Almost every other state has a census-driven remap in place, basically free of court challenges. That is not true in Florida.
A Florida circuit court judge on Wednesday struck down elements of a new congressional district map pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), ruling that the version approved by the Republican-controlled state legislature unduly diminished the rights of African American voters in the northern part of the state.
Judge Layne Smith on Wednesday ruled in favor of Democratic plaintiffs, who had sued over map lines that eliminated a historically Black congressional district stretching from Jacksonville west to Tallahassee
While this is great news, it once again adds chaos to our efforts in Florida. While we are focused on the Senate race, trying to dramatically increase turnout to help Democratic efforts against Marco Rubio, we’ve been trying to do so intelligently, helping out swing Congressional Districts, if we could. We had initially thought that DeSantis’ efforts to eliminate an African-American Opportunity District in North Florida would not effect our work in Central Florida, the final map approved by the state legislature and signed by the wayward governor did just that. Judge Smith is said to be hurrying his written opinion knowing it will be appealed.
“Smith opted to adopt a map proposed by plaintiffs, which leaves much of the rest of DeSantis’s map intact. The revised version redraws northern Florida to maintain Lawson’s district.”
He ordered the state to adopt a map that maintains an east-to-west version of Jacksonville’s 5th Congressional District, stretching from Duval to Gadsden counties…
The ruling may get appealed. It would first go the 1st District Court of Appeal, and then if appealed again, it would go to the Florida Supreme Court. The 1st District could also choose to send it straight to the state’s highest court.
Once appealed, the ruling will be automatically stayed, meaning it won’t be in effect during the appeal, but Smith urged elections officials to do what’s necessary to get ready for the August primaries.
And,
Smith during the hearing said the district had historical roots in Black communities along the Florida-Georgia border once populated with plantations. He added that his hands were tied by the precedent set by the state Supreme Court, which last decade set the district boundaries after years of legal battles, and the state constitution, which says a reapportionment plan cannot diminish the ability of minority residents "to elect representatives of their choice."
The map DeSantis signed into law decreased from four to two the number of districts where Blacks make up a plurality of voters, known as Black access districts. In addition to eliminating Lawson's seat, the state's map also shrank the percentage of Black voters in Florida's 10th Congressional District, an Orlando-area seat represented by Rep. Val Demings, a Black Democrat now running for US Senate. DeSantis' office accomplished this by shifting the district east toward Whiter communities.
Even with all this confusion, 228 volunteers came out on Saturday to knock on doors for Hope Springs from Field PAC. We continue to canvass in the Tampa area and eastern Seminole County. We’ve were assuming that the Central Florida Congressional Districts are good to go, and the new Smith map does little to change the lines in the I-4 corridor. It’s a tough map, but we aren’t canvassing for Congressional seats. We are canvassing for Senate seats and, thus, we are focusing on the I-4 corridor. The swingiest part where statewide elections get decided.
Inflation (or rising prices) continues to be the top issue about which voters we talk to are most concerned. Crime, mostly the threat of increasing crime, was the second most frequent response. I characterize it this way because voters told our volunteers that they had seen news reports about prison breaks and local coverage about the possibility that the escaped criminals might be in the area.
Education was third.
Like Nevada, Reproductive Rights really made a dramatically new appearance in the question we asked about sending a message to their Member of Congress (If you could send one message to your Member of Congress, what would it be?). Responses to this is generally all over the place, and often a bit sarcastic. If appropriate, we will send these along to the Democratic Member for that voter but that is pretty rare. But this week, we got some pointed responses in response to the Dobbs v Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health. What can you do to protect Women’s Reproductive Rights? Are Gay Rights at stake now? Will Congress enact a federal abortion ban if Republicans take over Congress? Among others.
Voter views of President Biden continue to flattened. 64% of the voters we talked to expressed approval of President Biden in Florida on Saturday. 18% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. We continue to get feedback from voters that they wished Biden could or would do more about inflation and Ukraine.
We are not hearing a lot of support for the jobs Governor DeSantis or Senator Rubio are doing. DeSantis’ approval numbers from the Democratic and Independent voters we talked had gotten as low as 8% but they rebounded to a recent high of 11% this week. Disapproval of DeSantis among these voters was 54%. Historically, governors of Florida have been quite popular in the state, regardless of partisan identification. Senator Rubio’s approval numbers continue to fall this week.
It is important to realize that we were canvassing in suburban neighborhoods in Hillsborough, Seminole and West Volusia counties. We don’t knock on doors of Republican households (although we do knock on the doors of mixed households), we are targeting Democrats and Independent households in swingy, suburban areas. And we continue to knock on doors in Osceola, in Hispanic precincts and neighborhoods where we started doing Election Protection work last summer.
