the years, to the new corporate-industry-financiers establishment wing Democrats as has been exemplified by the notorious Hillary-Billy Clinton clan. The names changed, but not very many of the policies or political ideology of “controlling” the American people to keep them working to serve the interests of the powerful, mega-wealthy few.
This is the so-called new “Democratic Party” of Florida who were fully involved and guilty of election fraud during the 2016 presidential primary against the old fashion Democratic Party’s progressive wing’s candidate, Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who would have likely been elected as President over Trump faction the Democrats helped put into power by their election fraud.
This is the group who continues to oppose legalizing cannabis and hemp crops once again, by ending the immoral “Prohibition of Marihuana” which was a scam pulling the wool over the eyes of voters back in the 1930’s to earn billions of dollars for the petroleum and plastics industries by making hemp, the earth friend, biodegradable safe choice to use, illegal in America. The same group that facilitated smuggling cocaine into the United States to distribute in the inner city communities heavily populated by black folks when Billy Clinton was Governor of Arkansas, working with George sr. Bush to raise money for the Iran-Contra scheme to topple the Sandinista government in the 1980’s and taking this operation over when the Bush-Clinton teams of establishment politicians switched places and Billy became President.
Do the new “southern” corporate Democratic Party so-called “leaders” really believe Florida voters are going to elect more corrupt politicians who follow the same corrupt policies as their political bedfellows, the Republican establishment wing?
I know far too many Florida voters who remain registered Democrats who will not fall in line, but rather, we will create our own political movement, the people’s peaceful political revolution, and elect people like Bernie Sanders on the local, state and federal level in the years to come.
See you on the streets as I continue to speak with voters, and at the ballot box on election day.
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