Lots of Democrats are thinking of running for Florida governor. Can any defeat Ron DeSantis?

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Lots of Democrats are thinking of running for Florida governor. Can any defeat Ron DeSantis?

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Skyler Swisher, South Florida Sun Sentinel
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It’s getting crowded around the political pool as Democrats dip their toes in the water, wondering if they should jump in the race for Florida governor in 2022.

Seeking the state’s top job is tempting for Democratic politicians, but also daunting. While Democrats assert victory is within reach, many also acknowledge that denying Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis a second term would be exceedingly difficult.

“Can we win in 2022? It’s going to be tough,” said Gwen Graham, the former north Florida congresswoman who finished a close second in the multi-candidate 2018 gubernatorial primary. “Of course, it’s possible.”

Graham said the November 2018 election “was a cakewalk compared to what 2022 is going to be for Democrats. We’ve got to be honest about it.”

Graham is one of the marquee names frequently mentioned as potential candidates, along with Val Demings, the Central Florida congresswoman; Charlie Crist, the St. Petersburg congressman and former governor; and Nikki Fried, the state agriculture commissioner.

Fried is sending the strongest signals. On Monday night, a strategist working on her behalf tweeted a teaser for a coming Fried video. On Tuesday, the one-minute video dropped, featuring extensive criticism of DeSantis. And on Thursday, the strategist posted a compilation of snippets of news coverage the video generated — and said he agreed with a TV talker’s assessment that she “could be the party’s best hope next year.”

Graham said in an interview she isn’t rushing. “I’m going to be following the race very closely,” she said. “I’m not someone who wants to ever say ‘never.’ I’m excited about the candidates that are considering running, and I think there are some really strong candidates, so let’s see how that plays out.”

State Rep. Anna Eskamani of Orlando, who would be 32 on Election Day, said she is “seriously considering” running. She is by far the most progressive of the potential aspirants, and her candidacy would set up the kind of internal clash that has bedeviled the party before.

Others are considering running for governor or U.S. Senate next year. “It’s a lot of names. And that’s probably a good thing,” said Nan Rich, a Broward County commissioner, former Florida Senate Democratic leader and unsuccessful candidate for 2014 gubernatorial nomination. “We’ll have an opportunity to kind of weed it out and come up hopefully with the kind of person who will win in the end.”

The Aug. 23, 2022, Democratic primary is 18 months away and the Nov. 8, 2022, general election is more than 20 months off — dates that make it seem awfully early to be wondering about who’s in, who’s out and who has the best odds.

It’s not.

By this time four years ago, most of the major Democratic candidates had been campaigning for months, even though they hadn’t formally announced their intentions. The first official announcement, from Democrat Andrew Gillum, who went on to win the party’s nomination for governor, came on March 1, 2017.

The Democrats’ 2022 efforts have been delayed by the party’s focus on defeating former President Donald Trump and by pandemic-forced cancellations of in-person political events.

“The 2020 election sucked all of the oxygen not only out of the room but the entire planet,” said Broward Mayor Steve Geller, a former Florida Senate Democratic leader and Crist confidante. “People just couldn’t even think about 2022 until after 2020 was resolved.”

Rich, who announced her candidacy more than two years before the 2014 primary, said it’s not too late for the 2022 candidates. “It’s not as much when you get in, I think, as having the campaign strategies and the campaign set up to hit the ground when you get in. Raising money has become more and more of a factor.”

One of the biggest uncertainties about 2022 is the remaining influence of Trump, now living in Palm Beach after his defeat. DeSantis tied himself to Trump years ago, and the former president’s 2018 support helped propel him to the Governor’s Mansion.

And last year’s election results, in which Trump won Florida, show he can motivate voters. But Trump hasn’t shown an ability to get his supporters to the polls when he isn’t on the ballot. Without Trump at the top of the ticket next year, it could be harder for Republicans to replicate what they did in 2020 in Florida and elsewhere.

“Governor DeSantis is now tied pretty irrevocably at the hip to Donald Trump. And if Donald Trump stays strong, that will certainly help Governor DeSantis get reelected,” Geller said.

By next year, Tallahassee-based Democratic consultant Steve Vancore said, Trump could be an anchor for DeSantis. “To some degree he’s going to bear the weight of Donald Trump and the negativity that Trump brings without the uplift of Trump being on the ballot and being able to inspire his base by being on the ballot,” Vancore said.

