Hillsborough County Dems tap Vanessa Lester as Chair, chart a new path forward

The Hillsborough County Democratic Party has elected Vanessa Lester as its new Chair, replacing longtime leader Ione Townsend.

Townsend announced she would not seek re-election following devastating results for the party after the November election. In selecting Lester, the party chose the perceived progressive candidate to lead the party through its uncertain period of rebuilding rather than the establishment pick in Rep. Susan Valdes.

The move signals that the party may be opting to move further left in an effort to boost voter turnout among those disenchanted with mainstream strategies, or who simply crave a new path forward. But conversations with party members suggest that path may be less about issues viewed as “progressive” and more about reaching voters who have either fallen out of favor or who can be persuaded to their side.

In any case, it’s the party’s first step toward rebuilding after losing ground in county offices for the second election cycle in a row. That includes losing another seat on the Hillsborough County Commission, handing the GOP a 5-2 majority after Republicans only just claimed its majority two years ago.

Additionally, Democrats lost control of the Clerk of Courts, with former Republican County Commissioner Victor Crist defeating incumbent Democrat Cindy Stuart. Local Democrats also suffered a blow when voters elected for the first time Republican Suzy Lopez over Democrat Andrew Warren, who had been removed from office by Gov. Ron DeSantis and replaced by Lopez.

Lester is nonbinary and Black, making them the first gender nonconforming person of color to lead the party in Hillsborough County. Some who spoke to Florida Politics on condition of anonymity say they have heard members of the Hillsborough Society, regular donors to the party, are now considering withholding donations. Others wonder whether those members are actively being lobbied to do so in defiance of a leftward shift some believe will only push the Democratic Party further into despair in a county that, up until two years ago, had been consistently shifting in their direction.

Regardless of which candidate won out this week, the rift is appearing as a symptom of a larger problem, one that suggests the party is drifting apart at a time when it should be coming together.

Sources who spoke with Florida Politics reported wildly different views of the party’s best path forward. Some argued Valdes would have offered a more centrist approach that would expand the party’s umbrella, while others said fresh perspectives and strategies could reengage voters who have sat on the sidelines, perhaps even wooing new voters to vote blue.

Reasonable people can disagree on how the party should move forward. There is value to the idea that progressive policies — which have largely been labeled by the political right as “woke” and been made the bogeyman of the GOP — have left middle-of-the-road voters, including those who have bucked party loyalty, disengaged in or even disenchanted by recent elections. So too is there value in the argument that by running from the center, younger voters and those with progressive views have been left out.

What is more difficult to argue against is the two-plus year slide Democrats have experienced not just in Hillsborough County, but throughout the state, which has thus far been unstopped by the party’s status quo.

Like Lester or not, they are entering their leadership role as a change-maker intent on getting more involved throughout Hillsborough County, including both neighborhoods that are already blue and those that have historically trended more conservative.

Lester, in their platform for Chair, directly acknowledged the party’s plight, noting major gains from 2016 through 2020 that included flipping some legislative seats, gaining a supermajority on the Hillsborough County School Board (though it’s technically nonpartisan) and winning a supermajority on the County Commission. But their platform also recognizes defeats in 2022 and 2024 that undid those gains.

“We cannot keep using the same playbook while expecting different results,” Lester wrote. “We can no longer simply rely on a significant voter registration advantage — that reality no longer exists.”

Lester’s answer lies in coalition building, one that targets not just Democrats, but the nearly one-third of voters in the state who are registered without party affiliation. Their platform involves more than get-out-the-vote efforts centered around the final 100 days of campaigns and instead adds emphasis to community canvassing to reach those who need convincing.

And there’s something else Lester ran on that could be a driving force for Hillsborough County Dems as they rebuild: a focus on intersectionality.

Speaking with Florida Politics, Lester rejected being painted into the progressive box, or any box for that matter.

“I’m the definition of intersectionality based on lived experiences,” they said.

The Democratic Party writ large — and Republicans are not immune to this either — has wrestled with varying priorities. A person may be deeply progressive on one issue, but centrist on another. As a veteran, a person of color and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Lester brings firsthand experience to the Chair role as it relates to discussing issues with voters across ideologies and life experiences.

Lester said the strategy will center on listening to voters and responding to their needs.

That is an approach that has long plagued Democrats throughout Florida. The GOP has had broad success reaching voters on issues that matter to them. The party caters its platform each election cycle nearly person-by-person, and at least community-by-community, responding to voters’ concerns based on what they report.

The Democratic Party, meanwhile, has been more focused on high level issues such as abortion. Defeating Donald Trump was directly part of the playbook in 2020 and 2024, and was featured indirectly in the 2022 Midterms as a repudiation of the once- and future-President’s Make America Great Again movement.

It was a strategy that saw some success in 2020 and was successful in other states in 2022. But it proved a flop in Florida.

Lester plans to change that, welcoming all voters to express their concerns freely, without interruption.

With new leadership at the helm in Hillsborough County, Democrats have the opportunity to start fresh and create a new playbook. Does that mean eliminating the referendum on Trump and his policies, or laying off the abortion argument?

Certainly not. Trump’s next term in office may well give Democrats plenty of fodder on which to run, and if his proposed tariffs are as bad for the economy and average Americans as economists predict, there will no doubt be backlash on which to capitalize. Likewise, 57% of voters in Florida supported protecting abortion rights, not enough to pass the constitutional amendment, but enough to prove the issue has teeth.

But the 2024 election — and to a large degree the 2022 election — proved that those issues are not enough. Democrats were up against a series of laws and regulations passed in recent years making it harder for some to vote, and harder for third-party groups to register voters. It would be foolhardy to ignore the implications that may have had on election outcomes the past two cycles, but it would be more foolhardy not to acknowledge that not enough was done to mitigate those impacts.

Here again, Lester has a plan, which includes reimplementing voter registration efforts that were put on hold amid new voter registration laws that impose strict deadlines and steep fines if they are missed, up to $250,000 per organization per calendar year. To avoid potential fines, Lester plans to work with third-party voter registration groups that have successfully navigated new laws to safely relaunch voter registration drives.

If it is to shift the pendulum back toward the left, the Hillsborough County Democratic Party likely needs to take an “all of the above” approach going forward, nodding to any pitfalls arising from a second Trump presidency, continuing to spotlight the dangers of strict abortion bans, expanding the party’s umbrella, tailoring messages, increasing voter registration efforts and better reaching all voters.

There’s nothing to say that Valdes, had she been elected Chair, would not have done that. The Representative from Tampa has an impeccable election record, winning four straight elections for the House after successfully running for Hillsborough County School Board. Her experience navigating the political environment in Tallahassee should be tapped into, even if she fell short on the party leadership election.

But by choosing Lester, the party may have just taken its first step in healing the battle wounds of the past two cycles by acknowledging the need for change.

Whether Lester is able to translate their win into victories for the county party remains to be seen, but it’s certain the party will need to rally around its new leader, not speculate about what might have been had the vote gone a different way.

And pulling funding out of protest because some didn’t get their way, well, that’s definitely the opposite of what the party needs right now.