Rosanne Dunkelberger
Back in the day, there was a joke about a man leading a donkey, and for days the thirsty animal would beg for water. The man would tell the beast over and over, “patience, jackass, patience.” The tale would go on and on until one listener would finally break and insist the person get to the point, at which time the storyteller would tell them, “patience, jackass, patience.”
It seems a particularly apropos metaphor for Monday’s Capital Tiger Bay Club as a panel of Democratic operatives discussed the state of their party and how it might break the current GOP stranglehold on elected offices statewide.
In short, the three experts with decades of experience working on campaigns, fundraising and strategy hold out hope for a Democratic renaissance, but the course correction could take decades — and the jackass will have to remain patient.
In his opening comments, Gary Fineout, the panel’s moderator and reporter for POLITICO Florida, pointed out Republicans have more than a million more active voters on the rolls than Democrats.
“What can we do? We can go register some goddamn voters is what we can do. That would be a good start,” said Beth Matuga, who has spent 25 years in Florida Democratic politics. “Republicans, to their great credit, enacted a 20 or 25 year plan, 20 or 25 years ago that’s worked.
“We didn’t get in this fix overnight and we won’t get out of it overnight. We should realistically be considering a 20-to-25-year plan to rebuild, not a 24-month plan to rebuild.”
For several cycles, Democrats thought if only they had “the perfect candidate, the perfect thing,” victory would happen at the top of the ticket, said Ashley Walker, who was Florida State Director for Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and is now a partner at Mercury Public Affairs. But they were not paying attention to the fundamental fact that the party was dropping statistically.
“I think the big piece is voter registration and I think that that’s statewide, but going regionally, finding places like Duval that’s purple where we had a big win with (Jacksonville Mayor) Donna Deegan and getting back on track in Miami,” Walker said. “We need to really get back to the fundamentals and start winning in some of those regional places first.”
While Florida has reddened relatively quickly, panelist Ryan Ray sees a blue light peeking through.
“This is a state where the same electorate in November voted 56% for recreational marijuana. Fifty seven percent voted to support a woman’s right to choose a constitutional right to privacy that’s been undone by Republicans,” said Ray, the Chair of the Leon County Democratic Party. “The voters are there. It’s all about political infrastructure and we’re working on it.”
The panelists copped to the problems that come along with being Florida’s “big tent” party, with plenty of wedge issues, and the not-necessarily-deserved hoity-toity image that comes with a large college-educated cohort.
“The Democratic Party ought to be the party of working people, going back to Franklin Roosevelt and all the great advances we’ve seen since,” Ray argued. “The Democratic Party has made America a good country, and liberals have made it good over the objections of conservatives over and over again. I think people that work for a living, everyday folks, have been the base historically, and still should be.”
When asked what issues such voters could get on board with, Walker answered, “affordability.”
“I think they cannot afford their insurance. Their kids can’t afford to live here when they get out of college, so they’re going to other cities that are more affordable,” she said. “These are all things that over time we have to address and I think that quite frankly — in a state where Republicans have ruled the Governor’s mansion, all the cabinet positions, and the state Legislature for quite some time — they’ve made zero headway. Those are issues we have some real solutions to that we need to be talking about more.”
“Managing expectations” seems to be the watchword for Florida Democrats in the next election cycle.
“I’m not going to sit up here and say that we’re going to run the table in 2026,” Walker said. “I do think nationally Democrats will do well. I do a lot of work in other states and things look good there. We have a lot of work to do here in Florida, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have victories. We have to define what those victories are so that donor investment, voter investment, candidate investment — they want to be a part of that because we’re setting realistic expectations for all those players in the process.”
With the money spigot all but turned off by the national party and statistics currently not in their favor, Florida Democrats need to be strategic about how to ration their time and treasure, the panel argued.
Matuga suggests going back to the basics, and sprinkling a little Democrat pride.
“It’s important that a Democrat goes to a Democratic door and say, ‘Hi, I’m the party and I want you to be a member of our party, too. I want to invite you to be a Democrat,” she said. “We need door knockers, we need voter registration people, we need people that will give. We need people that will do something. Any activity is better than none … other than protesting. We do very ineffective protesting.”
During the Q&A portion of the program, a self-professed Republican member of the audience asked the panelists whether, if they lived in New York City, they would vote for Zohran Mamdani, the millennial Democratic nominee for Mayor with an exceptionally progressive platform.
All said “yes,” and Ray shot back.
“I can’t brook any lectures about extremism and Zohran Mamdani from a party that elected Donald Trump.”
