3 days Ago By Anthony Man
Bryan and Ashley Travers help explain what happened in Florida on Election Day. So does Vanessa Stratton, whose vote on Tuesday exemplified the transformation of Florida from a swing state that could go either way in a presidential election into one that’s solidly Republican. “It’s a red Republican state.
It is very red. It is crimson,” said Kathryn DePalo-Gould, a Florida International University political scientist. Former President Donald Trump won the state 56% to 43% on Tuesday, a 13-point win that was inconceivable even to his most die-hard supporters four years ago.
He won 61 of the state’s 67 counties. When Trump won the state in 2020, as he was losing his bid for reelection, that year’s 3-point victory was hailed as a “Florida landslide,” which is how people in the political world describe anything greater than 1 point in a statewide election. For a generation, Florida was the premier swing state in the country, one that could go either way in a presidential election.
It’s now so solidly Republican that neither Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris devoted time or significant money to competing in the state. Harris didn’t visit once since becoming the Democratic presidential candidate over the summer. Trump did, but largely because he lives in Palm Beach and owns a golf resort in Doral.
The state was so uncompetitive that one longtime Republican Party leader and Trump supporter lamented during the final weeks of the campaign that it was difficult to get yard signs in Florida because they were going to battleground states. “The era of Florida being a battleground state is clearly over,” said Kevin Wagner, a political scientist at Florida Atlantic University. Voter registration numbers show the shift.
There were almost 1.1 million more registered Republicans than Democrats for this year’s election. Just four years ago, in November 2020, there were 134,000 more Democrats than Republicans registered to vote in Florida.
“The Democrats are down precipitously. And you’ve seen that all over the state,” said Richard DeNapoli, Broward’s elected state Republican committeeman and former county party chair. Early in the pandemic, Gov.
Ron DeSantis went along with many of the coronavirus restrictions recommended by public health experts. He changed course, lifting the rules before many other states and aggressively marketed what he called “the free state of Florida.” The newcomers are different from the Democrats who migrated to Florida in the later part of the last century.
“The coronavirus policies attracted a lot of conservatives from the other states during the pandemic,” DeNapoli said. “The Republicans are up largely due to that influx of people to Florida. About two-thirds of them registered as Republican.
” Related Articles Stratton and the Traverses are parts of Florida’s transformation. For years Bryan and Ashley Travers had been visiting South Florida. When they relocated a year ago from St.
Louis, Mo., for what they said a better environment in which to live and raise their sons, now ages 8 and 11, they brought with them their political leanings. Now living in Highland Beach, they were at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach for Trump’s election night victory celebration — and dressed for the occasion.
Bryan Travers wore an orange and yellow safety vest like the one Trump wore in Green Bay, Wis., on Oct. 30, when he drove a garbage truck to draw attention to President Joe Biden referring to Trump supporters as garbage.
Ashley Travers bought the vest on Amazon and added lettering from a Michaels store that proclaimed her husband “Proud MAGA Garbage.” She blinged up her denim jacket with sparkling letters on either arm — “Trump” and “Fortyseven.” Once the 45th president, Trump will become the 47th when he’s inaugurated.
Stratton, a retired real estate agent who left Boston three years ago, wasn’t as enthusiastic about Trump. “I’m not fond of Trump, but I’m very concerned about the border and the state of the economy,” she said after voting for him at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Fort Lauderdale. “Prices are out of control.
” “There simply are more of them,” said Democratic strategist Eric Johnson, who’s managed federal, statewide and local campaigns in Florida, lamenting the Republican gains in registered voters. After DeSantis won a 19-point victory over Democratic challenger Charlie Crist in 2022, many Democratic leaders thought it was an aberration and their voters would turn out again for the 2024 presidential election. “The hope, and honestly expectation, was that 2022 was a bit of an anomaly with the strong DeSantis performance, the Democratic voter turnout collapse (and) that it would return to the mean in this last election, and it did not,” Johnson said.
