1.5 Million Voter Advantage in 1-Party State and Still Scared: Florida GOP Ghost-Hunts Progressives at ‘Showdown’

With members of the Democratic Socialists of America winning congressional seats in New York City last week, Florida Republicans have seized upon fresh material to motivate their base in what could be a tough political environment for the GOP in this fall’s midterm election.

That was a major theme of the Republican Party of Florida’s Sunshine State Showdown Saturday at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood (which is actually in Davie).

“The Communists that just got elected in New York and in California and in Illinois, well, they’re banking on you not to getting out the vote,” said Gainesville-area Republican U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack. “They want you to stay home.”

“They are anarchist psychos who want to destroy this country,” added U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, on the ballot for the first time this year as a senator after being appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year to fill the seat left by Marco Rubio.

Moody fretted that the national Democratic Party had been taken over by “these crazy people that do not believe in what this country is,” and wondered whether anybody in the Democratic establishment could stop what she sees as an ominous takeover.

“Hakeem. Barack. Kamala. Ilhan. Zohran. I don’t know. If one of them is the leader, I don’t know who it is. But none of them will speak out to what those crazy anarchists are saying. None of them will speak out against it. And that should tell you all you need to know,” she said.

Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, also on the statewide ballot this fall after being appointed to his position a year ago by DeSantis, said Florida’s reputation as a “beacon of hope, freedom, and opportunity in a world that has gone completely mad” was at stake if Republicans didn’t get to the polls in November, “because the modern Democratic Party is the party of bat shit crazy, I’m sorry to say it.”

“They just elected a communist as mayor [Zohran Mamdani]. They nominated someone in Texas [James Talarico] who thinks God is nonbinary. They nominated a person in Maine [Graham Platner] who has a Nazi symbol on their chest and wants to rape home intruders. They just nominated a congressional candidate in New Jersey [Adam Hamawy] who helped a terrorist defend himself in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and just this week alone they nominated not one, not two, but three socialists in New York.”

(Brad Lander, one of the three New Yorkers who won their Democratic primaries last week, is no longer a member of the Democratic Socialists of America).

U.S. Rep. Randy Fine predicted impeachment hearings for President Trump will take place immediately if the Democrats win back the House in November and said, “The wheels of the government will grind to a halt.” Cammack echoed that sentiment, adding, “Every single Cabinet member will be dragged in front of Congress for 24/7 hearings in front of a rabid, radicalized Congress.”

No Gubernatorial showdown

The lead-up to Saturday’s gathering of party faithful had concentrated on the disappointment and anger felt by some party members (including Gov. Ron DeSantis) after party leaders announced earlier this month that there would be no gubernatorial debate during the event.

That was because only one of the candidates, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds of Naples, had met the pre-established criteria of reaching at least 10% support in an official party poll, raised more than $10 million, and secured more than 10,000 donors. Party officials instead offered individual speaking times for all of the top-ranked competitors to Donalds.

However, the party rescinded that invitation to investment firm CEO James Fishback, who has polled as high as second in several public surveys. Party Chair Evan Power said Fishback had participated in a “rival, unsanctioned event in violation of party rules” and “continued his antisemitic and racist attacks on members of our party.”

That left just Bobby Williams, the Polk County founder of a food and disaster relief nonprofit, former House Speaker Paul Renner, and Lt. Gov. Jay Collins to make the case for why they, and not Donalds, should be the party’s standard bearer this fall. But only Collins used his opportunity to explain why the party was making a grave mistake by nominating Donalds.

“There are people right now selling Florida a very familiar product,” Collins said. “They’re telling you that Byron Donalds is the safe choice. The acceptable choice. The inevitable choice. … The one who can get through the general election because he looks good on television and checks the boxes.

“My friends, we’ve heard that before. They sold Republican Charlie Crist the same exact way. They said he was safe, acceptable, and electable. Was that true? Now, we learned the hard way that when the establishment tells you if a candidate is electable, what they really mean is that that candidate is easy to control and easy for the Democrats to define. Florida cannot afford another Charlie Crist mistake.”

Collins went on to say that Donalds “is not ready for the fight ahead.”

