Ron's Gone Wrong (But Won Anyway)

The one state where the Democrats crashed and burned on Tuesday was Florida. GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis trounced Democratic former Rep. Charlie Crist, GOP Sen. Marco Rubio handily beat Democratic Rep. Val Demings, and the difference in both cases was the loss of the Latino vote in the state to the GOP, especially in Miami-Dade County.

Inside a packed section of La Carreta, the iconic Cuban restaurant in Little Havana, trays were packed with croquetas and guava pastelitos, while a DJ blasted music for people wearing María Elvira Salazar T-shirts. 

 

The election night party was for the freshman Miami Congresswoman of Florida’s Congressional District 27 — a district with the largest share of Hispanic residents anywhere in the state — who danced her way past the treats, onto the makeshift stage to declare victory for a second term. 

 

“This election proves what Ronald Reagan famously said, that Latinos are Republicans, they just don’t know it,” Salazar said Tuesday at her victory party, declaring an early night win over her Colombian-American opponent, Democrat Annette Taddeo.

Until tonight, because 2022 has been the year of the Hispanic Republicans,” she added.

 

Salazar’s statement is true for Florida, where Hispanic support for Republicans in the 2022 election — and for Gov. Ron DeSantis in particular — was crucial to a decisive and crushing victory over Democrats, according to a Miami Herald analysis of precinct-level results. The margin of victory for DeSantis — a nearly 20-percentage-point difference — has catapulted him onto the national political stage and into a potential 2024 presidential run.

Nationally, Dems did considerably better with Latino voters, especially in Nevada, New Mexico, California and Arizona. But Florida, and Miami-Dade County in particular, is where the hopes of Florida Democrats went to die.

DeSantis got 90%+ of the Latino vote in several precincts there. Republicans rolled to easy victories and increased the margin of their supermajority in the state legislature.  The results from Tuesday mean that the GOP legislative policies that lost elsewhere will be front and center in the Sunshine State.  

 

 

Supercharged by a supermajority in the House and Senate, Florida legislative leaders broke their silence Wednesday and confirmed they are prepared to discuss further abortion restrictions in Florida in the next year. 

 

But how far they will go is the big question, and interviews with the presiding officers indicate they already appear to be taking different approaches. 

 

Incoming Senate President Kathleen Passidomo told the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times in an interview that she wants to see the 15-week ban approved last year by lawmakers reduced to 12 weeks with the addition of an exclusion for rape and incest, which is currently not allowed.

 

“I went on record on the abortion bill in support of an exclusion for rape and incest, and I’d like to see that,’’ said Passidomo, a Naples Republican who will be sworn in this month as the third woman to be Florida’s Senate president. “And I think in order to accomplish that, I think we would have to reduce the weeks. I don’t have a problem going to 12 weeks.”

 

Under the law passed earlier this year, all abortions are banned 15 weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period. Women can still obtain an abortion after that cutoff if their health is threatened or if their baby has a “fatal fetal abnormality,” but there is no exception for victims of rape or incest.

 

Incoming House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, said the House is likely to support additional restrictions as well but he was unwilling to “put a number on it.”

 

“I don’t think it’s time for me to put a number on it until we’ve organized,’’ Renner said, noting that there are 30 new legislators joining the House after the election, including a record 85-member Republican majority. He was not prepared to say if they will want to see an outright ban on all abortions or further limits on the existing 15-week ban. 

 

“I personally am pro life and would like to see us move more in that direction,’’ he said. “But I want to hear from my colleagues in the House and my colleagues in the Senate before we take any steps in that direction.”

Florida Republicans openly talking about how many more rights will be restricted and/or lost, and Florida voters are happy to go along. Texas and Ohio are bad too, but Democrats won there, flipping several US House seats in both states. Texas counties along the border elected Democrats with Latino voters leading the way.

 

But Florida may be lost for quite some time until Democrats can figure out a way to beat DeSantis.