‘A day of reckoning’: Miami-Dade GOP celebrates county flip as Democrats mull future

Donald Trump. Photo via AP.

For the first time this century, Miami-Dade County voters sided with a GOP presidential nominee. It was a massive flip with seismic implications for future cycles.

President-elect Donald Trump outpaced Vice President Kamala Harris by 11.4 percentage points in Miami-Dade. The last a Republican at the top of the ticket took the county was when George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by 11 points in 1988.

The effect this year more than trickled down. All five county constitutional offices at stake (Sheriff, Clerk, Tax Collector, Property Appraiser and Supervisor of Elections) went to Miami-Dade Republicans. No congressional seats changed hands. The closest state legislative contest in the county — a rout between controversy-laden Republican Rep. Fabián Basabe and well-funded former Democratic Rep. Joe Saunders — still swung 4 points for the incumbent.

By all accounts, it was a veritable bloodbath. Miami-Dade’s most influential Democratic strategist called it a “day of reckoning.”

As early voting commenced two weeks ago, Republican turnout numbers in the county ticked upward faster than their still-more-populous Democratic counterparts, prompting Miami-Dade GOP Chair Alex Rizo to predict historic returns for his party.

He was right.

“Political scientists are going to be dissecting this election for a while,” he told Florida Politics. “I can’t tell you what’s in store for the Democratic Party, but they’ve really got to look at their leadership and see what they want to do, because I can guarantee you Miami-Dade is going to have more Republicans than Democrats within a year.”

Miami-Dade Democrats today outnumber Republicans by 33,728 voters. They lead independents by a mere 231 voters, according to the county’s most recent tally.

Rizo, a Hialeah Republican who easily secured a third Florida House term Tuesday, attributes his party’s success this cycle to a confluence of factors, from a slate of good candidates, smart strategizing and two divisive ballot initiatives driving voter turnout to Trump’s hyperfocus on two issues top-of-mind for Americans: inflation and immigration.

Miami-Dade Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera, who ran Trump’s successful Sunshine State campaign in 2020, presaged Trump’s win in a Miami Herald op-ed late last month, citing economic woes under President Joe Biden.

Democrats sidestepped voters’ interests and focused on the wrong things, he said, and it was their undoing as independent voters, principally Hispanic independents in Miami-Dade, sided with Republicans who spoke more to their interests.

“What surprised me time and time again was that you would ask voters: What are their top two issues? And it was always immigration and the economy. And when you asked them who they trusted on those issues, they trusted Trump. The equation was pretty simple,” he said.

“But the Democrats — this was a resounding rejection of them over the last four years and what’s happening with all these identity politics and wokeness: ‘Let’s pay for gender changes in jail’ and ‘Let’s let a minor get an abortion.’ You look at videos of Hillary Clinton in 2008 talking about building a wall and deporting people who violate the law. … If you replayed that now, you’d think she was a Republican.”

Cabrera blasted polling from Democratic strategist Christian Ulvert since the Primary that found Harris ahead of Trump in Miami-Dade by as much as 18 points. Other polls Ulvert shared with news outlets this cycle showed Democratic candidates for county offices with huge leads that failed to materialize on Election Day.

That included a September survey Ulvert commissioned from Sarasota-based SEA Polling & Strategic Design, which placed Democrat Annette Taddeo 12 points ahead in the Clerk’s race. Incumbent Republican Juan Fernandez-Barquin ended up winning by 11 points instead. Two years earlier, Republican U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar beat Taddeo by 14.6 points in a race SEA Polling said was a “statistical tie.”

“Ulvert’s polls are full of shit,” Cabrera said. “He said Kamala was up 18 points? In my poll they were tied. I hope people question, a little bit more, his stuff moving forward because I don’t know what his methodology is, but it’s obviously very flawed.”

Of note, polling Ulvert conducted in May correctly projected Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava would beat six challengers by a large enough margin to avoid a runoff.

Ulvert noted Thursday that discrepancies between polling and what happened on Election Day were hardly unique to South Florida. He pointed to reliably Democratic states like Illinois and New Jersey tilting for Harris far less acutely than surveys suggested they would.

The September poll, he said, was more accurate than Tuesday’s results suggest. But by October, several factors had come into play that Republicans better capitalized on in their messaging than Democrats did.

Democrats nationally lacked a concise economic message, Ulvert said, and Iran’s second attack on Israel was more intense, as was media coverage of it, stoking consternation among independents. There was also a “very small but loud faction” within the Democratic Party who “really muddied the message around Israel and freedom,” he said.

“There was a day of reckoning for our national Democrats on message and brand that needs to be heard, and as much as we gave it our all in Miami-Dade, voters — particularly independent and Hispanic voters — went into the ballot box having certain feelings about the brand and let those feelings be known,” Ulvert added.

“When I first saw the results come in in Miami-Dade, that was the exact moment I knew Donald Trump had just secured the presidency again. Miami-Dade is a good bellwether because of the makeup of our population and how our voters perform.”

Global and cultural factors notwithstanding, a comparative dearth of resources did much to hamper progressive efforts in the county, said Miami Gardens Sen. Shevrin Jones, Chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party.

Less money in Florida from the national party, which sent more funds and personnel to states still considered presidential battlegrounds, translated in Miami-Dade into fewer feet on the ground and less ads and mailers supporting Democratic candidates.

Another thing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) didn’t send to Florida: its candidate. Harris sent surrogates to stump for her, including Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and DNC Chair Jaime Harrison. But as Emhoff said at an Oct. 23 rally in Hallandale Beach two weeks before the election, Harris was “literally everywhere” — except Florida.

Meanwhile, Trump was a consistent presence in South Florida and frequently visited Miami-Dade on trips from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach.

“While I think that the national party did what they could, the Harris-Waltz team should have took a greater look at Florida to see what kind of investment it could make, at least in the most populous county in the state,” he said. “And while people understand (Harris) not coming here because she needed to focus on some of these other states, we can’t explain that to people. Her coming here could have made a difference. People look at it as, ‘If you don’t see us as a priority, then we are not going to make it a priority.’”