Staff Reports
Last Call – A prime-time read of what’s going down in Florida politics.
First Shot
Two weeks after Kamala Harris became the presumptive (now official) Democratic presidential nominee, the party has closed the gap with Republicans. And then some.
As of Wednesday, the RealClearPolitics polling average shows Harris with an advantage in the General Election.
It’s minor – just 0.6 percentage points – but it represents a massive shift from former President Donald Trump’s inarguable polling advantage over the past few months.
No national polls in the average taken after July 31 have shown Trump in the lead. Meanwhile, Harris’ advantage has hovered between two and three percentage points in polls released this week from CBS News,NPR/PBS/Marist and Economist/YouGov.
However, the polls showing Harris has vaulted into the lead were all conducted before she announced her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Despite Trump’s claim that running mate picks don’t matter, his polling slump coincided with his selection of Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance as his No. 2. His presence on the ticket continues to be divisive, and he is especially unpopular among women and voters with college degrees.
Few polls have measured Walz’s favorability, and in those that have, a large majority of voters said they didn’t know him – or at least didn’t know enough to form an opinion.
The few voters who did pick a side shared mixed opinions, but he still managed to clear the low bar set by his GOP counterpart, who is somewhere between three and nine percentage points underwater in major polls.
Evening Reads
–“Kamala Harris chooses comfort food: Will America bite?” via Jonathan Martin of POLITICO Magazine
–”Harris campaign plans to deploy Tim Walz as her anti-MAGA ‘sledgehammer’” via Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez of Rolling Stone
—“’Weird’ is a rebuke to Republican dominance politics” via Katy Waldman of The New Yorker
–”Campaigning hard in the Midwest, Harris and JD Vance cross paths on airport tarmac” via The Associated Press
–”Why Harris’ fundraising spree might prove more valuable than Trump’s” via Nicole Narea of Vox
–”How Walz embraced Minnesota’s leftward shift” via Jonathan Weisman of The New York Times
–”Elon Musk’s plan for monster rocket rattles Florida’s Space Coast” via Susan Pulliam and Micah Maidenberg of The Wall Street Journal
–”It’s getting worse for Vance” via Aaron Blake of The Washington Post
–“I did something stupid” via Chris Cillizza of So What
–”Having a chance has changed the Democrats” via Stephanie McCrummen of The Atlantic
–“Faculty unions sue FSU, UF, FL Board of Governors over rights to arbitrate employment disputes” via Jackie Llanos of the Florida Phoenix
–”Red Bull’s potential NBA entry with Las Vegas franchise” via David Skilling of Culture of Sport
–”Pitbull is getting his own stadium. It’s called Pitbull Stadium.” via Herb Scribner of The Washington Post
Quote of the Day
“We need true articulation and conversation about policy and constituency services, not wack dis records with half-truths and crappy beats.”
– Rep. Angie Nixon, on a video allegedly put out by Brenda Priestly Jackson’s campaign.
Put it on the Tab
Look to your left, then look to your right. If you see one of these people at your happy hour haunt, flag down the bartender and put one of these on your tab. Recipes included, just in case the Cocktail Codex fell into the well.
Pour Angie Nixon a Gunfire for the shots she took over a campaign video allegedly put together by Brenda Priestly Jackson’s campaign.
Republican House candidate Nick Primrose gets a Doctor’s Orders after landing an endorsement from the Florida Medical Association.
Pour a Skate Punk Punch for Andy Macdonald and Dallas Oberholzer, who proved that the “older guys” can still compete with the young’uns.
Breakthrough Insights
Tune In
Lyles aims for legendary status in Paris
The World’s Fastest Man, Noah Lyles, goes for a double in the Olympic sprints as he prepares for the 200-meter final at the Paris Olympics (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC/Peacock).
Lyles, a Gainesville native, won the 100-meter dash in the closest finish in Olympic history. Lyles edged Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson by five-thousandths of a second to win the premier race at The Games.
Lyles will seek to join an elite group of sprinters who have won gold in the 100 meters and 200 meters at the same Olympic Games. Nine other men have achieved the feat, including Usain Bolt, who accomplished the double three times, Carl Lewis, and Jesse Owens.
Lyles aims to join the legendary group. He has already run the fastest 200-meter time this year, clocking a 19.53 at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore. in June.
Lyles also owns the American record in the 200 meters. He ran 19.31 two years ago in Eugene, the third-fastest 200 meters in history. Only world record holder Bolt (19.19) and fellow Jamaican Yohan Blake (19.26) have ever run faster.
Lyles is also trying to become the first American to win gold in the Olympic 200 meters since Michael Johnson set a then-world record in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Johnson’s time of 19.32 stood as the American record for 28 years before Lyles broke it by 0.01 seconds.
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Last Call is published by Peter Schorsch, assembled and edited by Phil Ammann and Drew Wilson, with contributions from the staff of Florida Politics.
