Florida Republicans are confident of victory in November, but they are wary of the dangers of overconfidence.
Party activists, candidates and elected officials who gathered in Hollywood on Saturday for a major Florida Republican Party fundraiser predicted a broad-based victory.
“Anyone who thinks we’re going to lose, anybody who thinks for a second that Donald Trump is going to lose Florida, that’s crazy,” said Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. “Republican turnout across the state of Florida is unbelievable. This is going to be a great year.”
That’s especially the hope for Mr. Scott, who is running for reelection this year and polls show he’s in a tight race.
(An Emerson College/The Hill poll conducted Friday showed Scott’s approval rating at 46%, while his Democratic opponent, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, had 45%.)
Seeking to keep party activists and donors motivated in the final stretch of the campaign, speakers one after another offered a powerful motivator: the illusion of Vice President Kamala Harris winning the presidential election.
There has been as much criticism of Harris as there has been praise for Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump.
“We’ve had the most radical candidate on the Democratic side of things in my lifetime,” Scott said. “She’s a total socialist.”
State Attorney General Ashley Moody said “everyone is surprised” by Harris’ candidacy.
“I’ve never seen a candidate campaign in such thin air, in such smoke, in such fumes,” she said. “There’s no substance. There’s no substance at all.”
Moody said Harris would “talk words” to win, “laugh big”, “be who you want her to be and say what you want” and would be a different, more dangerous person if she became president.
The Trump campaign sent Kimberly Guilfoyle as a surrogate to the event at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood.
Guilfoyle is a former Fox News personality, the longtime fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. and a show host on the right-wing video platform Rumble.
Guilfoyle warned of the Democratic Party’s “final American madness” and the “domination of the far left.”
“Americans today leave their homes in the morning with less money in their pockets, less safer streets, less healthy schools and less confidence that the country we all love and cherish so dearly can reach its full potential,” she said. “Why? Because of Kamala Harris.”
Guilfoyle argued that the vice president’s “extremism is all too real. Let’s pay attention to that. And her obsession and reckless pursuit of power at any cost will lead this country down a path from which it will never recover. … But the good news is that Donald Trump and the Republican Party have a plan to get this country back on track.”
She then resumed further criticism of the Democratic candidate: “Kamala Harris wants Americans to feel like the enemy in their own country.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis, in his keynote address, said Florida has “lead the way” on issue after issue during his time as governor. “Time and time again, we’ve delivered.”
He touted increased funding for schools, infrastructure and Everglades restoration, and highlighted some of the culture war social issues that have characterized his administration.
“We believe schools should educate children, not indoctrinate them. It was wrong to try to force gender ideology into elementary school classrooms. It is wrong to distort history and demonize our Founding Fathers,” he said.
And he proudly pointed out that Florida State University has taken a tough stance against pro-Palestinian protests, which he called pro-Hamas: “We’re not going to let prisoners run a psychiatric hospital. We’re going to bring order to the courts.”
“We said Florida was the place where woke people went to die, and I can report that woke ideas are dead in the state of Florida,” he said.
DeSantis also reiterated his strong opposition to two November ballot measures, one to legalize recreational marijuana for adults and the other to enshrine the right to abortion in the Florida Constitution.
Either would be “really bad for the state of Florida.”
State Republican Party Chairman Evan Power said in an interview that party activists are “excited and fired up.”
Still, he said in his speech that party members shouldn’t assume the results will go their way without putting in any effort: “We take nothing for granted. We have to fight as if we’re down 10 points. There is no room for complacency for the Florida Republican Party.”
A big advantage DeSantis and several others cited Saturday is that Republicans have 1 million more registered voters than Democrats. When DeSantis was elected governor and Scott was first elected to the Senate in 2018, Democrats had more registered voters than Republicans.
DeSantis said the election cannot be taken for granted, “but these numbers give a huge advantage to the Republican candidate.”
State Treasurer Jimmy Patronis said a big part of the change is due to increased migration to Florida.
“I never thought Florida would become an all-Republican state,” Patronis said. “What we’re getting is exactly the kind of people we want. They’re fleeing heavily Democratic states. They’re fleeing the high-tax hellholes they live in.”
Money is another Republican advantage: Power said the state GOP outspends Democrats by seven to one.
He said Saturday night’s event could ultimately gross $1 million. What made the night even more lucrative was that Hard Rock donated the venue. Power repeatedly thanked the Seminole Tribe of Florida for their support, while Patronis thanked tribal leaders.
The venue donation wasn’t the only reason to hold the event in Broward County, Florida’s most Democratic county: Power said the state Republican Party has many donors in the area.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.