“The success starts off with them having successfully registered more voters, and more of their voters moving to Florida,” Johnson said. “And so after two elections in a row like that, you’d have to say Florida is a red state.” And, DePalo-Gould said, “The enthusiasm I think is there for Republicans,” adding that “it’s going to continue.
Democrats have a really tough road ahead if they want to compete statewide.” Johnson said much will depend on Trump’s performance in office, pointing to 2018, which was a good year for many Democrats. Trump was halfway through his first term, “it was a disaster,” and many voters weren’t happy with his performance.
Trump received 6.1 million votes in Florida this year, according to unofficial results posted Friday, up from 5.7 million in 2020 and 4.
6 million in 2016. Harris received 4.7 million votes this year.
Biden received 5.3 million in 2020. Hillary Clinton received 4.
5 million in 2016. The Republican governor wasn’t on the ballot. But he staked his political capital and reputation on the outcome of two referendums.
Amendment 3 would have legalized recreational marijuana for adults and Amendment 4, which would have enshrined abortion rights in the state Constitution. DeSantis used millions of dollars in state government money to orchestrate a campaign against the amendments, including millions of dollars in television advertising paid for with public dollars. If he had failed, that could have made it harder for him to sell himself nationally and more difficult to exert his will on the Legislature during his last two years in office.
DeSantis leaves office in January 2027 because of term limits. Both amendments fell short of the 60% threshold required for passage, an outcome that he can use to tout his conservative credentials and leadership in 2028 when many people expect he’ll make a second attempt to win the Republican presidential nomination. “He put a lot of political capital on the line to defeat those,” DePalo-Gould said, “and would have definitely been in a weakened position if those amendments had passed.
” DeSantis is a formidable potential presidential candidate, though the rise of Vice President-elect JD Vance is a huge roadblock. If Vance is seen as the heir to Trump — especially if he receives Trump’s endorsement — it would be tougher for DeSantis. It would be even more difficult if another Florida resident seeks the Republican nomination: The president-elect’s son, Donald Trump.
Jr. “DeSantis doesn’t start from zero certainly, but it’s going to be a crowded field,” Wagner said. Joe Budd, the elected Palm Beach County Republican state committeeman, was an early Trump supporter who then backed DeSantis’ unsuccessful campaign for the 2024 nomination, thinking that he’d have a better chance of winning the election.
Budd isn’t sure about DeSantis’ prospects in 2028. “I’ve got to be honest with you. I was a supporter of his in the primary.
But I love JD Vance. If I had to make that decision today, I’m a JD Vance guy.” Roger Stone, who has been a friend of Trump’s for decades and an informal political adviser, pointed to DeSantis’ failed challenge to Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination.
“You guys may remember Ron DeSantis was supposed to be a tough competitor,” Stone said. “He didn’t just get beat. He got his ass kicked and he’ll never hold public office again.
” With Trump at the top of the ticket, U.S. Sen.
Rick Scott, R-Fla., had his best performance ever, receiving 55.6% of the vote against former U.
S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, his Democratic challenger.
His 2018 Senate victory and successful 2010 and 2014 gubernatorial campaigns were much smaller. Now he’s competing with U.S.
Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota for the post of Senate majority leader. It’s up to other Republican senators to pick the leader who will run the Senate for the next two years, though it may ultimately come down to who Trump prefers.
U.S. Sen.
Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who won reelection two years ago, could end up in Trump’s cabinet. He’s spent much of his career on foreign affairs, and the job he and his supporters hope for his secretary of state.
If Rubio resigned to join the cabinet, DeSantis would appoint someone to fill the job until the next election. If DeSantis doesn’t see 2028 as a good year to run for president, he could appoint himself to the Senate and run for president sometime in the future. Staff writer Susannah Bryan contributed to this report.
Anthony Man can be reached at [email protected] and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon..
