Democrats started organizing Latino voters too late, didn’t tailor their message for an increasingly diverse community and ultimately took Latino support for granted, a Florida pollster told about 50 members of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus of Broward County.
Democrats will lose again in 2020 if they don’t move swiftly to win over Hispanics, the pollster, Eduardo Gamarra, told the group.
With the swearing-in last Tuesday of two newly electedRepublican leaders, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott, Florida has become a more reliably red political bastion.
For Republicans, Florida stands out as a show of strength in a state that seems to be growing more favorable to their party at a moment when demographic changes are lifting Democrats elsewhere.
Democrats remain just as shellshocked as they were after Election Day, when it became clear that Bill Nelson, the state’s longtime senator, and Andrew Gillum, the young mayor of Tallahassee, had lost by exceedingly close margins. As of Tuesday, there was still only one Democrat in statewide office.
“We just live in a red state here,” said Alex Sink, a former Democratic state official. “I think it’s just tilted toward the Republicans now, and I hate to say that.”
The question looming over the state going into 2020 is: How can the party narrow its losses with voters who are older — and in many cases white — without alienating younger, nonwhite voters?
What is so agonizing for Democrats is that 2018 did little to clarify the best path. The party put forward Gillum, a 39-year-old black progressive, and Nelson, a 76-year-old white moderate who had been in elected office for nearly half a century. Nelson lost by about 10,000 votes and Gillum didn’t fare much worse, losing by about 32,000 votes.
The only Democrat in statewide office is Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried.
Fried’s success offered Democrats a few clues for how to win in the state: She ran on legalizing medical marijuana, gun control and addressing Florida’s toxic algae. And Fried spent the last 24 hours of her race in a decidedly unusual region for a Democrat: Florida’s deep-red Panhandle.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.