No Longer the Canary in a Coal Mine: Florida and the Increasing Grip of the Republican Party
Cubans for Trump Rally on Inauguration Day 2017 via Wikimedia.
A commentator referred to Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and Donna Shalala’s Congressional re-election campaigns in Miami-Dade County as the “canary in a coal mine” for how Florida would go in the 2020 presidential election. Yet the metaphor can be applied to Florida as a whole, the canary in a coal mine of presidential campaigns for the past 24 years. Called early on election night, Florida usually serves as an omen. From 1996 to 2016, the winner of Florida’s twenty-nine electoral votes has gone on to win the national election without fail.
That is, until last year, when Donald Trump carried the election in Florida and still lost nationally to Joe Biden. Does the break in a quarter-century long tradition mean that the canary in a coal mine is losing its senses? If Florida can no longer reliably predict the outcome of presidential elections, what does that say about politics within the state?
For a state whose victories are exceptionally powerful, competitive, and coveted, Florida has become increasingly Republican. Florida is the largest competitive state in presidential races, with twenty-seven electoral votes, and an average margin of victory of 2.6% for the past six presidential elections, far slimmer compared to the 16.5% margin of all states. In 2016, the state voted for Donald Trump for president. That same year, it re-elected Marco Rubio, a rising star of the Republican party, to the Senate. The midterm elections in 2018 remained undetermined for days, when the incumbent Democratic senator Bill Nelson refused to concede until 30,000 likely Democrat ballots had been counted in Broward County. The Democratic candidate for governor, Andrew Gillum, conceded on election night but later released a statement saying he had done so prematurely, not anticipating the race heading to a mandatory recount. After a machine recount and a hand recount, Ron DeSantis was elected governor and Rick Scott senator, turning both of Florida’s Senate seats red and sustaining a Republican trifecta of control over state government. Currently, there is only one statewide elected Democrat in office in Florida.
Perhaps Florida’s outcome in 2020 was a one-time occurrence, an exception to the rule caused by miscalculations of the Biden campaign and the Florida Democratic Party. Or, perhaps it is a symptom of Florida more consistently supporting the Republican party over the past decade. With Republicans’ use of an anti-socialist rhetoric that especially resounds with Cuban-American voters, the lack of effective Democratic outreach in the state, and voter suppression campaigns that target Spanish-speaking as well as Black communities, Florida could become a Republican stronghold and lose its relevance as an early predictor of presidential vote.
The Republican Party and Florida Latinos
Despite winning Miami-Dade County, which traditionally leans for Democrats, Biden’s victory was more narrow than Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. Biden won Miami-Dade County with 617,864 votes to Trump’s 532,833 votes, compared to Clinton’s 624,146 votes to Trump’s 333,999 votes. With more than a million Cuban-Americans living in Florida, Trump made gains with conservative Cuban-Americans, many of whom are political refugees who were satisfied by Trump's hard-line policy towards Cuba. While in office, Trump tightened economic sanctions and restricted travel to Cuba, undoing the work Barack Obama and Biden put into normalizing relations with the regime.
In addition, Trump and his supporters branded the Democratic party as socialist, using rhetoric that resonates with the Latino exiles from authoritarian countries such as Cuba. Rick Scott wrote in his endorsement of Donald Trump, “Whether or not he’s aware of it, he’s a vessel for the radical policies of the new Socialist Democrat Party,” referring to Joe Biden as a clueless socialist trojan horse for the Democratic party.
Not only were Republican officials strategically using anti-socialist rhetoric, but fear mongering misinformation campaigns specifically targeted Spanish speakers in Florida. Several major newspapers reported that anonymous messages were sent in large Whatsapp group chats claiming that a Joe Biden victory would lead to a government coup or that Trump supporters would be harassed if Trump did not concede the election. For many exiles who fled violence in their home countries, these are serious threats. The Tampa Bay Times quotes Erick Arevalo, who has tried to reassure Cuban-American family members worried the Whatsapp messages are real, “It doesn’t matter how many times I have told them that it’s okay, to not worry about it and that it is fake news and that nothing is going to happen. They are really worried and scared.” Later, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell would specifically identify these misinformation campaigns targeting Latinos as a factor for her re-election loss.
COVID-19 and the Lack of Democratic Outreach
In a New York Times article, Nicholas Casey and Patricia Mazzei attribute the coronavirus pandemic as one of the reasons Joe Biden failed to win the state of Florida in 2020. While Republicans in the state continued to mobilize, knocking on doors and hosting packed in-person Trump rallies, Democrats froze out of public health concerns. Biden may have opted for virtual events and some visits near the end of the race, but the efforts of registering voters, canvassing in neighborhoods, and campaigning face to face were missing. Dario Moreno, a professor at Florida International University, says that Trump had very strong ground organizing in Miami-Dade and Broward while Biden relied on virtual programming and social media, and that by the time the Biden campaign began in-person organizing in South Florida, it was too late.
