Florida Democrats Are Getting Giddy. They Should Beware.

By Diane Roberts

Florida Democrats have gotten a bit giddy lately. Optimistic, even.

These are unfamiliar emotions for them.

Some election year polls are perking them up something fierce.

Democrats — “Dixiecrats” as many were called back in the day — owned this state for more than 150 years (with a little pause during Reconstruction), holding all state offices, controlling the Legislature, looking unbeatable.

But by the 1970s, the Democrats had become the Party of Civil Rights and Republicans, who had once favored racial justice and other progressive notions, had become the Party of Scared White People.

With population growth from the Midwest and the North, Republicans made slow inroads and, in 1998, Florida elected Jeb Bush. The Rs already had control of the Legislature and have run this state ever since.

Twenty-eight years on, Republicans hold supermajorities in the Florida House and Senate and occupy all state-wide elected offices. State Supreme Court justices, all but one chosen by Gov. Ron DeSantis, range from the extremely conservative to the we-don’t-need-no-stinking-Constitution conservative.

The one moderate, Justice Jorge Labarga, will retire in January 2027, opening a seat for another right-winger — unless, by some voodoo, divine miracle, or electoral freak, a Democrat becomes governor.

That’s crazy talk, you say. And you’re probably right.

Nevertheless, a Stetson University poll shows Rep. Byron Donalds, long considered a sure thing, in a competitive match-up with two Democrats, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and former U.S. Rep. David Jolly.

Demings is within four points of Donalds; Jolly is within seven points.

Seven percent of voters remain undecided.

Pining for Jim Crow

In the race for attorney general, the incumbent finds himself in a dogfight with former Democratic state Sen. José Javier Rodriguez.

One poll shows Rodriguez leading DeSantis appointee James Uthmeier 42.8% to 39.6%.

Former attorney general and sitting U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody is barely ahead of Democratic challenger Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, within the margin of error, with a substantial 14% undecided.

Important Caveat 1: This poll was conducted by two communications firms led by Democratic political consultants. Other polls are much closer, often with the Republican in the lead.

Important Caveat 2: Almost all the Republicans have raised more money than the Democrats, although that may not mean as much as it used to.

In March, Navy veteran and union organizer Brian Nathan flipped a state Senate seat in a Hillsborough County, beating a much better funded Republican.

Over in Palm Beach County, Democrat Emily Gregory won a House seat previously considered as red as a MAGA necktie: District 87 is home to the gold-leafed festival of vulgarity we know as Mar-a-Lago.

Donald Trump won it by 10 points in 2024.

Republicans observe that these aren’t real elections, merely special elections. Nobody’s paying attention. Turnout is low. They don’t really count.

Yet you can see why Florida Democrats allow themselves to hope.

The Republican candidates for high office are, by any rational measure, terrible. Wannabe dictators. Often dumb as a bag of hair. Also, weird.

Take Donalds, the Trump-endorsed U.S. representative from southwest Florida and acknowledged front-runner in the gubernatorial race. He has claimed segregation had some really good points: “During Jim Crow the Black family was together.”

Moreover, Black folks were rock-ribbed conservatives, lamenting that in the Good Old Days before all that civil rights business, “more Black people voted conservatively.”

Contempt

I daresay you see the problem with this statement. Except for the all-too-brief experiment in democracy from 1865-1877, Black people could be as “conservative” as they liked, but it was almost impossible for them to vote, not until the 1965 Voting Rights Act, at least.

You could get lynched for even trying.

Donalds should read up on his American history, just not in one of those dubious texts approved by the State of Florida.

There are a couple of other reasonably serious hopefuls, including Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and former House Speaker Paul Renner.

Alas for them, they aren’t making much of an impact statewide, and nobody gives them a snowball’s chance on a June afternoon in Miami.

They’re tragically dull, too.

However, if you’ve never heard of James Fishback, who also wants to be governor, do yourself a favor: Look him up.

