Free Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) got to work cleaning up Florida elections almost as soon as he entered office and has continued to do so during his two terms as governor. Combined with his policies that Floridians overwhelmingly approve, Republican voter registration surpassing that of Democrats, and the 2022 red wave elections in Florida, the Sunshine State has become, at least for now, a solidly red state.
This is so much the case that Biden’s campaign chair stated that Florida is not in play this November.
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, told Puck News that Florida is not in play this November.During her interview with John Heilemann, she laid out the campaign’s “six in six” strategy focusing on the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia.Heilemann also asked if the campaign saw North Carolina as a battleground state.“Yes,” O’Malley Dillon replied.“Florida?” he asked.“No,” she said in response.“Thank you,” Heilemann said. “I was afraid you were going to lie.”
It’s an election year, and Florida Democrats are not happy with this clear-eyed assessment from Team Biden.
[Dillon’s] comments seemed to throw Florida politics into a tailspin, with even many Democrats viewing them as contradicting an April memo from Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez that declared Florida “winnable.”“Not a lot of staffers, consultants or organizers are in a position to say it, but this was such an unnecessary, demoralizing gut punch,” Florida-based communications consultant Kevin Cate wrote on X about the comments, while urging fellow Democrats to keep up their work “and one day, we will flip it.”. . . . Despite O’Malley Dillon’s comments, Dan Kanninen, Biden-Harris battleground states director, maintained in a statement that Florida was “in play for President Biden and Democrats up and down the ballot” and that the campaign “continues to scale up our presence and investments into the state.” Abhi Rahman, a deputy communications director for the Democratic National Committee, said the state party was “undergoing a resurgence,” while Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried urged people not to “count Florida out” and said the party was building for the long term.
Between the wistful “one day we will flip it” and “the party was building for the long term,” it seems Florida and National Democrats do not consider Florida a battleground state for this year’s elections, either. And it’s not.
Politico continues:
But Florida Democrats haven’t seen a surge in voter registrations in the time that the Biden campaign said it was expanding its footprint there. And while a recent Fox News poll has Trump leading Biden by only four points, Ryan Tyson, who’s done polling for Gov. Ron DeSantis and has a track record of accuracy in the state, recently had Trump ahead by 10 points, Florida Politics reported. Neither side is spending much money in Florida, a key indicator that it’s not competitive.. . . . Even before the O’Malley Dillon line on Monday, some long-time Democratic analysts and consultants in Florida had grown weary of what they viewed as an all-too-optimistic viewpoint coming from Democratic leaders such as Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair who was in Tallahassee last week.“Democrats are gaslighting Democrats about Florida,” said Fernand Amandi, the South Florida communications and political consultant well known for his cable news appearances.
Floridians cannot sit back and relax because Democrats never give up, and they very much feel the loss of Florida and its 30 electoral votes.
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