For the past two decades, there’s one thing the Florida Democrats have gotten really good at: losing. Despite having many more registered Democrats in this state than Republicans, our state government is the equivalent of ruby red Alabama, with only one statewide Democratic official—Secretary of Agriculture Nikki Fried. (Even Alabama, at least, has one Democratic senator.) The GOP has no business holding a complete trifecta in a state like Florida, but here we are.
The good news is that we are only three seats away from achieving a tie in our state senate. That would be huge, because it would ensure shared power for the 2020 redistricting effort and for setting legislative priorities. However, if we can’t get those three seats, Democrats won’t have any leverage. Coincidentally, there happens to be exactly three state senate races, which I wrote about last month, that would be excellent pickup opportunities this cycle. The problem is that only two of them—SD-9 (near Orlando) and SD-39 (South Florida)--are getting any real help from Democratic leadership.
The third race in SD-20 (near Tampa), however, is not.
The candidate is Kathy Lewis, a John Hopkins University graduate and disability rights activist who ran in 2018 and received 46.5% of the vote in a very winnable R+2 district—with no help from the party. This district also transverses the I-4 corridor, which is critical for Biden’s Florida campaign. Lewis was endorsed by the Tampa Bay Times, and the longtime incumbent who defeated her just retired this year. Supporting this race is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, not only has most of the Democratic senate caucus not endorsed her, she told me that two major donors who had pledged money were told not to donate to her campaign. What is going on?
State Senate District 20 candidate Kathy Lewis is a Johns Hopkins University graduate, community organizer, and disability rights advocate.
Just to be clear, Senate District 20 is the most competitive pickup race following SD-9 and SD-39. The urban area covers New Tampa near the University of South Florida, with the Hillsborough suburbs, and rural portions of Polk and Pasco counties gerrymandered to favor the GOP by a 51 — 49 split. The rural areas of this district, however, have grown increasingly suburban.
Lewis told me she never wanted to be a politician, but decided to run her first race after the inordinate amount of trouble she had trying to access benefits for her daughter, who is disabled. Frustrated beyond belief, Lewis decided to make her voice heard. She campaigned hard, and despite being outspent 12 to 1 by entrenched incumbent Republican Sen. Tom Lee, who had been in office since the 1990s, still managed to receive 46.5% to 53.5% of the vote. Again, she did this without Democratic party support.
This year, State Sen. Tom Lee suddenly and unexpectedly retired. You’d think party leadership would jump at the chance for Lewis to run again, but they asked former gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink to run for this seat instead, which she ultimately declined. In fact, Sink endorsed Lewis. This district is looking very good for a flip, with Democratic turnout set to break records. Our party leadership should be excited about this opportunity.
Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Florida Senator Gary Farmer, who is set to be Democratic Minority Leader in 2021, oversees the Democratic Senate Victory funding. He has ensured that Senate Districts 9 and 39 are flush with money. District 9 challenger Patricia Sigman has been receiving funds from the Florida Democratic Legislative Campaign since March. More importantly, she and District 39 challenger Jose Fernandez received endorsements early on that helped big donors open their checkbooks. Sigman and Fernandez have raised half a million each.
Geo-political map of Florida: Dems need three pickups to tie the state senate. The best opportunities are, in order, District 39, District 9, and District 20. The only real threats to losing Dem seats are in District 37 and District 3.
Kathy Lewis never received such treatment. Mr. Farmer has tweeted against spending money on “long shots” that take away from races that he feels can be won. To be fair, he must spend a lot to win both Districts 9 and 39, and this year he must also spend money in District 3 (Tallahassee) and District 37 (South Florida) to ward off surprisingly strong challengers—even though they are in blue areas. The Democratic incumbents for SD-3 and SD-37 have over $300K each.
However, District 20 is far from a long shot. In fact, an internal poll, commissioned by a large donor in September, showed the race to be very competitive. The poll data showed that Lewis’ Republican opponent, Dan Burgess, had an edge until questions were posed from the GOP agenda, such as cutting Medicare, fracking and not fixing former governor, current Sen. Rick Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ unemployment system—which became an utter disaster in this state after COVID. The poll swung to Lewis by a 24-point margin! With appropriate funding, and Lewis’ plan to digitally micro-target constituents, the district could be in great shape for a flip.
