Bill Cotterell: GOP won the election game before the kickoff – Tallahassee Democrat
Florida’s 2022 elections were really over before the polls closed; in fact, the results were pretty predictable before precincts even opened Tuesday morning.
It wasn’t a question of whether Gov. Ron DeSantis would be reelected, or if Sen. Marco Rubio would win his third term in Washington. Nor was there any doubt that all three state Cabinet seats would have Republican rumps in them, or any suspense about control of the state Legislature.
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The only preelection speculation focused on the size of the GOP victory, not the inevitability of it. Would there be a “red wave,” or just a ripple, or maybe a tsunami?
Voter turnout in early voting, and use of mailed ballots, decided the results of elections all over the state well before Election Day. It was reported that 4,918,932 Floridians cast ballots early, or mailed them in — more pre-voting than any state but Texas.
And Republicans outpaced the Democrats by about 480,000 ballots in that vital category of early voting.
Marc Caputo, an NBC analyst and former Miami Herald Tallahassee reporter, noted that Democrats led by a half-point in early voting four years ago. This year, the GOP was up by 6 percent.
Barely an hour after the polls closed, network news programs called the big races for DeSantis and Rubio. With about 90 percent of the vote counted, DeSantis led U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist by about 20 percent, while Rubio was up 16 percent over U.S. Rep. Val Demings.
Compare that to the last midterms.
DeSantis won the governor’s mansion in 2018 by less than a half-percent over ex-Mayor Andrew Gillum of Tallahassee. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., ousted ex-Sen. Bill Nelson by just over 10,000 votes statewide.
A 20-percent lead for DeSantis would be the first double-digit victory margin for a governor since Gov. Jeb Bush won his second term 20 years ago.
The Democrats couldn’t even mount major challenges to Agriculture Commissioner-elect Wilton Simpson, Attorney General Ashley Moody or Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who all won in a walk.
Dr. Keith Simmonds, a political science professor at Florida A&M University, said “political intensity” was a big factor for the GOP. For the first time, the Republicans overtook the Democrats in voter registration last year, and campaigning on issues of the economy and inflation clearly paid off for GOP nominees.
“It seems to me pocketbook issues are playing a larger role, more on the minds of particularly women,” Simmonds said. “It meant more than the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion.”
Crist and Demings hit hard on abortion in their campaigns, blasting DeSantis for signing a ban on the procedure after 15 weeks gestation and attacking Rubio for his strongly anti-choice stance.
Simmonds also said “the Republicans are picking up more support from the Hispanic community.” Hispanic voters were specially decisive in Miami-Dade County — usually a Democrat stronghold — that went red on this year’s maps.
Except for deep-blue Democrats, Florida voters were not put off by DeSantis’ abortion stance, or his legislation forbidding the teaching of critical race theory in schools, the parental-involvement law Democrats labeled “Don’t Say Gay” or his edicts to keep Florida commerce open while other states locked down in the COVID pandemic.
Crist used those issues against him, but they landed with a thud. Demings was similarly unsuccessful in getting people excited about Rubio’s Senate attendance record over the past 12 years.
So what do the Democrats need to do, to get back in the game?
Jon Ausman, who’s been involved in Democratic politics more than 40 years at many levels, said the party needs to “become more inclusionary in decision-making, train and recruit candidates, improve voter contacts, and educate and motivate voters.” He said the party structure has been captive of statewide elected officials — but he’s not optimistic that Democrats can change.
“Frankly, the state executive committee is going to sit back, form a commission to cherry-pick the results and say, ‘Here’s where we won some,’ and ultimately do nothing,” Ausman said. “They haven’t changed anything since I started in the 1980s.”
The party of Reubin Askew, Bob Graham, Lawton Chiles and Bill Nelson is a faded, distant relic. But Democrats won’t be dominated by top elected officers as Ausman feared — not because they’ve changed, but because they don’t have anyone left in statewide office.
Bill Cotterell is a retired Tallahassee Democrat capitol reporter who writes a twice-weekly column. He can be reached at bcotterell@tallahassee.com
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