The Democrats haven’t won an election for Florida governor since 1994. There’s no guarantee about next year, but multiple factors give the Republican governor an edge:

Time. DeSantis has the advantage of incumbency. He also got a fundraising head start. Democrats, by contrast, are starting from zero. (A wealthy candidate is somewhat immune. In 2018 billionaire Jeff Greene got in the gubernatorial primary late and lost despite spending millions of his own money. In 2010, multi-millionaire Rick Scott got into the Republican primary late and won after spending millions of his own money.)

Democratic Party crisis. The state Democratic organization is in debt, and the new leadership that came in after the 2020 election laid off many staffers. The Democrats have little infrastructure for a ground game operation that reaches out to voters and gets people registered, motivated and turned out to vote, Rich said, something Florida Republicans excelled at last year when Democrats pulled back because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rich cited Georgia, where the 10-year effort led by Stacey Abrams helped produce Democratic victories in two U.S. Senate runoff elections in January. Vancore said there’s “a lot of basic repair work within the party infrastructure that needs to be done before they can begin to move forward in an effective way.”

Messaging. In 2020, Republicans successfully convinced many people in voter-rich in South Florida that Democrats were socialists and wanted to defund the police. Rich said neither is true, but the party didn’t offer an effective response. As a result, she said, Democratic candidates were hurt."

Florida Democrats remain divided on what kind of candidate has the best chance to win.

One theory: nominate someone from the liberal-progressive wing with the goal of motivating younger, liberal voters who don’t get excited about the usual Democratic fare. “I am absolutely concerned if somebody like me isn’t in the race the corporate influence in the Democratic Party will continue to persist, and there won’t be a strong progressive perspective grounded in the struggles of everyday people,” Eskamani said.

The other theory: nominate a centrist with the hope of attracting the broadest swath of voters by appealing to moderates. “We need to replicate kind of what Biden did in terms of being a moderate, mainstream person,” she said. “The No. 1 goal is to select a candidate who can win the general election.”

They’ve tried both approaches, and both produced what University of Central Florida political scientist Aubrey Jewett termed “agonizingly close” defeats. Centrist Crist came in 1 percentage point behind Republican Gov. Rick Scott in 2014. Progressive Gillum came in 0.4 points behind Republican DeSantis in 2018.

“The Democrats in this state have not settled that argument,” Jewett said.

In 2018, progressive liberal Gillum won the primary with 34.4% of the vote, just 3.1 percentage points ahead of centrist Graham — in a race in which two other more centrist candidates who received an additional 30.4% of the vote.

As to whether a brutal primary would weaken the eventual nominee, Eskamani said that “dirty laundry needs to be aired, and candidates need to be challenged ahead of the general. It will make for a better candidate.”

The looming redrawing of congressional district and state legislative district boundaries for the 2022 election plays a role, even though the borders won’t be drawn until next year. Redistricting is used to adjust for population changes revealed by the 2020 Census.

And Republicans who control state government can use redistricting to make it more difficult for Democrats in Congress, the state Senate and the state House to run for reelection. That could prompt some to make a run for higher office if they think redistricting could make their chance of reelection more dicey.

Rep. Stephanie Murphy, from Central Florida, is keeping her options open. The Florida Politics website reported that this week that people who went to her StephanieMurphyforCongress.com website were automatically redirected to a website for StephanieMurphyFL.com. “She wouldn’t be the first politician who was inspired to seek a different office because of redistricting,” Jewett said.

It’s difficult to overstate the intensity of their feelings about DeSantis, who has fashioned a style of combative conservative governance in the mold of Trump. The policies and approach that have made him a favorite of many in the Trump universe make him an anathema to Democrats who would love to deny him a second term.

An added incentive for Democrats: Defeating the governor would derail a DeSantis 2024 presidential bid.

“Ron DeSantis is trying to become the Trumpiest of Trumpsters,” said Graham, who frequently posts critiques on Twitter using the hashtag #TheRonFile. “Absolutely the Trumpsters love him, but my argument about him from way before it was the cool thing to do to criticize Ron DeSantis is that he was inept and unfit to be governor.”

Vancore, who said voters would end up judging DeSantis largely on his pandemic performance, said he has vulnerabilities. But, he added, DeSantis’ approval rating is above 50% in polls and he has campaign money.

“He is going to be hard to beat,” Geller said.

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