Nonetheless, she not only received the cold shoulder on funding, she also has only managed to get the endorsements of five state senators as of this writing: Annette Taddeo, Lori Burman, Victor Torres, Audrey Gibson, and Bobby Powell. Endorsements are needed to bring in big donor funding. The other 12 Democratic state senators have not endorsed her, and in some cases, stated they wouldn’t. Fergie Reid, Jr. of 90for90.org revealed that Democratic state Sen. Darryl Rousen told him he had a friendly working relationship with Burgess, the Republican candidate, and thought Kathy Lewis wasn’t a strong enough candidate to beat him. I reached out to state Sen. Rousen and left messages, but they were not returned as of this writing.
Rousen wasn’t the only one: Several state senators I reached out to did not return calls concerning this race. However, state Sen. Perry Thurston told me that he was planning on speaking with Mrs. Lewis. Another state senator, Bobby Powell, agreed to speak with her and ultimately gave her the fifth endorsement.
At the county level, the Hillsborough Democratic Party chair, Ione Townsend, didn’t help matters when, back in July, she tried to justify on a Zoom call with the Hillsborough Democratic Black Caucus why Lewis was not getting the financial help she needed. (It’s at the one hour, 30-minute mark.) Lewis, she said, was “not high on our list because of where the polling was. What we do is, we prioritize based on our overall goals. White, Black, brown—it doesn’t matter who that candidate is, it’s where they fall on our election priority list.”
Her lack of support from party leadership was confounding enough that the Tampa Bay Times wrote an article about it. Given the dynamics in the race, even the Democrats Senate Victory spokesman, Anders Croy, couldn’t give a reason to deny support.
“Kathy Lewis is a fantastic candidate who would be an incredible representative of her community in the Florida Senate. We are continuing to monitor her race as we move toward election day.”
In the article, Lewis said she felt her party could be doing more to support her—and not just for her sake, but for Biden’s candidacy. She was honest with the reporter when he asked if she had received money from Senate Victory. (She hadn’t.) The Times reporter tried and failed to reach Farmer after leaving messages, and other incumbent senators either didn’t return calls, or referred him to Farmer.
Kathy’s public assertion that she wasn’t being supported appears to have severe consequences.
At least two major donors told the Senate District 20 candidate directly that party leaders warned them away from her campaign, because she has talked to local and national news outlets, including The Nation, about her struggles to get state Democrats to take her campaign seriously. More than one Florida Democrat has suggested she stop talking to the press about her travails, if she wants to gain support.
I called Lewis to give her a chance to elaborate on these incidents. She told me that one donor was planning to donate $50,000, and another $300,000. According to her, the one who had pledged $50,000 told her that three Democratic state senators asked that he not give her money, so he backed out. The one who had made the bigger pledge told Kathy that he had been warned off of her by other large donors. Lewis said she was told that she made a mistake complaining to the press about the party not helping, and that she needed to be careful with her words. For example, she was told she could have said she hasn’t received any funding “yet.” Lewis let me know that she wouldn’t have ever said that, because she doubted funds would be forthcoming.
I tried to reach out to Gary Farmer and his assistant to ask about Kathy Lewis, but messages were not returned as of this writing. Lewis did let me know, however, that she did finally receive $22,000 from the Victory Fund on October 7, shortly after I started digging around for this piece.
Here’s the deal: I’ve lived in this state for decades. I’m tired of losing, and this treatment of a quality contender reeks of pettiness. I agree that Lewis is not a politician: the Baltimore native doesn’t parse words, which is why it was so refreshing to talk to her. She is exactly the kind of non-passive, non-politician we need in Florida’s state senate. She is fired up when talking about healthcare and stopping gun violence. Her own mother was a victim of gun violence in Baltimore. I don’t understand the Stockholm Syndrome of preferring non-abusive Republicans to Democratic challengers. Yet this has been a problem with Florida Democrats for decades. I can’t even imagine the other side ever withholding endorsements from their own candidates or making it difficult for a viable candidate to get funding, just to leave the door open for the Republican they know. It’s just not what a winning team does.
Kathy Lewis is exactly the type of person we need to be supporting. Our Democratic leadership seems stuck on the failed strategy of not wanting to run candidates in red areas. They don’t want people campaigning in certain areas because they are afraid it would motivate the Republican base to come out in greater numbers. This means the Democratic message and platform gets defined by the Republicans, because there is no one around to counter their lies. I have been told it’s better to cede these areas and only run candidates in blue and swing districts. This was the exact same strategy discussion that happened in the Virginia legislative races in 2019. Several Democratic leaders only wanted to focus on only the top tier races, while activists wanted to expand the map. After years of being in the minority, Virginia finally adopted a new strategy of contesting almost every race and not ceding anything in the rural districts. Virginia is now enjoying a blue trifecta.
