It’s presidential primary election day in Florida. The date of what many astute observers believed a year ago might be the Final Countdown has arrived. DeSantis vs. Trump. Ron vs. the Don. Grit vs. Glitz. Coif vs. Combover.
The Sunshine State Showdown.
Instead, as the rest of America awoke to an equinox dawn, Florida got the Equinox Yawn. In an astonishing display of momentum over substance, former President Donald Trump cracked the delegate barrier to the Republican renomination before the first Easter egg was hidden.
It turns out Yogi Berra, the Bronx Sage, was wrong. Sometimes it is over before it’s over. Sometimes, the polls get it right.
Nonetheless, some small fraction of Florida’s GOP electorate (we wisely practice closed primaries, with registrations closing 30 days before elections) braved a pleasant chill and brilliant blue skies to exercise our franchise Tuesday, and as this is written — midafternoon — who knows what the tally will show.
The gentle poll workers at the Episcopal church in our neighborhood reported, at 2 p.m., I was Voter No. 13 at their location. They’d opened their doors seven hours earlier. That’s math even a retired newspaperman can do: 1.86 ballots per hour had been cast.
One-point-eight-six might be a great earned-run average, but for people of all political hues yammering endlessly about how, in the year 2024, we must save democracy (I’d prefer we save the republic, but I’m always about two cycles behind what’s fashionable), that’s not much action in support of impassioned rhetoric.
Anyway, as one of the Dogged Thirteen, I did this.
Conceded: This was taking a two-by-four to expired horse flesh. Sue me.
What I’ll do come November, I cannot yet say. I am weary of pinching my nose on behalf of the Duke of Mar-a-Lago. Not that it much matters.
With another presidential election year taking shape, Florida’s reputation as the nation’s biggest battleground state has faded: Republicans now hold the biggest advantage in voter registration either major party has held in almost four decades.
State elections data through last month shows the GOP has just surpassed a major milestone. The party's 851,417-voter lead marks the biggest gap between the parties in Florida since Democrats dominated by more than 854,000 votes in 1988.
The gulf could make Florida an afterthought in this year’s presidential contest.
Plenty of moving parts contributed to Florida’s swift seismic shift, including longtime upstate Cracker Democrats at last switching to the party that matched their principles, as well as the inflow of blue state conservatives fleeing progressive policies for Florida’s more rational governance.
On this particular election day in this increasingly crimson state, we cast our eyes across the roiling Sunshine State landscape — because no place is perfect — and take note of some good, some bad, and a bit of ugly.
The good (because it reflects on the state’s attractiveness) includes Florida being home to four of the nation’s five most rapidly growing metro areas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
There’s also this: Florida added nearly 38,000 private sector jobs in January, a 0.4 percent increase, double the national rate of 0.2 percent. Year-over-year, Florida’s 2.2 percent workforce increase nearly tripled the national average (0.8 percent).
The bad? Gas prices surged a dime in the past week, to $3.492, hitting their highest level of 2024, the most since Halloween 2023. At this rate, it won’t be long before we see the return of those charming Joe Biden I did that! stickers returning to gas pumps.
The ugly? In a piece published Monday by Florida Daily, State CFO Jimmy Patronis became the latest Republican to acknowledge the problem of obtaining and affording homeowners insurance.
For all of Florida’s many blessings, however, you don’t have to be an actuary to know that when it came to our property insurance market, Florida had its issues. I love Florida, but my own premiums have gone up 50 percent. This isn’t a new issue despite what you hear in the news.
Patronis went on to describe the assorted reforms put into place by the Legislature in partnership with DeSantis, such as limitations on litigation (fee multipliers, assignments of benefits), a state-supported home-hardening program, and tax cuts on insurance policies and storm-resistant supplies.
Meanwhile, spunky Nikki Fried, the Florida Democratic Party chair, vows Democrats will run, and win, by decrying stubborn property insurance rates, unaffordable housing and, naturally, abortion, abortion, abortion.
Good luck with that. Florida’s presidential primary moment may not have unfolded as the governor originally envisioned, but, 16 months after his runaway reelection to chants of “Two more years!” the proof of DeSantis’ administrative expertise includes a thriving economy, healthy employment, and the caravan of moving vans headed this way.
And we haven’t even discussed the welcome demise of DEI on the various campuses of Florida’s public universities.
Florida is a pretty swell place in an of itself. People of a certain age well remember the When You Need It Bad, We’ve Got It Good tourism campaign. It’s still true, and then some.
Some of us think Ron DeSantis has had more than a little bit to do with the improvements. Today, in Florida’s ballot booths, we shook our fists at the fates.
