Who Is The Biggest Drag On Republican Candidates In Florida-- Trump Or DeSantis?

Lambchop by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday's Quinnipiac poll of Florida voters, released just as the U.S. crossed the 4.1 million case load, must have left White House heads exploding. Trump's overall job approval is way underwater-- 40% approve and 58% disapprove. (When it comes to his handling if the pandemic, it's even worse-- just 37% approve.) And Trump is dragging down the Florida GOP with him. They're all underwater. DeSantis' job approval is just 38%, while 57% disapprove. Rick Scott's approval is down to 41%, with 44% disapproving, similar to Marco Rubio's 40% approval/44% disapproval. Lucky for them, none of them is up for reelection in November. Democrats running against entrenched GOP incumbents in the state legislature are seeing the opportunity. I asked some of the progressive candidates in Republican-held districts in different parts of Florida.

Jared West, a candidate for state House in the northeast Polk County district held by knee-jerk Republican Sam Killebrew. "We’re fired up in district 41,' Jared told me this morning. "My opponent spent over 80 days ignoring coronavirus, the unemployment crisis, and what’s happening here that is hurting everyone so much. People see right through it. We’re tired of our community need falling on deaf ears. We’re tired of people not working for us, but for special interests instead. And I’m going to flip this district."

Katherine Norman is running for state Senate in the 23rd district, mostly Sarasota County with a slice of Charlotte. Her opponent is the notorious Joe Gruters, a wily extremist right-winger, former co-chair of the 2016 Trump campaign in Florida and now chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Norman is looking forward to the contest. "When elected officials are more interested in their own personal gain than the interest of their constituents it will always come to light eventually. This pandemic has made this clear. Gruters, DeSantis, and other Florida GOP Trumpists have brought the utterly misguided loyalty to the current administration at the expense of Florida's citizens to light. This pandemic and our government's response will be remembered Nov. 3rd. The lives we have lost will never be forgotten and we are working harder than ever for accountable leadership in their names."

Florida state House candidate Joshua Hicks, a progressive, not a garden variety Democrat, told me that people he talks with in his Republican-leaning district in northeast Florida "are exhausted by the chaos and are tired of politicians who put blind party loyalty above what’s in the community’s best interest. Independents and moderate Republicans, especially women, are abandoning President Trump in droves and those are the voters that my campaign is focused on. They care about stopping coronavirus spreading, expanding healthcare access, addressing climate change, and stopping gun violence. Instead of working on those kitchen table issues, my opponent, State Rep. Cord Byrd, has been doing everything he can to set himself up to win future Republican primaries for higher office, while placating Trump’s ego. During the height of the recent peaceful civil rights protests against systemic racism and police brutality, my opponent was holding a boat parade for Donald Trump, with supporters flying confederate and QAnon flags. To this day, he has not made a statement on George Floyd or ending systemic racism."

Joshua said that Byrd has made matters worse by being conspicuously absent all during the pandemic. "In a selfish and irresponsible move," he told me yesterday, Byrd "attended a fundraiser where a lobbyist attendee tested positive for COVID-19 and where no one was wearing masks. Then he attended an RNC Host Committee event with Vice President Pence, again not wearing a mask or social distancing. He still hasn’t made a statement about his testing or quarantine status, even though other GOP politicians from the same events have done so. In short, my opponent would rather please Donald Trump than do what’s best for his constituents. The poll numbers by Quinnipiac shouldn't be surprising-- we have a real opportunity to flip this red seat if my campaign has the resources to take advantage of collapsing approval of Donald Trump and the Republican party at large. People are fed up and this November, they'll make it known at the ballot box if we out work and out organize every politician who puts Trump before people."

