After another brutal election, Florida Democrats question path forward

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Democrats across the country are questioning their party’s identity after former President Donald Trump’s stunning victory last week.

In Florida, the mood might be more bleak.

After yet another punishing election that saw Democrats lose even more ground in the state Legislature, some Democrats are blasting state leadership. Others are calling for the party to get back to the basics. And at least one is quitting the party altogether.

“The brand of the Florida Democrats, especially Miami-Dade, was not a dying brand. It was dead,” said Billy Corben, a Miami film director who is a prominent critic of local politicians. This week, he announced he was leaving the party and switching his registration to “no party affiliation.”

Although Democrats have been out of power in the Legislature and governor’s office since the 1990s, statewide contests have often been competitive.

This year, there were rosy statements from President Joe Biden and other Democrats that the state was “in play.” Some polls showed Debbie Murcasel-Powell within a few percentage points of Sen. Rick Scott. Democrats also typically do better in presidential elections, and they were hoping for a boost from two proposals to enshrine abortion access and recreational marijuana in the state constitution.

Within an hour of the polls closing on Election Day, it was clear none of that was true.

Trump won the state by 13 points — the largest margin by a presidential candidate in Florida since George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis in 1988. Scott won his race by nearly that amount.

Trump’s biggest gain came in historically blue Miami-Dade County, where he won by 11 points, making Vice President Kamala Harris the first to lose there since Dukakis. The next biggest was an Orlando-area Democratic stronghold, Osceola County.

As soon as Osceola posted the results of early voting and voting by mail showing Harris up only 3 percentage points, Democratic elections analyst Matt Isbell knew something was very wrong.

“That was a sinking feeling moment, where I was like, Why’s that happening?” Isbell said. “There’s no reason for this kind of collapse.”

Trump ended up winning the county by nearly 1.5 points. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won it by nearly 25.

Florida Democratic Party chairperson Nikki Fried, who became the last Democrat to win a statewide office in 2018, wrote in a Miami Herald op-ed on Thursday that the results “are tough to swallow.”

But she painted a rosier picture, noting that the party reinstated Orange-Osceola County State Attorney Monique Worrell, who was removed from office by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“Despite being outspent by Florida Republicans, Democrats held the line, netting one loss in the Legislature and protecting all of our congressional seats,” she wrote.

Thomas Kennedy, a Miami activist and former Democratic National Committee member from Florida, said Fried should resign.

“There’s just so much unprofessionalism,” he said, noting that Fried posted on X in August that Florida was still “in play” and that Harris would win Florida.

“Where do we go from here? I don’t know,” Kennedy added.

Fried told Fox 29 on Thursday that she would run for her position again. If the party has to start over again with a new leader, 2026 will be an “absolute bloodbath” for Democrats, she said.

The party also had little help from the Harris or Biden campaigns. In March, Biden tapped three veteran Democratic operatives to lead the campaign in Florida.

Jasmine Burney-Clark, the founder and former director of Equal Ground Education Fund and Action Fund, was its state director. On Tuesday, she posted on X about the campaign’s struggles, writing that they “couldn’t afford basic items like food, water, venue fees, security or even printing for a single volunteer event.”

In 2020, the campaign spent $50 million on Florida, compared to $5 million this year, she said.

“The Florida arm of this campaign was plagued with issues from the day I started,” Burney-Clark wrote. “We were NEVER in play and we all knew it.”

In the Legislature, Democrats were looking to flip eight seats. That would have broken Republicans’ two-thirds supermajority in both chambers, which allows them to override House and Senate rules and silence debate without Democrats’ input.

Instead, Democrats struggled to hang on to what they had. They just barely defeated Rep. Carolina Amesty, a Central Florida Republican who was indicted on forgery charges in August.

One of the few bright spots for Democrats was the reelection of Rep. Lindsay Cross, who faced a serious challenge by Republican St. Petersburg City Commissioner Ed Montanari in a district with a slight Democratic advantage.

Cross said the party needs a strong bench of local candidates to build from, especially when the party lacks resources. It’s unrealistic to expect first-time candidates to win state races, she said.

“It basically becomes a full-time job for three to six months at a minimum,” she said. “I think it requires someone who’s aware of what they’re getting into.”

Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, who became the Miami-Dade Democratic Party chairperson this year, said the party needs to get back to basics, building local coalitions and getting more creative at reaching out to voters.

“We can’t go nowhere else but up right now.”

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Times/Herald staff writer Alexandra Glorioso contributed to this report.