Right now, the Florida Democratic Party is ceding almost half of the House of Representatives to the Republicans without a fight. If you're a Florida Democrat and care about our state, you have to read this entry.
A little analysis of the declared candidates for the Florida House of Representatives shows that there are 55 seats (out of a 120-member chamber) with no declared Democratic candidate. One of those seats is held by a Democrat who won in a special election this spring (Janet Cruz), and I expect her to run again. But apart from her district, right now Democrats living in 45% of the state house seats have no one to work for in November in the lower chamber and no chance of having better representation in the Florida House. For statewide candidates, unless party leaders recruit House candidates, they'll be facing November where 45% of the House districts have no grassroots campaign. You figure out the odds of Kendrick Meek's winning the Senate seat or Alex Sink's winning the governorship, and then factor in the lack of operations for truly local candidates.
The deadline for qualifying as a candidate in state races is June 18, so this isn't over by a long shot. And to shine a light on candidate recruitment, I'll be updating these figures every few weeks. For this first report, I want to cut the legs out of the main excuses I've heard for poor candidate recruitment:
- Republicans control rural Florida
- The districts are gerrymandered
- We need to concentrate resources on our best opportunities
Rural Florida has disappeared as a political factor. As of 2009, 42% of Floridians* live in counties with at least a million residents; 64% live in counties with at least 500,000 residents; and 85% of Floridians live in counties with at least 200,000 residents. (*-Excluding those who are inmates.) If you look at the counties included in each of the 120 Florida House districts, only six districts include no part of a county with at least 200,000 residents. So 5% of the seats are truly rural. Lots of "exurban" seats, but few truly rural districts.
And if you look at candidate recruitment thus far in the 2010 cycle, dividing the seats into the counties they include and whether the seat is open this fall, it's clear that Democrats have one bright spot and only one bright spot: recruiting people to run in metropolitan districts (which I'm defining crudely as including at least parts of a county with 750,000 or more residents). In 16 open "metro" districts, held currently by a Republican but open this fall, Democrats have recruited candidates in 13 districts. Woohoo! We're contesting 13 of the easiest seats to win! Go us! If we win all of those 13 seats, we'd go from a pitiful minority of 44 to 57, almost half the House. And that would be a substantial gain. But that's a huge if, and the reality is that Democratic candidate recruitment in open seats is pitiful outside metro districts and pitiful everywhere a Republican incumbent is running for reelection.
The following table shows the candidate recruitment results thus far in Republican-held seats by type of district (largest county included in the district) and by whether the seat is open or a reelection bid. The first number is the number of seats with at least one Democratic candidate. After the slash is the number of Republican seats in that cell.
District type | Open | R reelection bid | Uncontested seats |
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Countes 750K+ | 13/16 | 6/26 | 23 |
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Counties 500K-750K | 1/4 | 2/10 | 11 |
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300K-500K | 0/4 | 0/9 | 13 |
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200K-300K | 0/0 | 0/1 | 1 |
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<200K | 0/0 | 0/6 | 6 |
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Total uncontested | 10 | 44 | 54 |
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This table shows that there are currently 34 uncontested Republican-held seats that include parts of counties with at least 500,000 residents. Candidate recruitment is a problem in large counties, and they should not be blaming small counties for their own problems.
The next two arguments are just state replicas of the arguments at the national level in 2005-06. Fortunately, the right strategy prevailed to allow Nancy Pelosi to become Speaker. What about at the state level?
Democrats have to run even if a district is gerrymandered. I've given money to Fair Districts Florida, but that's no excuse to slack off on candidate recruitment. Nationally, Democrats could have laid down and given up in 2005-06 in all the places where it's hard to win, and all I can say is that we would have had no chance at health care reform this month if that had happened. You have to run and win in hard places.
Florida Democrats need to stop eating their young. A decade ago, Florida Democrats put all their eggs in the basket of the governership to deny Jeb Bush. Bush won, and not only did the Democrats lose the governor's mansion, by letting all of those resources get sucked into the top race and in a few legislative races, they left an empty bench for the last decade. We still haven't recovered. (I'm still mad about the failure to support Peter Rudy Wallace, who was running for the Commissioner of Education in 1998.).
It's time for a change in approach in Florida. It's time to take the 50-state strategy to Florida and have a 120-district strategy in Florida. To that end, I'll continue looking at candidate recruitment and zero in on urban counties that are doing the best and worst jobs at recruiting House candidates. I hope I can get enough time to do that in the next two weeks.