‘Don’t sleep on Florida’: Miami-Dade Democrats make the case that Florida is in play

Miami-Dade Democrats sought to move past months of infighting and internal drama on Saturday at their annual Blue Gala in Miami Beach.

Bringing in the top brass of the Miami-Dade, state and national parties, the gala was framed as a pep rally for Democrats, who are hoping to head off a possible electoral drubbing in Florida in November. Democrats need to run up big margins in Miami-Dade in order to have a shot at winning both the presidency and statewide office, but that has proved increasingly difficult in recent years, most notably in 2022, when both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio won the county.

With just over six weeks to go before Election Day, party leaders on Saturday rallied around the hope that the electoral rout they suffered two years ago was an anomaly born out of internal dysfunction and low voter turnout. This year, they vowed, will be different.

“Don’t sleep on Florida,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said before a packed ballroom at the Miami Beach Convention Center. “Something special is going on in this state right now…and I think it’s going to shock the world. I think it’s going to shock the nation. And I know it’s going to give Republicans a shock.”

In a brief interview with the Miami Herald on Saturday night, Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried said that the Blue Gala represented “the rebuilding of the Miami-Dade” Democratic Party after a rough stretch earlier this year.

Florida Democratic Party leaders forcibly removed the Miami-Dade party’s chairman, Robert Dempster, in March after Fried suspended him for what she argued were repeated violations of the state party’s rules and bylaws. That kicked off a heated and divisive race to succeed Dempster as the head of the Miami-Dade party – a job that eventually went to state Sen. Shevrin Jones.

Fried, a Miami native, said that the county party is experiencing a resurgence.

“You see a sold-out crowd, you have the chairman of the DNC who’s here as our keynote speaker,” Fried said. “You have [elected officials] that are here, leaning back into the local party, understanding that we can do all of this great work across the rest of the state, but if Miami-Dade doesn’t produce the numbers and show once again that Miami is a stronghold for Democrats, it doesn’t matter what happens in the rest of the state.”

Fried noted that things are looking up for Democrats in Miami-Dade, pointing to County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s reelection win last month as a sign that Democratic voters were willing to turn out this year.

Democrats are also hoping that a pair of proposed constitutional amendments that will appear on the ballot in November — one that would legalize recreational marijuana and another that would enshrine broad protections for abortion rights into state law — will help boost turnout among Democratic voters.

Yet there are still significant challenges. Statewide, there are now nearly one million more active registered Republican voters in Democrats, and Republicans are increasingly bullish about the notion that former President Donald Trump could pick up Miami-Dade County in the November presidential election.

Taking the stage Saturday night, Jones, the Miami-Dade Democratic Party chairman, acknowledged the divisions that had beset the party, but insisted that Vice President Kamala Harris’ path to the “White House runs through” Miami-Dade. He said it was incumbent upon Democrats to “build bridges” within the party and put their differences aside.

“While we didn’t see eye to eye on all things, we all had one common goal, and that was to get the damn job done,” Jones said. “The Miami-Dade Democratic Party is back and we are not going back and we will win in November.”