He’s not dull; he’s terrifying.

Fishback’s a Gen Z ultra-conservative praised by white supremacist Nick Fuentes, fawned over by Tucker Carlson, and endorsed by accused rapist Andrew Tate. He’s called Byron Donalds a “slave” and suggested he’d turn Florida into a “ghetto.”

His fans say he’s the future of the Republican Party. Young white men love him.

Other races? There’s James Uthmeier, appointed attorney general by DeSantis after Ashley Moody went to D.C. to fill out now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s term in the U.S. Senate.

Moody’s running for a full term; Uthmeier’s running for A.G., and boy, is he a piece of work.

A federal judge has found him in contempt for violating a court order, and fellow Republican Sen. Alex Andrade has accused him of criminal fraud and money laundering in the Hope Florida scandal.

Flouting the Constitution

He proudly takes credit for naming Florida’s Everglades internment camp, “Alligator Alcatraz,” and sells t-shirts with grinning gators saying, “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide,” on his campaign merch site.

Way worse, he regards Florida law as nothing more than a suggestion: He feels free to violate it at any time when, in his superior judgment, it does not mean what you — and most legal scholars — think it means.

Article 1, Section 3, of the Florida Constitution says you can’t use public money “directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution,” which seems pretty clear: The government cannot favor, support or promote religion with taxpayer dollars.

Uthmeier insists that’s wrong, a violation of the First Amendment, and besides, the Founders meant the United States to be a Christian country: Church should not be separate from state.

So what if the state’s governing document spells it out in black and white? He, James Uthmeier, knows better, and if you voted for that amendment, you were wrong.

Mind you, flouting the Florida Constitution is pretty much de rigueur for Florida Republicans.

The Legislature has now passed a congressional redistricting map doing its damnedest to eliminate Democratic representation in Florida.

If past electoral patterns hold in this year’s midterms, Republicans could pick up four more House seats.

They know better

Again, the Florida Constitution forbids this. In 2010, Florida voters approved the Fair Districts Amendments by more than 60%. It says: “No district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party on an incumbent.”

Fair Districts also forbids maps drawn with the “result or intent of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice.”

Again, Uthmeier and Ron DeSantis know better than the voters. The new map disenfranchises minorities.

Now that the Trumpist U.S. Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act, Republican-run states feel empowered to gerrymander in favor of white folks.

DeSantis claims that’s not his motive. Nor did he do this for political reasons, oh goodness, no. Just because Donald Trump demanded states draw a map to help Republicans keep their tenuous grip on the House of Representatives, and just because DeSantis unveiled his map on Fox “News” subtly color-coded red and blue, doesn’t imply partisan intent.

If you believe that, Elvis is alive, Hillary Clinton drinks babies’ blood, and Donald Trump’s tan is real.

Now: Looking at these Republican end-runs around voter-approved constitutional amendments, bending (or ignoring) statutes, prevaricating, election-rigging, and general hostility to the law, Democrats have a big basket of attractive candidates and strong issues.

In 2019, Alex Vindman, a Ukrainian-born Iraq vet and former National Security Council official, blew open Donald Trump’s attempt to strong-arm President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into finding dirt on Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine.

Vindman testified before Congress; Trump fired him and denied him his army promotion.

The guy has a Purple Heart.

Stupid lawsuits

Ashley Moody, his opponent in the Senate race has, well, a J.D. and a history of stupid lawsuits such as trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Back then, Moody’s own staff lawyers called her move “bats— insane.”

Surely there’s an opening for candidates actually interested in addressing Florida’s out-of-control insurance costs, reining in runaway sprawl, addressing the climate crisis, and improving our education system.

You’d think, right?

But there’s logic and good sense, and then there’s the Florida Democratic Party.

The history of the last few decades shows that, if there’s a way they can screw up, they probably will.

Yet there remains that chance — that little chance — one or two will break through.

Watch this space.

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.