TAMPA, FL — Beleaguered Florida Democrats are desperate to prove they have a pulse, but their best shot is far from the White House.
The hope, political insiders on the ground say, is for Democrats to notch enough wins in the state legislature to be taken seriously. At the top of the ticket, it’s nearly a foregone conclusion that Donald Trump will get Florida’s 30 Electoral College votes. But state-level wins would be “proof of concept” for Democrats, state House Democratic Chair Fentrice Driskell told NOTUS.
“When you have reasonably well-funded campaigns, when you have terrific candidates and you have a competent plan, Florida is winnable,” Driskell told NOTUS.
The question Tuesday, she said, is, “Can we show that we can do this without major national investment, and then maybe attract some of those dollars back?”
Florida’s 2022 “red wave” — when Democratic turnout cratered and Gov. Ron DeSantis won by almost 20 points — led to a Republican supermajority in both the state House and Senate.
“We had one of, if not the largest, loss Florida Democrats have ever experienced in 2022,” Nikki Fried, the state party chair, told NOTUS. “Democrats nationally wrote off Florida.”
With less than a third of the seats in each chamber, Democrats have had little power to block DeSantis’ agenda. That included a 2023 law making it harder and more expensive for third-party groups to register voters.
The new law compounded Democrats’ demographic problem: a COVID-era influx of Republican voters. Now the party is on even shakier ground this election than it was two years ago. Republicans have a million more registered voters than Democrats.
As Democrats try to claw back power, they’re hoping state-level wins can help them maintain relevance after Election Day, even if Republicans sweep the federal races.
National party leaders even acknowledge the real goal on the ground. Hillary Clinton gave the objective a shout-out during a Kamala Harris rally in Tampa on Saturday, telling the crowd, “Tampa’s own leader Fentrice Driskell has a real shot at breaking the right-wing supermajority in the Florida House.”
Democrats need to keep their current seats and pick up either five House seats or two Senate seats to break either chamber’s supermajority. One key target is the 37th House District, an Orlando-area seat Republicans flipped in 2022.
Democrat Nate Douglas is vying to take it back. At 23 years old, he would be the youngest lawmaker in the state legislature, and is counting on college students at the University of Central Florida to carry him over the line.
“One of the biggest things that will change is youth turnout,” Douglas told NOTUS. “This is gonna definitely be a game changer in our district considering that students make up a large portion of our population.”
But he’s fighting a numbers battle as Republicans catch up to Democrats on voter registration in the historically blue district. In 2022, there were 4,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in this district, according to state data. This year, that number is 729.
“It’s just bringing as many voters out as possible because at the end of the day, when it comes to a district like this, it’s about turnout,” Douglas told NOTUS. “When we have a high turnout and folks are excited, Democrats are going to blow this out of the water.”
Democrats flipped another state House seat in a special election in the neighboring 35th District earlier this year, and have been touting it as proof they can win in Florida ever since. The winner, Tom Keen, is back on the ballot, and Election Day will test whether Democrats are strong enough to keep that seat, too.
Democrats in Florida say just getting a simple minority in the House or Senate could start the domino effect they’ve been desperate for, and would tell national investors not to write the state off again.
“Not only is Florida in play for the future, but most importantly — what I believe, most importantly — is that Florida can flip the legislature,” Rahman Johnson, a Harris campaign surrogate and a Jacksonville city councilman, told NOTUS. “That’s when things start to change.”
Driskell, who has told other news outlets she is considering running for governor, is also hoping Election Day will help increase the level of national investment in 2026, when the governor’s seat will be back on the ballot. The Democratic Governors Association invested little into Democrat Charlie Crist in 2022.
She’s counting on this week to change the narrative.
“I think if we break the supermajority, I feel like it’s a kind of pushing back on the legislature that has been DeSantis’ rubber stamp,” she told NOTUS. “It’s a kind of repudiation of him as well and it shows that we’re in play for 2026.”
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Claire Heddles is a reporter at NOTUS and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.