Approval for Senator Rubio was at 16% this week. It was the lowest number we have seen since we started (going back to last summer). On the other hand, the Democratic Party is up a bit, but hardly significantly. Its disapproval number was close to its lowest it has been this year.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to increase awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their rights, and, in March, we will begin an even bigger effort. We are thinking about how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," both informing and helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization
Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. But the reason we won the Iowa Caucus in 2008 was because we registered voters and then turned them out! The approach we adopted was focused on listening, on connecting voters and their story to the candidate and our cause. Repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans did). We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters). Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be cured.
Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races in 2022 as well as districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year. As not every state has completed their re-maps, re-districting hasn’t yet made those opportunities/needs apparent. The Senate map started out clear. That may be changing. There are places we need to defend (Georgia and Arizona) and there are opportunities. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are such opportunities. We’d like to get into Nevada, too, and perhaps others that appear more competitive at that time — if we can generate the resources needed to do so. There is a lot of work to be done!
Like our Swing State canvasses last year, we walk with an Issues Questionnaire. Especially early in the cycle, where volunteers aren’t as comfortable with their campaign spiel, the Issues Survey allows for the voter to lead the conversation. Volunteers, then, are more focused on prompts, things that spur more thought and conversation so that we have a fuller picture of what motivates the voter.
We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters. At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand. The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter. Far and away the number one issue that the voters we talked to in the Senate Swing States last year was inflation or price increases, and I imagine that concern has only increased.
But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns. We find that most voters who aren’t in a hurry or in the middle of something are willing to answer at least a couple of these questions, especially their top issue or concern and their views of President Biden. Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary. Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has a hybrid approach. We aren’t interested in competing with regular campaign field organizing. We are in the field before they get there and then move on to voter protection when the Democratic campaigns start their intensive field work. Indeed, when we wind up the typical field work by Labor Day, we will encourage all the volunteers working with us to move over to the Senate campaigns in their states (and hope that our field organizers will be hired on by those campaigns). After Labor Day, we will begin organizing our Election Protection Project.
But we are also cognizant that Democratic turnout has traditionally dropped off more than Republicans in non-presidential years. So early, frequent voter contact is more important to our side. Equally important, though, is that starting early means that we can make up for our inability to register new voters in the presidential election because we took Covid and the health of our base seriously. Registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.
As you can see from the very first question in the Issues Questionnaire, making sure that voters are registered from their current address is a major function of early canvassing. Part of this is making sure that voters are registered in compliance to the new, confusing and frustrating Election law that is particularly onerous for people who change residences more frequently than normal.
The new law requires voters to provide, in addition to their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number OR their driver license OR state ID card number to make an address change. Which is par for the course this year, but here’s the part that is likely to stump people who move around. You have to remember which one you provided, because you have to provide the same one every single time you interact with your local Supervisor of Elections, or your request won’t be granted. Supervisors of Elections won’t have access to other databases, so they can only "verify” a request by the information the voter has provided.
We also ask voters if they have any local infrastructure issues they would tell local elected officials about. We ask those who do if they wanted to fill out Constituent Service Request forms. 31 voters raised some area that they wanted addressed. Service Requests are handed over to (hopefully Democratic) office holders with responsibilities for the area of the request. We use a generic CSR because cities and towns have vastly different methods and forms for dealing with this.
We can't overstate the impact of not doing traditional voter contact/outreach by knocking on doors in 2020. In every single state where Hope Springs from Field PAC has canvassed, voters have thanked volunteers for knocking on their doors. We were missed in 2020, not just by those who would open their doors to canvassers but also by whole neighborhoods, who may not have opened their doors but witness canvassers in their neighborhoods, saw the literature left behind and talked to neighbors who had spoken to volunteers. The reinforcement by the process was missed. They told us this.
And one last observation: it still fascinates me that the most responses or comments that we get with regard to Reproductive Rights comes from (predominantly) women in the 45-64 age range. We only had two responses on the topic in the 18-29 age range.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them. That includes making sure that out-of-state workers at Disney know to, and how to, obtain a State ID card if they don’t want to give up their out-of-state DL but still want to vote in Florida. There’s a lot of work to be done, but fortunately, the three states that are making it most difficult are also states in which you can knock on doors at least 10 months out of the year. And, with your help, we will be there, getting our people to super-comply with these restrictive provisions.
If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization
Thank you for your support.