After Hurricane Maria brought thousands of refugees to Florida from Puerto Rico, Democrats were expected to make gains with the group in Central Florida, possibly reshaping the electorate. Yet expectations were subverted when Trump received 32% support from Puerto Ricans in Central Florida, an eleven point gain from 2016. Some Democrat officials link the party’s losses with Latinos directly to the lack of outreach associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Democratic Primary candidate and former Secretary Julian Castro points to states where Joe Biden made gains among Latinos, like Arizona and Nevada, and claims that Biden won the states in which he spent money and put people on the ground. Castro demonstrates an optimistic line of thinking, since the lack of outreach that cost Biden Florida is a lesson that can be learned for the next election.
However, other Democrat leaders point to bigger problems within the Florida Democratic Party’s organizing. State Senator Lauren Book argues that the party is broken, spending their money in all the wrong places and failing to identify the important groups, “There were millions and millions and millions of dollars that were poured into this state and we lost ground.” A leader of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus of Florida, Nicole Rodriguez, echoes Book’s sentiment, lamenting that the Florida Democratic Party’s failure to reach out to Puerto Ricans this year may have turned them away from the party in the future.
Amendment 4 and Black Voter Suppression: A Modern Poll Tax
In 2018, Florida voters passed Amendment 4, an initiative that abolished the lifetime ban on voting for felons, except those with murder and sex offenses. Ultimately, this ban disproportionately disenfranchised Black Floridians. Major disparities in the incarceration rates of Black Americans and white Americans drive the disproportionate effect of lifetime voting bans on Black communities. In Florida, one in every 22 Black adult males is incarcerated in state prisons. Since Florida’s lifetime voting ban was originally a method to keep newly freed slaves from voting, its continued existence barred one in five Black Floridians from voting until the passing of Amendment 4 during the 2018 midterm elections. The mass enfranchisement of 1.4 million Floridians was expected to reshape the state electorate.
Yet soon after Amendment 4 passed, Republicans in the state legislature passed a law requiring those felons to repay all court-ordered fines to the state before regaining their voting rights. Advocates argued that the law is an act of voter suppression, a modern poll tax, since most of the Floridians impacted would not be able to pay what they owe. The accusation called back to a Jim Crow era doctrine where states, including Florida, required fines to vote that were designed to specifically exclude Black Americans and circumvent the 15th Amendment, which had given them the right to vote. The Republican-backed law permits wealthier felons to pay their way to enfranchisement while barring the poorer from voting, suppressing a likely Democratic block of voters before the 2020 election. Not only did the state require all fines to be paid, but they made it intentionally difficult for individuals to learn what they owe. Without a system to universally track legal fees, the responsibility of clearing felons to vote has fallen on individual counties, creating disparities in accessibility from county to county.
After a lower federal court ruled that the restrictions of Amendment 4 were in violation of the 24th Amendment, which abolished poll taxes in 1964, the case went to the United States Court of Appeals in the 11th Circuit. There, the judges ruled that the state’s law did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and hence is constitutional, overturning the prior ruling. Five out of the six judges who supported the decision last September to uphold the law restricting Amendment 4 were appointed by Donald Trump, and two of those were previously appointed to the Florida Supreme Court by Ron DeSantis. With the appellate court’s decision and a Republican trifecta in state power, short of taking the case to the Supreme Court, the restrictions to Amendment 4 seem to be here to stay. Even if the case was taken to the Supreme Court, it has previously ruled in favor of the state, requiring legal fines to be paid off prior to registering to vote until the 11th Circuit decision.
Due to the restrictions placed on Amendment 4 and the consequent back and forth of its legal battles, Amendment 4 ultimately did not fundamentally change the electorate in Florida, depicting the lengths to which a partisan group would go to improve their chances of winning the state. As the New York Times Editorial Board writes, “Republicans will continue to practice their dark arts of voter suppression as long as they can, secure in the belief that when the number of voters goes down, their electoral prospects go up--until they don’t.”
Preceded by Republican Congressmen and unseated by Republicans, the 2018 elections of Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and Donna Shalala in Miami-Dade might have seemed like evidence of a state that flips, of a purple Florida. However, neither race was a landslide victory. Shalala won District 27 by six percentage points, and Mucarsel-Powell beat the incumbent Carlos Curbelo in District 26 by just one percentage point. In 2020, these races were predictive of how Florida would vote in the presidential election, but also point towards a future controlled by the Republican Party. The factors that led towards their losses, anti-socialist rhetoric, a lack of Democratic outreach, as well as misinformation and voter suppression campaigns that target Latino and Black voters, also brought Florida to break its streak of perfect accuracy in presidential elections for the first time in 24 years. With the current hold of the Republican party on the Florida state government and its manipulation of voter eligibility, we may lose our canary in a coal mine of presidential elections. The 2020 elections in Florida must serve as a wake-up call for Democrats not to take the state for granted and to invest in their grassroots organizing, because they may truly lose it.
Amalia Garcia is a staff writer at CPR and a sophomore at Barnard College studying Political Science and History.