ORLANDO, Fla. – The 2022 U.S. Senate campaign in Florida will be one of the most-watched races in the country, and Democrats are hoping they have a strong candidate in Val Demings who can overcome Marco Rubio’s advantages as a two-term incumbent in an increasingly GOP-leaning state.
Demings, whose official Senate announcement was first reported in the Orlando Sentinel on Wednesday, has acknowledged she faces a tough task in unseating Rubio next year.
Rubio’s South Florida base of Cuban Americans is a demographic that surged towards Republicans in 2020, giving former President Donald Trump a second victory in the state and pushing Florida even further to the right.
To win, Demings has to work toward rebuilding the coalition that helped former President Obama win the state twice, while also fighting back against the socialist tag that helped torpedo Democrat Andrew Gillum’s quest for the governorship in 2018 despite a hefty Black turnout, experts say.
Obama, who along with Bill Nelson in 2012 was the last federal Democrat candidate to win in Florida, “was able to mobilize the core constituencies of the Democratic base, and he was able to bring in some new voters that hadn’t voted before,” said Aubrey Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida.
“It’s going to be tough to do, but that’s what she needs,” Jewett said, saying she has to turn out African American voters in particular. “She needs to somehow generate the enthusiasm that Barack Obama was able to generate, or at least something close to it. It’s probably unfair because you can’t equal that enthusiasm ... but she needs to get something that approaches that.”
Steve Schale, a Democratic consultant who led the Obama campaign in Florida in 2008, said, “There are a million things Democrats have to do better than they’re doing right now,” including vast improvements with Hispanic outreach and voter registration.
Demings also has to eat away at Republicans’ increasing dominance of exurban counties, Schale said.
“She doesn’t have to win the counties around Orlando,” Schale said. “If Val’s able to do two or three points better in places like Polk, or Brevard, or Volusia … she’s got a reasonable shot.”
Rubio lost no time following Demings’ entry into the race Wednesday, with a video calling her a “far-left extremist.”
“In 2022, Florida is going to have a choice between two very different candidates and two very different records,” Rubio said.
Demings, who said Rubio’s attempts at tagging a career law enforcement officer as a socialist were “desperate,” responded to Rubio’s video with a photo of herself in her Orlando police chief’s uniform.
Obama “never let a lie go unresponded to,” and Demings needs to do the same, Schale said.
“It’s also a function of just being much more full-throated [in response],” Schale said. “She’s a self-made woman who grew up in a poor part of the state, put herself through school, and was a cop for 27 years. It’s pretty hard to call that person a socialist who wants to defund the police. But they will, and she’s going to have to call it out.”
Ben Newman, who ran Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign in Central Florida, said Rubio continues to have a distinct advantage.
“Not only in statewide name ID, but in terms of his fundraising network that he’s developed now for well over 10 years on a national level,” Newman said. “Money is the mother’s milk in politics. And so I think this is a huge advantage going into the race.”
Rubio, one of Trump’s biggest critics when running against him for president, has become one of the former president’s biggest defenders, appearing at rallies with him and voting against both Trump’s impeachment and a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
“It’s something that he’s had to try to navigate very, carefully,” Jewett said. “At first, it was like he and Trump were crashing into each other like mountain goats on a hillside. But when it became clear that Trump was going to win and become the face of the party, Rubio had to adjust.”
Rubio’s biggest fear seemed to be a primary challenge from the right by a more fervent Trump supporter. Or, as Jewett said, “a Trump family member” in Ivanka Trump, who was rumored to be considering a challenge.
But without one, Newman said, “Republicans will, for the most part, fall in line behind him. … If there’s a Trump base a year from now, still, and Rubio needs or wants Trump’s help to get that base out to vote, then I suppose that will probably happen.”
Jewett also cautioned Democrats who might hope that lingering distrust of Rubio could lead Trump supporters to stay home.
“When Trump and Rubio were both on the ballot in Florida six years ago, Rubio won by a much more comfortable margin than Trump,” Jewett said. “So that’s some evidence that suggests he, independently of Trump, has some appeal to not only Republicans but to independents and swing voters.”
The rightward shift of the Cuban Hispanic community, where turnout in 2020 in Miami-Dade helped put Trump over the top, would also have to be countered by an equal enthusiasm among non-Cuban Hispanics for Democrats, Schale said.
“The thing that we’ve gotten away from is a truly partisan registration organization,” Schale said. “In 2008 and 2012 … we built strong campaigns that got invested in those communities and hired people that were from those communities.”
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