“They’re going to ask about character. They will ask how a member of Congress went to Washington and saw his net worth explode. They will ask about drug dealing and crime. They’ll ask about money and influence. And they will ask about every headline, every disclosure, every transaction.”

This was not the first time in the campaign that Collins has gone scorched earth against Donalds. On April 20, he held a press conference in St. Petersburg to distribute a 13-page summary of previously published stories about some of Donalds’ alleged liabilities, without any significant effect on the trajectory of the race, which has seemed almost baked-in after Donald Trump endorsed Donalds in February 2025.

David Jolly as Abigail Spanberger?

The event climaxed with Donalds as the closer. His presentation began with a short video clip showing the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk endorsing him for Florida governor. Donalds then announced that in the spirit of Kirk’s engagement with students at college campuses, he would invite Republicans, who shelled out the $150 to attend the event, to ask him a question.

Before that happened, though, Donalds offered his own remarks, detailing his plans if elected in the fall, and laying out the campaign strategy of depicting likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Jolly as a man who is running as a moderate but will govern to left if given the keys to the Governor’s Mansion.

“He’s going to campaign in the most boring way possible,” Donalds said. “You’re probably going to turn the channel, because it’s boring. Let me tell you, the boring part is not a bug. It is a feature. The Democrats understand very clearly that they cannot campaign on their radical agenda, because the people of Florida will reject it soundly. So, what they’ll campaign on is being nice and trying to sound normal. But we’ve seen this campaign before.”

He mentioned the campaigns of Katie Hobbs for governor in Arizona in 2022 and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia in 2025 as prototypes for what could happen in Florida unless Republicans get out the vote.

“I served with Abigail [in the U.S. House]. She is a radical,” he said. “She voted for every radical piece of legislation that Nancy Pelosi put in front of her. But on the campaign trail she was very nice. She wore a white suit. … And, when she became governor, she began to undo every major common-sense reform that Glenn Youngkin put into the Commonwealth of Virginia.

“So, now it’s coming to Florida, ladies and gentlemen. They are going to sound very nice, but they are going to be very radical. And I don’t know about you, but we have worked too hard in this state for too long to make the Number One conservative state in all of America, just to elect some milquetoast Democrat wannabe who thinks he’s going to transform Florida.”

What will happen in November?

In a state with nearly 1.5 million more registered Republicans than Democrats, Donalds will be considered the favorite against Jolly in November, as will Moody, Ingoglia, and every other Republican on the statewide ballot in November.

However, Donald Trump is not that popular around America right now, including in the Sunshine State. A polling memo published by Global Strategy Group and pushed out by the Alex Vindman for Senate campaign on Friday shows Trump’s favorability rating has declined by 10 points since January, with 52% of Floridians now holding an unfavorable view of the president.

It was also just three months ago that Democrats pulled off electoral shockers in two special elections for legislative seats in Hillsborough and Palm Beach counties.

Power says that’s why it’s crucial that the party motivate its base to come out in November.

“We’ve built the best grassroots organization in America,” he told the Phoenix. “We’re going to continue to do that. But it’s a concern. We’ve got to motivate our guys to go vote, because if you don’t vote — it’s not necessarily statewide. If you don’t turn out every voter, you can lose legislative seats, you can lose congressional seats, and that’s where we’re concerned.”

Jack Brill, chairman of the Sarasota County Republican Party, says that Jolly’s selection of former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham as his running mate is going to make the governor’s race a “good competition.”

“This is going to be one of those years that, statewide, it’s not going to be a 20-point blowout. So, we have to be united going forward, to make sure that we get our Republican candidate for governor to continue the things that Gov. DeSantis has done so far, and Gov. [Rick] Scott has done before him,” he said.

When asked about the Democrats’ surprising election wins in those state legislative contests in March, Randy Fine said he’s not overly concerned, noting that he had to deal with his own special election for Congress last year, when many Republicans were not even aware his race was on the ballot.

“It’s not that anyone’s changed their mind, it’s who’s willing to go out to vote,” he said. “If Republicans are told the message, they understand the assignment, and go and vote, we’re going to win. But if they stay home, then no.”

–Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix