How Florida Went Right

Obama Won The Sunshine State Twice; Now That Seems Like Another Time

The 2024 election was the last one Dorothy McEwen will ever be involved in. The 84-year-old great-grandmother from Boyton Beach, Florida, has been involved in politics ever since she was a twentysomething New Yorker marching for Civil Rights. After watching her precinct, where she worked the polls since moving to Florida in 2002, go Republican for president for the first time in over 30 years, the longtime Democratic Party activist is hanging it up.

“There’s not much left I can do here,” she said. “My time has come and gone.”

McEwen, whose eldest granddaughter Amanda was a classmate of mine in high school, had a lot to say about her state’s lurch to the right but repeatedly emphasized that she was not surprised.

“Florida was a Republican state when we moved here,” she said. “It’s come full circle.”

She reminisced about the 2008 election when Barack Obama won the Sunshine State with a margin of about a quarter of a million votes. She described the battle fought by Florida Democrats to get the national party to take the state seriously, even after early polls showed Republican presidential nominee John McCain with a comfortable lead over Obama. McEwen talked about the excitement built around young people in Florida that year and how many out-of-state youths came to Florida to convince their skeptical grandparents and older relatives to vote for Obama, part of what comedienne Sarah Silverman called “The Great Schelp.”

With its coalition of older liberal Boomers, younger progressive millennials, and increasingly left-trending Cubans and other Latinos, there was a hope at that time Florida would become Democratic for the foreseeable future.

It was wrong.

Florida voted for Obama in 2008 for the same reason it gave Donald Trump a double-digit win in 2024—the state's role as a haven for transplants dramatically changed its politics from the previous generation.

McEwen, born in the Bronx and raised her family in Queens and later in Farmingdale, Long Island, laughed in agreement when I suggested that Florida was “Long Island South.”

“Everyone here is from somewhere near the city,” she said. “When I got here, it was all New York transplants my age. Many of those transplants are my children’s and grandchildren’s ages today. It’s the same migration, but they’re very different people.”

When she arrived in Florida after her husband’s retirement just weeks after 9/11, her neighbors were all former New Dealers and Vietnam-era hippies who spoke positively after FDR, Truman, and John F. Kennedy. She remembers how popular former U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler was in her community. Wexler was then a young then-40-year-old progressive Jew, also originally from New York, who supported impeaching George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Nearly all of her peers from that era have died, and their children have either moved into their houses or sold them. Most of her neighbors are younger, in their 40s and 50s, and lean conservative.

“There are Trump signs in front of houses that had ‘Impeach Bush’ signs twenty years ago,” McEwen said. “It’s not the same people.”

That may be one of the most significant representations of what has happened to Florida.

For Some, A Paradise

Florida has several things that were always going for it. First, it’s the largest and most accessible tropical possession the United States has. The advent of air travel made Florida accessible by a two or three-hour flight from the frigid northern metropolises instead of a two-to three-day trek by train, car, or boat. Resorts popped up along the warm oceanfront, welcoming vacationers from around the country and the world. My grandparents honeymooned there in 1952.

The evacuation of the native Seminoles from the state made vacant land plentiful and, thus, cheap. In the post-World War II economic boom, people who visited this tropical paradise realized they could also live there reasonably inexpensively. The state’s lack of an income tax was also appealing. Northerns move to Florida in waves to occupy the vacant land.

The Florida they were moving into was a Confederate State only a century earlier. It was still then part of the Jim Crow South, home to strongly conservative communities. Florida was one of the few states to elect a member of the Prohibition Party governor. At the time, most of Florida’s population was located in the north, between Pensacola and St. Augustine. Except for Key West, the state’s largest city for a time, Central and South Florida and the Miami, Tampa, and Orlando areas did not grow until well after World War II. That meant Florida’s politics were influenced by communities in the north, part of the Deep South, that had existed since the Confederacy. Over time, the newer communities adapted to the conservative culture of the north, and that culture attracted many people to Florida. It still does.

Florida has never been particularly friendly to progressives or Democrats after the collapse of the Solid South Democratic coalition. From 1948 until 2008, Democratic presidential candidates only won the state three times: in the 1964 Lyndon Johnson landslide, where he only won the state by one point; in 1976, with Jimmy Carter from adjacent Georgia; and in 1996, in the Bill Clinton landslide. In 1984 and 1988, Democrats only won one county in the entire state. While Democrats did somewhat better down-ballot, Florida sent Republicans like Paula Hawkins and Connie Mack to the U.S. Senate in that timeframe. Florida’s reputation for being Republican and conservative even bled into pop culture. Congressman Alex Shrub, a character in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, based in a fictional version of 1980s Miami, is described as an “extreme right-wing” politician. Politically-themed programs like The West Wing, Commander In Chief, Veep, and Scandal included characters who were conservative Republicans from Florida.

In the 1970s, Florida became an epicenter for anti-progressive causes. Anita Bryant launched her anti-gay crusade in Miami, leading a successful fight to overturn Miami-Dade County’s anti-discrimination law in 1977. Florida has a reputation for having one of the most brutal criminal justice systems in the country. Though chain gangs haven’t been common since the 1950s, they have become part of Florida culture, as has the state’s electric chair - Old Sparky, though it’s now rarely used. More than 100 people have been executed in Florida since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the fourth most of any state¹.

My family has connections to Florida that go back over half a century. My great aunt and uncle relocated to Pinellas County from Queens in the late 1960s, and my father spent some time there as a pre-teen. He often mentioned seeing separate checkout lines for black people in supermarkets, even several years after federal law outlawed them.

Diana Rothman remembers them as well. In 1966, when she was five years old, her family relocated to Central Florida from Upstate New York. She remembers black women being afraid to use the ladies’ room if there were white women in there.

“My mom used to say, ‘down there, the races don’t mix,’” Diana, who lives in Plant City, said. “I always felt there was some allure to Florida, one of the last standing bastions against the social policies of the North. Unfortunately, I think that’s still true.”

Her husband, a realtor in the Tampa Bay area for over twenty years, admits to having clients moving in from out of state who are attracted to Florida’s conservative politics.

“His clients are often from New York, Boston, Chicago, or Baltimore and want to live someplace where they feel represented,” Diana explained. “Everyone wants to be heard, and in the past few years, Florida sent out a beacon to every conservative in America: You will be heard here.”

The path to Florida’s status as a beacon for modern conservatism starts in the first Trump presidency.

The 2018 Gubernatorial Election

In March 2019, I visited Cartegena, Colombia. Our tour guide, Francesco, and I talked about America's relationship with Latin America while walking around the colonial-era fort in the city. Francesco lived in Miami for a time, something he says many wealthy Colombians—specifically children of relatively wealthy Colombian families like his, who were staunchly anti-Communist and anti-Socialist—do as a rite of passage.

He called Miami “the de facto capital of Latin America” and mused how ironic it was that the “defacto capital” wasn’t even in a Latin American country. I responded, “Well, Florida sometimes feels like a Latin American country.”

He agreed.

“If you want to make money, go to Miami,” he said. “So much of Central and South America are too corrupt or socialist. In Miami, there are no limits. That’s the reputation America has, and Miami is the gateway.”

When I brought this up to Jason Hernandez, a Venezuelan-American organizer with the Florida Democratic Party, he sighed.

“There’s a lot of truth in that, I think,” he said. “I think that vibe works in Republicans’ favor lately.”

Hernandez said his own relatives were among the many Floridians who have turned against the Democratic Party.

“My mother and all my aunts voted for Hillary,” he said. “They loved her and hated how [Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie] Sanders supporters treated her. They think he won control of the party in the end.”

Hernandez described the shock of learning that his relatives, who despised Donald Trump in 2016, voted for him in 2020 and 2024 as a “gut punch.” He pointed to one specific event when I asked him how this shift happened.

The 2018 Democratic primary for Governor.

That year, Florida Democrats sought to pick up the Governor’s mansion for the first time since former Gov. Jeb Bush won his first term in 1998. The Democratic Party was a three-way race between Gwen Graham, a former Congresswoman from the Florida Panhandle and daughter of former Governor and Senator Bob Graham, a Florida political icon; Philip Levine, the former mayor of Miami Beach; and Andrew Gillum, the then-mayor of Tallahassee. Sanders backed Gillum, and progressives aligned with him, while Graham got the backing of the Democratic establishment.

Ultimately, Levine, who came in third statewide, won the plurality in many Latino parts of the state, especially Hernandez’s community of Sweetwater, west of Miami. Hernandez said that was mainly due to Levine's familiarity with South Florida, but he has faulted Graham’s campaign for not doing much outreach in the Hispanic community. Gillum won the primary with a 34 percent plurality.

“I think if Gwen had not relied solely on nostalgia for her father, she would’ve won,” Hernandez said. “She didn’t realize so many Floridians who came to the Democratic Party under Obama don’t remember her father because they didn’t live here decades ago when he was in office.²”

Gillum’s win changed the dynamics.

