Joe Henderson: The preseason is over and the real election season is about to start

Is Party switching rampant in Florida? Not good news for Democrats.

If you grew weary of having your TVs and mailboxes bombarded with political propaganda during the run-up to the Primary Election, here’s some friendly advice:

Hide under the covers for the next two months. Don’t watch TV, and consider having a neighbor or friend screen your mail. Because all that noise around the Primary was just the preseason, an exercise to see which candidates survived cutdown day.

Sorry (not sorry) Anthony Sabatini, turn in your playbook. You didn’t make the cut.

This is another way of saying that Labor Day is upon us, and that means the real election season is just getting started.

For the last couple of weeks, Gov. Ron DeSantis has aired commercials that show how cuddly and likable he can be. His spots show him surrounded by adoring, smiling, and grateful Floridians, befitting his status as a man of action for the people.

Well, most people. Not those “woke” people over there, and certainly not those evil teachers who indoctrinate impressionable school children with dangerous ideas like, oh, being nice to each other.

However, with things getting serious now, I suspect the Governor will retreat from warm and fuzzy and head to the dark side. Let’s face it, he has more money in his campaign coffers than he can reasonably spend.

On second thought. he might want to save some dough for the 2024 White House run (wink, wink).

Even so, we’ll soon see ads comparing Charlie Crist to every evil human who lived.

Charlie the Hun. Charlie Lucifer. Or maybe, Charlie the Wokeness Monster.

Since winning the Democratic gubernatorial Primary, Crist hasn’t been on TV much. He needs to conserve his nickels for the stretch drive, but even with that, he can’t possibly compete with the Governor in an airwaves war. He’ll need a lot more than the $100,000 California Gov. Gavin Newsom contributed.

Oh yes, there are other elections we should watch. Democrat Val Demings, for instance, definitely has the cash to compete with incumbent U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.

But taking out Rubio will require more than money.

Most polls have Rubio ahead, and every time Demings touts her experience as Orlando’s Police Chief — which is nearly every time she opens her mouth — it’s countered by ads and stories of Florida Sheriffs railing against her.

And I’m not sure those repeated ads about Rubio missing too many Senate votes will leave a mark. Maybe she ought to concentrate more on what Rubio does when he shows up to vote.

In the next two months, Demings needs to cast a wider net. She needs to focus on things like Roe v. Wade, Rubio’s allegiance to the National Rifle Association, and, especially, his bowed knee to Donald Trump.

Thanks to gerrymandered districts, we could probably predict the congressional races throughout the state without fear of being wrong.

But local School Board races should be unusually volatile, thanks to DeSantis’ determination to stack those with his acolytes. There will be more dire WOKE and critical race theory warnings in these races than maybe all the others combined.

Sound like fun?

I didn’t think so.