State Senate District 27 candidate Rachel Brown
The same progressive organization that helped recruit candidates in Virginia—90 for 90—teamed up in 2020 with Florida’s Democratic Environmental Caucus to recruit a full slate of candidates for the first time in Florida. Since Florida Democrats keep losing by a single percentage point in major races, the plan is that more challenges in more races will increase turnout for up-ballot races. You’d think the Florida Democrats would be anxious to try to replicate Virginia’s success in a blue wave election year. But no.
Just ask Rachel Brown.
Rachel Brown is the Democratic activist who progressive groups recruited to run in Senate District 27. Rachel is campaigning hard for the independents and moderates in the district. Even if she doesn’t win, her efforts will only help with turnout. Rachel isn’t expecting money or party support, and has done an amazing job running a campaign on a shoe-string budget. She has gotten a lot of attention for recycling old campaign signs, which not only plays into her environmental message, but have been popular with residents in Lee County.
Gary Farmer didn’t support her running in this district, but went further than that. Brown tells me he encouraged her to “fail to file.” His logic was that she couldn’t win, and that he didn’t want state Rep. Ray Rodrigues, a former Republican Majority Leader in the Florida House, to win—because he felt he would be too difficult to work with. Instead, Farmer wanted to force an open primary that would have Democrats voting for the slightly-worse Republican, state Rep. Heather Fitzenhagen. Brown thankfully refused to abandon her Democratic supporters, and it’s a good thing. Fitzenhagen ultimately became a pariah in her party for running in the primary, and she got crushed. All that Farmer’s ploy would have accomplished is ensuring that Mr. Rodrigues was the only name on the ballot next month.
I’m so tired of fighting the Republicans and my own party. “Down With Tyranny” blogger Howie Klein put it bluntly in a post entitled, “If There Was No Florida Democratic Party, It Would Be Easier For Democrats To Win.” This strategy of only concentrating on blue areas is colossally stupid. The Republicans figured out decades ago that you must win in the margins. They run ads in immigrant communities in their own languages, and attend their community festivals. They compete everywhere, and invest in every district to cut into our margins. They also have this crazy idea of supporting their candidates. Democrats should do the same.
There are tens of thousands of voters in these red districts who aren’t registered. There are tens of thousands of rural women voters who are disenfranchised, and thousands of former felons who have been granted the right to vote again. We can win, but we have to at least try.
Kathy Lewis’ district leans red, but only slightly. If she had real support this year, she would be looking at a real victory. Instead, she’s dealing with petty politicians who are more concerned with punishing her than supporting her, and it may very well cost Democrats our best chance in two decades to break the GOP monopoly. This is what losers do.
Perhaps now that Mike Bloomberg has committed $100 million to winning Florida, he can direct 1/1000th of that money to Tampa, and make a real difference here with these races—as opposed to running a few more ads for Biden. I doubt that will happen, and time is running out. Oct. 29 is the last day for any political donations in Florida. If we are going to defeat the GOP, as always, it’s going to fall on us.
Let’s help her out.
Kathy Lewis
I am also adding the other targeted seats for the Florida senate in what I consider order of need.
Senate Candidate |
Seat |
District |
About |
Website |
Patricia
Sigman
|
GOP Held |
SD-9 |
She has backing from establishment Dems and progressives. Target of Dark Money campaign in primary. Her opponent is notoriously corrupt Jason Brodeur. He declared homestead exemptions on two houses, and has association with the Proud Boys. |
patriciasigman.com |
Loranne Ausley |
DEM
Held
|
SD-3 |
12-year member of the Florida Legislature and mother to a child with special needs. Advocate for children and families with disabilities. |
www.ausleyforsenate.com |
Javier Fernandez |
GOP Held |
SD-39 |
This district went for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and is in a deep blue area. The GOP incumbent is a DeSantis toady. This needs to be fixed. |
www.javierforflorida.com |
Jose Javier Rodriguez |
DEM Held |
SD-37 |
Champion for the environment and small businesses. His opponent is Ileana Garcia, who co-founded “Latinos for Trump”, which even the Trump campaign crapped on. |
jjr.vote |
Finally, let’s give a little love to Rachel Brown: