Florida bucked the trend toward sanity

Not subtle. Not nuanced.

Americans launched an almighty middle finger at the Mob Boss of Mar-a-Lago, repudiating him and his congressional Flying Monkey squad.

The Bible-spouting Pharisee Mike Johnson will no longer be Speaker of the House; the sclerotic Chuck Grassley will no longer chair the committee that placed Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch on the U.S. Supreme Court; and no longer will Congress sign off on obscene funding for the Iran war.

MAGA myrmidons crashed and burned in Trump-voting states across the nation — not Florida, of course, but we’ll talk about that in a minute.

Ohio, for example, where tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy saw nothing wrong with running an attack ad starring the estranged mother of opponent Amy Acton, a woman who defended her husband even though he’d been indicted for raping Amy when she was 12.

Or Texas, for God’s sake. Texas, a state so red it puts cheap Santa suits to shame, spurned Ken Paxton, Trump’s hand-picked Senate candidate.

The epically sleazy Paxton, who was impeached by his own party, got taken to the woodshed by a fresh-faced seminarian with a strong resemblance to Opie Taylor.

Elon Musk must be sick as a parrot. He burned through millions of dollars trying to get his Texas supplicants elected, to no avail. Now, SpaceX and Tesla stock is heading downhill and Texas’ new Democratic government is likely inclined to investigate him, his dodgy finances, his campaign donations, and his environmentally disastrous space city.

Now that Texas is no longer friendly to the bazillionaire oligarch and professional baby-daddy, what do you want to bet Musk moves to Florida?

All the best authoritarian creeps end up here: Trump, his boys, the Kushners, Jeff Bezos, and Flávio Bolsonaro.

But Iowa? Kansas? Seriously? Kansas hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.

New new South

South Carolina hasn’t chosen a Democratic senator since Fritz Hollings was re-elected in 1998. It’s got one now.

The South, land of slavery-excusing, abortion-banning, vaccine-hating, and mandating religious instruction in public schools is getting bluer.

They’re still counting in the Mississippi Senate race, where Democrat Scott Colom leads incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. His lead is small, but y’all, this is Mississippi, a state Trump won by more than 20 points in 2024.

In North Carolina, voters flipped a U.S. Senate seat, gave Democrats the majority in the state House of Representatives, and made substantial gains in the state Senate.

In Georgia, the top offices are now as blue as deep water.

Democrats hold both U.S. Senate seats, have taken control of the state House of Representatives, and elected the nation’s first Black woman governor.

Then there’s Florida, which never fails to disappoint.

While most the country rejected Donald Trump’s toxic regime, Florida bucked the trend toward sanity and stuck with Republicans.

Byron Donalds made history as the state’s first Black governor.

This should be a proud accomplishment, except the man is a Trumpist to the core.

During the campaign, he inched away — a little — from references to Trump’s endorsement.

Trump’s approval rating was (and is) in the low-to-mid 30s.

However, once Donalds won, the sucking-up resumed. The man who likes to call Trump “Daddy,” declared: “Mr. President, I want you to hear from Florida that we are still red!”

And Trump is still a racist.

Even Florida shifted

Florida could have made more history by electing Angie Nixon, who’d have been our first Black senator.

Instead, we chose former Attorney General Ashley Moody, appointed to serve out Marco Rubio’s term after he was elevated (if that’s the right word) to be Trump’s secretary of state.

James Uthmeier, appointed to fill the attorney general post after Moody decamped for D.C., won his election, too.

He’s a self-proclaimed devout Christian, yet remains proud of “Alligator Alcatraz,” that giant human rights violation of a prison camp in the Everglades.

Government inspectors (Trump administration inspectors!) found the facility abused detainees, some of whom accused the state of “torture.”

Uthmeier can now continue his mission to shut down drag shows, ban Judy Blume novels, instruct bishops in Roman Catholic theology, and defend himself against accusations of misdeeds in the HOPE Florida scandal.

Still, Florida was not a total bust for Democrats.

These races were far closer than they should have been, given how this state has been blindly electing Republicans for the past 30-odd years.

Angie Nixon was less than three percentage points behind Ashley Moody. That’s a major shift: Marco Rubio beat Val Demings by 6.5 percent in 2022 and Rick Scott’s 2024 margin over Debbie Murcasel-Powell was over 12 points.

The last time he ran, Ron DeSantis romped (an unseemly image, but still), beating Charlie Crist by nearly 20 points.

David Jolly got within 1.3 percentage points of Donalds.

As for Uthmeier, his win over José Javier Fernandez was thread-slim, despite having more than three times as much campaign cash.

There’s more (qualified) good news for Dems.

If Republicans prevail in the two neck-and-neck races that are, at the time of writing, still too close to call, the party make-up of Florida’s congressional delegation will remain the same as it was last year.

‘Oops’

But Republicans thought they could grab even more seats.

Remember that redistricting stunt they pulled to pad their numbers and get rid of the likes of Kathy Castor, the long-time representative from Tampa Bay?

It didn’t quite go as planned.

Three of the four redrawn districts went to Democrats; incumbent Darren Soto leads in the fourth.

Nationwide, what the gerrymandering Republicans thought was a sure bet to net them more seats blew up in their faces.

Most of their redrawn districts went to Democrats.

As the Texan sage and failed presidential candidate Rick Perry once said, “Oops.”

Despite Florida’s Cabinet remaining DeSantisite, Republicans have lost their supermajority in the House and their total control of the Senate is teetering on the brink after Maitland Mayor John Lowndes whipped incumbent DeSantis acolyte Jason Brodeur, one of the most powerful politicos in the state.

The question will be: Will Florida Republicans get a clue and realize they’re not as popular as they used to be?

During a post-election press conference, DeSantis congratulated Florida (and, by extension, himself) for bucking the national trend, while warning the midterms were “as close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country as we have seen probably in the last 100 years.”

Scary! His party has lost two key states, Ohio and Texas: “If the Republican Party doesn’t have Texas as an anchor, then we are not going to be viable moving forward.”

Texas was always what Florida wanted to be when it grew up.

But, as DeSantis boasted, “Our line of scrimmage held better here in Florida.”

Amendment 3

He’s even more pleased Amendment 3, his pet anti-local government project, passed.

Appealing to greed usually works: Voters have chosen to dismantle our property tax system.

Homeowners will be happy to get the extra cash, though the one-third of Floridians who rent won’t get anything out of this.

And nobody will like it when their local taxes and fees shoot up to fund basic services, when the potholes don’t get fixed, law enforcement loses officers, firefighters get laid off, libraries and neighborhood clinics close, cultural events are canceled, and parks neglected.

None of that matters to DeSantis. Amendment 3 is his calling card for another presidential bid, an accomplishment he thinks he can run on.

But Florida might not remain the Ghost of Texas Past DeSantis and the Republicans want it to be.

This year shows even the reddest of reds can fade.

The presidential race in 2028 may bring another Democratic opportunity in Florida.

Ashley Moody must run again to keep her U.S. Senate seat. It’s possible she’ll again face Angie Nixon.

Given the stinking miasma of the Trump administration will still be hanging over Republicans in general, and Moody in particular, Nixon could prevail this time.

Perhaps the Florida Democratic Party — long a by-word for dysfunction — will look across the border at Georgia, where Black women hold the top state offices, and learn.

The national Democratic Party may finally (finally!) invest in the state, recruiting good candidates, growing the voter base one citizen at a time, and spending actual money here.

It won’t be easy, obviously, but the midterms have blown a chill wind through Republican Florida.

As the good old Game of Thrones saying goes, “Winter is coming.”