“It was a sign the party was moving in a more unfavorable direction to those in my community,” Hernandez said. “Immediately, I saw people question whether they should support Gillum, even though they had voted for Hillary just two years earlier.”

Gillum narrowly lost the general election to Gov. Ron DeSantis in an upset. That, Hernandez said, was the “death blow.”

McEwen remembers being shocked at the result.

“We thought Gillum was a shoo-in,” she said, noting that she preferred Graham and believes she would’ve easily won. “We were all shocked. Where did we go wrong?”

Latinos, said Hernandez.

“The Republicans figured out how to do Spanish outreach,” he said. “We were bombarded with ads calling Gillum a socialist, tying him to Bernie, saying he would institute an income tax and set criminals free.”

Hernandez said there were ads with sheriffs blasting Gillum, ads about how Tallahassee was “a crime-ridden hellhole.” Gillum did respond, but it wasn’t enough. Hernandez said the response “wasn’t convincing.” There was a viral moment in a debate between the two where Gillum accused DeSantis of being a racist, using the phrase “hit dogs holler,” a reference to DeSantis’ “guilty” response to being called racist. It backfired in Sweetwater.

“I think we dismissed DeSantis as an unelectable MAGA candidate,” he said, noting that DeSantis had defeated more moderate establishment Republican former Rep. Adam Putnam in the primary. “We thought [Gillum] nailing him at the debate was a knockout move. It just pissed people off and made him look like a bully. A black man everyone thought was a socialist was going after a veteran with a family; the optics couldn’t be worse. Those who it didn’t make angry were scared to death of Andrew and what he might do as Governor.”

COVID-19

Some Florida political advisors tell me that under Governor Gillum, the COVID-19 pandemic would’ve gone very differently in Florida, which might have saved the state’s competitive status. They believe Gillum would have had a similar trajectory as other Democratic governors in states with Republican legislatures like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Tony Evers of Wisconsin, and Roy Cooper of North Carolina. Specifically, they believe his powers would’ve been curtailed “at the right time,” allowing him to avoid becoming the face of unpopular restrictions while keeping Florida from becoming a symbol of resistance to “the perceived COVID tyranny” nationwide.

Although Florida did lock down early in the pandemic, and restrictions stayed in place longer than other Southern states, by early 2021, DeSantis had become a bulwark against ongoing mandates and public health rules. Hoping to position himself as official opposition to the incoming Biden Administration for a potential 2024 presidential run, he defanged public health in the state. He loudly opposed mask and vaccine mandates, essentially banning them in Florida. He promoted the state as a “free state.” DeSantis went further, extending his war against COVID restrictions to targeting “woke” culture, including LGBTQ and race curriculum in schools, and fought corporations like Disney for promoting diversity programs, tying it all together into one sinister plot by Leftists to tear apart American culture.

While it did not help DeSantis’ presidential ambitions, it reinforced Florida’s longstanding reputation as a haven for anyone fleeing liberal “nanny state” policies. Those fed up with ongoing COVID politics and, by connection, what appeared to be the growing progressive consensus in blue and purple states elsewhere, were invited to move to Florida. Not only those escaping mask and vaccine mandates but also people who felt criminal justice reform would handicap law enforcement's ability to curtail crime moved to Florida – DeSantis personally invited police officers fired for misconduct to work in law enforcement in the state. People tired of rainbow flags and diversity programs moved to the state at the Governor’s invitation. Those who feared higher taxes to fund democratic socialist priorities fled to Florida, knowing the state would never introduce an income tax under DeSantis.

Those people were natural additions to the state’s Republican coalition, making it challenging for Democrats to appeal to them.

A Trump shop in Bradenton, Florida

The New Floridians

In 2018, Nikki Fried was elected State Agricultural Commissioner, the last time a Democrat won statewide office in Florida. After an unsuccessful run for Governor in 2022, she became chair of the state party in 2023. One of her priorities was reaching out to recent transplants and naturalized citizens. Florida had almost 100,000 new naturalized citizens in 2023, the third-most of any state, and thousands upon thousands of recent residents who moved in from elsewhere. One problem was that most of these people had already been captured by Republicans.

“We just found that when we would reach out to recent transplant voters, they had no interest in our message,” said Hernandez. “We’d reach out to them to get them registered, and they’d just say, ‘fuck off, we’re Republicans,' and that was that.”

