The Sunshine State

I know I don’t get there often.
But God knows I surely try.
It’s a magic kind of medicine,
That no doctor could prescribe.

And there’s this one particular harbour.
Sheltered from the wind.
Where the children play on the shore each day.
And all are safe within.

One Particular Harbour  -   Jimmy Buffett  (1983)

….

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I spent the first 60 years of my life (my grandchildren happily tell me that I am old) living in California and of course I spent 14 years in full time elected office from there. From my birth until 1992, California voted Republican in every presidential election except for Lyndon Johnson’s lopsided win in 1964. Of course, we all know what has happened since then. Not once has the state voted Republican and it is now one of the most reliably blue states in the union.

Not so with Florida.

Florida, in keeping with its reputation (along with Ohio) as a swing state that elects presidents, has voted for the winner in every presidential election since 1928 except for 1992 and 2020.

On the surface, Florida and California have a lot in common. Both are blessed with beautiful beaches and a warm climate with mild winters. Both have harbors for commerce and recreation. Both have grown massively over time with California’s population tripling in my lifetime and Florida’s increasing by 6 times. That growth has given both strong economics during the last 6 decades. Both have lots of Hispanics and lots of retirees.

But politically today, they could not be any more different. Trump won Florida in 2020 by about four points, while Biden carried California by nearly 30 points. In 2022, Newsom won reelection as governor in California by 18 points while DeSantis carried Florida by nearly 20 points.

So why? How did generally red California become deep blue and purple swing Florida become solidly red?

Whatever the reasons that California turned blue, the attempts by the Republican party over time to turn it back have been to focus less on social issues, try to be more moderate and run more Hispanics. Those efforts have all failed. But where Republicans have failed in California, Governor Ron DeSantis has succeeded in Florida.

In 2016, Donald Trump saw something that very few political observers had noticed. That there was a large group of blue-collar working families that felt no one cared about them. Trump did care and they voted for him, often crossing party lines to do so.

I would argue that DeSantis has identified something similar. He has focused on the cultural issues. Not for their own sake. But on how woke culture is affecting education and crime and the border and families. And that appeal has crossed party lines. Many a voting Democrat do not want their daughters being told they are boys or being raped in a locker room by a “girl” with male genitalia. They don’t want to have their house broken into by a recent illegal alien criminal let over the border. They don’t want a person with multiple convictions for armed robbery released from jail after six months to murder a 22-year-old girl on a hiking trail, as just happened in Scottsdale near where I live. And they don’t want their kids taught in school to hate themselves, their parents, their country, and their race.

DeSantis barely won election in 2018 and then won by 20 points four years later, after hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and Illini had moved in. We hear in Arizona that part of the reason our state has gone from red to purple is that all the Californians moved in and voted the same way they did in California. If that’s true, why didn’t the New Yorkers keep voting Democrat when they moved to Florida?

Something is happening in Florida. The Democratic propaganda machine media, entertainment and tech complex doesn’t want you to pay any attention. Their attacks on DeSantis and now on the whole state broadly are relentless. That media would have you believe that DeSantis has made a bunch of errors by pushing “too far to the right” with policies in Florida. (Notice Biden, Newsom and the like are never “too far left.” There is no such thing.) But polling from last month shows DeSantis approval rating in Florida around 59%, the highest it’s ever been and more than 20 points higher than Biden’s approval rating amongst his constituents. Higher too than the most recent polling of Newsom in his home state.

People in Florida are happy with how the place is being run in every dimension from taxes to education. It’s that simple. DeSantis’ messaging on “the place where woke goes to die” is working and appealing a lot more voters than just Republicans.

Is there a message here for the 2024 presidential election? Rather than a focus on “smaller government” or “strong national defense” specifically, is a stronger, more appealing message to turn back the tide of wokeness and its deleterious  effects on everything from courts to the military to neighborhoods? Might it have a cross-party appeal like Trump’s “forgotten man” appeal?

This is not an endorsement of DeSantis for president. But one cannot ignore the political accomplishments of the man in the last 4 years in America’s 3rd largest and very diverse state. And a swing state at that.

The first presidential primaries are months away. So, there will be plenty of time to discuss all of this in more detail. But as I “look across the bow” towards the next election, I feel as though there is more fog than I remember seeing before. I think this is the most unpredictable election in some time. I know that the polling says that a repeat of Trump v Biden is the most likely outcome. In my gut, I just feel as though that is not going to happen.

It is hard for me to believe that the two major parties will nominate people who have support of less than 50% of their own party and 0% of the other party and maybe 10% of independents. Neither Trump nor Biden command the support of much more than 30% of the total electorate. And both are very, very well known. So, their abilities to change those numbers are low if not non-existent.

I just have to think it will be somebody else, maybe in both parties. And we may see a credible 3rd party ticket for the first time since Ross Perot in 1992.

It is hard in this uncertain environment to escape notice of what has happened in Florida and wonder if there is not a message there for the rest of us.

As I was growing up, California and Florida were in competition with each other as places with sunshine, warmth, and beaches. I was told that Florida had better winters, but we had better summers. True. But today, there’s a lot more areas in which Florida is better than just the weather.

Can we move the U.S. Capitol to Tallahassee?

I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free