Near the southern tip of the state, Bob Lynch is running to replace another right-wing power-monger, Daniel Perez, who's in line to become House Speaker in 2024-- if Perez manages to beat Lynch and if the Republican majority doesn't get swept away in the anti-Trump tsunami. Lynch is counting on beating Perez and watching the Republicans' majority dissipate. "This is not a year where we should be listening to the traditional handicapping of state legislative races," he told me today. "The catastrophic incompetence of the Trump and DeSantis’ administration has brought our state to the brink of ruin. We’ve had more Floridians die of COVID-19 than every single hurricane in the state’s history combined. Where the hell is the state House? Where is Danny Perez? Why is the state legislature not doing anything to hold these people accountable and save lives and jobs? Because all of the Republicans are complicit, especially the ones in future leadership roles. Anyone who is only looking at so called 'winnable' races based on outdated metrics is missing the big picture and an opportunity for real change in the state of Florida. And it is precisely races like mine that donors should be focusing on because the return on investment is much higher and the capital required is far lower. I will continue to hang Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis around my opponent's neck like a millstone because he is responsible for enabling their incompetence and corruption. People relying on PVI or past breakdowns are living in a different reality. The situation is really bad here and we are entirely controlled by Republicans at the state level. No excuses."

Anselm Weber is running for the Florida House as well, across the state from where Lynch is running, in Lee County, where the pandemic has been picking up virulence. Today Florida reported 12,444 new cases statewide and another 278 in Lee County, bringing the county total to 14,046-- a ghastly 13,794 still active. Weber told me that he thinks DeSantis' and the other Republicans' crashing poll numbers across the state "provide enormous opportunity for everyday Floridians to hear a new perspective. My opponents, Jason Maughan and Adam Botana, are running on the 'Trump agenda' which is short for 'let's not do anything for working people and use the working class as sacrificial lambs to get the economy up and going again.' It is truly pathetic, their 'leadership' during this time, and Floridians need to have representatives who have their back during this crisis. We need to cancel rent and home payments in the short term, and provide universal healthcare, affordable housing, unions and livable wages for the years to come for the working class."

Florida's new coronavirus cases again topped 12,000 yesterday-- bringing the total beyond 400,000 more than any country in Western Europe, including more than any of the countries with much bigger populations than Florida. Florida's population is 21.5 million.

• Germany (pop- 83.8 million)- 205,142 confirmed cases (672 yesterday)
• U.K. (pop- 67.9 million)- 297,146 confirmed cases (769 yesterday)
• France (pop- 65.3 million)- 179,398 confirmed cases (1,062 yesterday)
• Italy (pop- 60.5 million)- 245,338 confirmed cases (306 yesterday)
• Spain (pop- 46.7 million)- 317,246 confirmed cases (2,615 yesterday)

The disparities are staggering. It doesn't take much deep thinking to see that whoever is making the decisions in Florida is getting it really, really wrong.

At Bloomberg News yesterday, Jonathan Bernstein offered some ideas about what the Republicans will be up to after they lose both the White House and Senate (and more House seats). Trump gave a little preview in the tweet (above) after he tried blaming Democrats for GOP disarray and dysfunction. Cooperation will not be on the menu. "After a round of recriminations," he wrote, "the next two years are reasonably predictable: Republicans would react to unified Democratic government exactly the way they did in 1993 and 2009-- and arguably in 1977 and 1961 as well. They’d mount as much obstruction as they could in Congress, while charging the incoming administration with malfeasance. Outside of Washington, expect more Tea Party-type rallies, blaming Democrats for the high levels of unemployment they inherited and claiming their plans are socialist overreach. Expect partisans to rile up resentment the way they did in those years as well… There might be some talk about the long-term demographic challenges the party faces, but most will soon conclude that their main mistake was not being conservative enough. There will be no serious discussions within the party of the real problem: They can’t govern. The reason this is easy to predict is because, as the party sees it, the Bob Dole Republicans in 1993-1994 and the Mitch McConnell Republicans in 2009-2010 were totally successful. Compromise is a trap, in this view; the way to recover is to oppose the Democrats flat-out."

Sad that Biden is unlikely to accomplish anything to make anyone happy-- other than just fumigating the White House and the Executive Branch. And Schumer's Senate will be run by a Democratic majority but a very, very conservative one. The Democratic establishment has set the table for another 2010-like electoral donnybrook in 2022.