He said the same was true of recently naturalized citizens – many of whom were of Cuban, Venezuelan, Haitian, and Nicaraguan descent and strongly resented the way the Biden administration used the asylum process to help undocumented immigrants stay in the country, and were heavily propagandized by right-wing Spanish-language media and social media messaging.

“We thought we’d find natural allies in that community, but to our shock, they were totally on board with Trump’s view of handling immigration and sincerely believed Democrats were socialists who wanted to take their money,” Hernandez explained. “It was a total reversal from what we saw in 2016.”

McEwen said she had to “self-reflect” when she saw how many Trump captured younger Latino and Black people in her community.

“I began to wonder if the idea we had that non-white people would never support this kind of Republican Party was just me being dismissive,” she explained. “Was it racist to assume that? Are they seeing something I’m not? We took the idea that they are natural Democrats for granted.”

Influence From Latin America

A big part of the problem was the rise of right-wing leaders in Latin America who had captured the attention of the diaspora stateside. That was especially true in Florida, the defacto “capital” of Latin America, where, as Hernandez explained, Latinos remain very connected to their home countries.

He explains that socialism, even democratic socialism, which is the center of the Democratic Party faction led by Sanders and Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of New York, repels Venezuelans, Cubans, and other Latinos in Florida. Since the 1950s, these people have fled socialist regimes or civil wars in Latin America.

“Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were going to help make all your dreams come true,” he said. “Now though they see Democrats like they see [former Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez, [current Venezuelan leader Nicholas] Maduro or Fidel Castro. They think we will force them to be poor or something.”

People like former presidents Jair Bolsanaro in Brazil and Jose Manuel Santos of Colombia, current leaders like Javier Millei in Argentina, and, most recently, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador have captured the attention and praise of Latin Americans in Florida. Supporters of those leaders have pushed Trump as a natural ideological ally and even a mentor to younger leaders like Bukele, opening the door for Trump to win over these voters who had gone for Obama and Hillary Clinton.

That is contrasted with the toxic unpopularity of left-wing Latin American leaders like Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba, the heir to Castro’s Communist regime, Venezuela’s Maduro, who has been in power since the death of Chavez in 2013, and former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo and his successor Dina Boluarte. Democrats, Hernandez said, were tied to those leaders when Republicans were able to propagandize prominent left-wing Democrats, offering praise to them, as Bernie Sanders did for Castro in 2020, or criticizing attempts to destabilize the Maduro regime as AOC and Rep. Ro Khanna did.

Bukele’s presidency has been particularly damaging to Democratic prospects because many Latinos see his brutal handling of El Salvador’s gang violence as a template for tackling crime in the United States. Once one of the most crime-ridden countries in the world, El Salvador’s crime rate has plummeted since Bukele instituted a ruthless crackdown on gangs in the country, moves that ran afoul of democratic norms. El Salvador’s crime rate is lower than even the safest American cities today.

“You can’t argue with results, and Salvadorians are all over Spanish-language media telling that story,” Hernandez said. “Meanwhile, we’re still trying to get the stench of ‘defund’ off us.”

Nikki Fried, Florida’s former Commissioner of Agriculture, was the most recent Democrat to win statewide when she won in 2018. She is now chair of the state party and seeks to lead its renaissance.

Going Forward

None of the Florida Democrats I spoke to have any hope of the state going blue anytime soon. However, Hernandez was most optimistic, saying that Trump’s performance might result from Florida being his adoptive home state, something McEwen echoed.

“Here’s a former New Yorker who relocated to Florida, so that story resonates here,” she said. “I don’t know what happens when he’s gone.”

Hernandez said he believes something dramatic, like natural disasters creating a housing and insurance crisis that Republicans mishandle or the GOP nominating former Rep. Matt Gaetz as their gubernatorial candidate in 2026, could shake up the state’s politics. All of his possible silver linings, though, revolve around Republicans screwing up massively and Democrats being prepared to take advantage, something he said the party under Fried’s leadership is looking to do, hopefully with help from the national party. He’s skeptical the national party will want to invest in Florida and understands why.

"The people staying in Florida are older and more conservative, the people leaving are younger and more progressive, the people moving in are younger and outright fascist,” Hernandez said. “We have a huge problem here, and it can’t be fixed by just doing better messaging. We’re going to need something massive or an entirely different electorate.”

1. Florida is likely to move up the list soon, as Virginia, currently in third, abolished the death penalty in 2021. The other two states are Texas (591 people executed since 1976) and Oklahoma (127).

2. Graham’s father served as Governor from 1979 until 1987 and Senator from 1987 until 2005, long before many current Florida voters lived there.