It isn’t much fun, or indeed very productive, being a Democrat in Florida these days. Outnumbered by a Republican supermajority in the state legislature, the party was forced to sit back and watch extremist governor Ron DeSantis sign law after law riding roughshod over the rights of Black voters, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community.
The humiliation in Tallahassee was the culmination of a years-long decline in Democratic fortunes, predating even the ousting of long-serving US senator Bill Nelson in 2018.
Dismal performances from mediocre candidates in successive elections turned what used to be the nation’s largest swing state firmly red, and for the first time since Reconstruction, the Florida Democratic party has no statewide elected official to its name.
Worse, registered Republican voters, in a minority only three years ago, now outnumber Democrats by half a million. And, this year, the state party faced outright elimination from a bill filed by a Republican state senator.
The only way is up.
The fightback – part revival, part revolution – is in the hands of an aggressive, and progressive, new leadership team that is promising to restore the Florida Democratic party’s lost pride, and equilibrium to the state’s lopsided politics that DeSantis has, in the eyes of some, dragged into fascism.
“The only way democracy works is when you have two strong parties that can bring people together to make sure we’re working on policies that impact the entire state of Florida,” said Nikki Fried, who was elected state party chair in February, and acknowledges the “enormous task” before her.
“Understanding the gravity of this moment is why people are stepping up, wanting to help, and wanting us to be successful. Even Republicans want us to be successful, because they’re frustrated at the one-man show under Ron DeSantis, and frustrated they’re forced, by pressure and threats, to follow him.”
Of course, planning a comeback, and it coming to fruition, are two separate things. But Fried, in a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, said she does not accept that DeSantis, despite his landslide re-election in November, is anywhere near as popular as he thinks he is.
“He didn’t win by 19 points. The Democrats lost by 19 points,” she said.
“His victory is on us because we hadn’t been putting in the resources on the ground, hadn’t been mobilizing our base, hadn’t been talking about the issues that are important to the people of our state.
“It’s been an accumulation of missteps, for decades, from the lack of expansion of our coalition, to coordination between our elected and the party apparatus, to messaging, to structural changes that needed to happen inside the party, including voter registration.
“We just have not been showing electoral success because the Democratic party has not been organized. That changed when I took the gavel.”
In November, she said, DeSantis was well placed to take advantage.
“He took that 19 points and made it into a mandate, even though little more than 4.5 million people voted for him in a 22 million-person state,” she continued.
“He took that win and went even further, taking this last session so extreme that the pendulum is going to come back faster, and more fierce. People in our state are not happy with a six-week abortion ban, with permit-less carry, with the attacks on our education systems, and they’re going to fight back.”
As evidence, Fried points to the election in May of Democrat Donna Deegan as the first female mayor of Jacksonville, Florida’s most populous city. Her upset of DeSantis-endorsed Republican Daniel Davis was, she said, a reflection of “the overall energy across our state”.
Candidates such as Deegan are what Fried believes the party needs to make itself appealing again to voters, vocal politicians unafraid to take off the gloves, scrap it out with Republicans and call out their policies.
Progressive Maxwell Frost, 26, the first member of Gen Z elected to Congress, and state representative Anna Eskamani, 33, are two examples of rising young Democrats carrying the banner for the next generation.
Fried, 45, who as state agriculture commissioner was a thorn in DeSantis’s side as part of his four-person cabinet, also considers herself part of the active resistance. In April, she and Lauren Book, the state senate minority leader, were arrested in Tallahassee protesting DeSantis’s abortion law. Trespass charges were subsequently dropped.
“There are no regrets when you’re standing up for justice, standing up for a woman’s right to choose,” she said. “Sometimes, you know, good trouble is necessary trouble.”
The first real test of Fried’s leadership won’t come until next year, when the Senate seat of Republican former governor Rick Scott, who narrowly defeated Nelson in 2018, comes up for reelection.
Fried won’t be running herself. “I have a job at hand to rebuild the Democratic party and the faith of the people in our state in the party,” she said, adding that Scott can expect a “formidable” challenge.
“We are going to have a dynamic, strong, outspoken female who’s going to run for the Senate race, somebody who’s going to be able to carry the values and the morals that we all share,” she said.
Before then, Fried will concentrate on trying to rebuild the state party’s once envied ground operation, that carried the state for Barack Obama twice.
“We’re just at the start of it,” she said. “Every registered voter, every elected official, every volunteer, needs to start taking ownership and ask what they can do for the Democratic party, not what the Democratic party can do for them.
“When we start changing the mentality of how everybody has a part to play here, we can start working together. It’s one team, one dream, and we all need to be getting into the same boat and rowing in the same direction.”
