Pearl River      Once upon a time, Florida was a battleground state.  Now it is allegedly blood-red thanks to the project of Governor Ron DeSantis and concerted Republican organizing.  DeSantis took a swing at running for president in 2024, and went down quickly the same way, swinging wildly.  He has made Florida a laboratory for far right government and done so successfully enough that MAGA-master Trump now has left New York in the rearview mirror to claim residency and vote by mail ballot there.

DeSantis is term limited, so who knows what his future might be, but there was interesting news in the primary elections.  A three-term state representative, Angie Nixon, handily won the Democratic nomination in an upset against a much better funded opponent.  On the Republican side, Congressman Byron Donalds is the nominee.  Donald’s is a former Democrat, originally from Crown Heights in New York City, who switched parties in 2010 to go the Tea Party push and enjoyed Trump’s endorsement in this race.

There are a lot of interesting things about these developments and the coming race.  What are the odds that someone Black would have been elected to succeed DeSantis?  That’s really the only thing that is now guaranteed in November, since both candidates are Black.  Donald’s could even claim an immigrant’s background from Panama and Jamaica in a state that along with Texas is often in the headlines for its anti-immigrant policies and programs.  What irony?

Nixon has gotten huge media attention as a member of DSA, Democratic Socialists of America.  It’s unclear in reading about her whether she’s riding for the brand or the brand is riding on her?  She only joined DSA a short time ago – in June.  Hardly makes here dyed in the wool, no matter what her opponents are now claiming.  Furthermore, it seems that she wasn’t even endorsed by DSA in this race.  There’s no doubt that she’s a progressive, that’s for sure.  Her time in the state assembly have proven that with attempts to get the body to advance Medicaid, support Gaza, and block gerrymandering to redraw seats at Trump’s command, including sitting in at the governor’s office in protest.  She was decidedly pro-union, serving as a state director for SEIU, along with other community and labor positions.  She’s definitely one of our people, but seems more socialist adjacent, than the way she is being labeled a bogeyman, so to speak, by the right in the wake of Mamdani and others.

That doesn’t mean she’ll win the governor’s chair, but she might herald a swing of the pendulum back to something more normal in Florida, a state where a lot of the population doesn’t see themselves as in a race with Mississippi and Alabama for revanchist politics.  Interestingly, Sarasota on the west coast of the state that had been the crucial of horrific local school policies, led by the leader of Moms for Liberty and their efforts to pull library books off the shelf in the name of parental rights, saw Democrat-backed candidates depose two of their hard right number with another in a runoff, killing their majority.

In short, take nothing for granted.  Add to this the claim that Nixon was able to offset a huge money disadvantage with a field campaign that emphasized door knocking, and how could I not be a fan!