Issue #198: Republicans blow their opportunities in the Florida 9th and 23rd

Bad GOP primary results

It is late September, and Florida remains in a weird position in terms of the national elections. The state was long regarded as Safe for Donald Trump. However, with polling showing Harris within 5 points, MUCH better than I or really anyone expected, there is renewed interest in the state. How much national focus (and money) comes to Florida over the next 40+ days remains to be seen. This is still a far cry from 2022, where national Democratic groups invested little to nothing in the state, allowing a super-charged DeSantis machine to dominate the state and forge landslides for himself and all other statewide Republicans.

Following the 2022 Republican landslides, speculation emerged about if any of the state’s Democratic-held Congressional seats could be swiped up. Thanks to the DeSantis gerrymander, Florida already has just eight seats that voted for Joe Biden.

However, amid the 2022 red wave, two additional districts, the 9th and 23rd, voted narrowly for Ron DeSantis in the Governor’s race, though both remained in the Val Demings column against Marco Rubio. How all statewide candidates for 2022 did by district can be seen here.

Now, as I’ve documented extensively, the 2022 landslides were driven heavily by an unprecedented lopsided turnout that is unlikely to be repeated in a regular presidential cycle. Regardless, nationwide and state-level Republicans still looked at the 9th and 23rd and thought, could we take these?

In truth, the answer was always “likely not.” However, even putting pressure on these districts and diverting Democratic money would have been a sign for good results elsewhere. However, we are now at a point where any risk for an upset appear completely gone. And in both cases, the results of the primaries had a major role in this effort.

With that, I am going to discuss the dynamics in each district and why the primaries mattered so much.

The 9th Congressional District

The current version of the Florida 9th Congressional district is similar to the seat created back in 2012 and 2015. The district aims to give a unified voice to the Central Florida Hispanic population, which is heavily Puerto Rican. In 2012 and 2015, the district drawn was not yet majority-Hispanic. However, the increasing Hispanic population of the area has resulted in the new version of the 9th now being 50% Hispanic Voting Age Population. Voter registration, which often lags the census data, has Hispanics at 45%.

As the party data in the corner shows, the district is largely a mixture of Democrats and Independents. Unlike Miami-Dade, where the Hispanic population has a large number of Republican Cubans, the Hispanic voters of Orlando lean much more Democratic.

In 2020, a year that saw Biden lose plenty of ground with Hispanic voters, he still won this version of the 9th district with 58% of the vote.

Biden’s drop with Hispanic voters was fairly uniform across Florida; though the collapse in Miami-Dade generated the most attention. Part of this shift was conservative-minded Hispanics turning out at a far greater rate than liberal-Hispanics. However, there was also a genuine swing in support for Trump over the four years from 2016 to 2020. However, despite this, the district’s Hispanic voters remained in the Democratic column; unlike down in Miami-Dade.

The 2022 midterm, however was a completely different story. That year, the district swung heavily to the right. Ron DeSantis WON the 9th district by just under 2% while Val Demings, who represented the Orlando area in Congress, managed to beat Rubio by 3% in the district. Darren Soto, originally not considered at any real risk, won re-election by a closer-than-expected 7%.

The drop in Democratic support in the 9th in 2022, however, is much more of a story of turnout. Only 37% of voters showed up in the district; and GOP turnout was a staggering 16 points higher than Democrats. For context, in 2020 the GOP turnout advantage was just 6 points. Thanks to this dynamic, Republicans made up a far greater share of the electorate than their registration figure: 34% vs 23%. Thanks to much stronger white turnout, the vote cast was 49.9% white and just 32% Hispanic.

Long story short, the district was much whiter and more conservative than the voter registration or typical turnout. The 2022 turnout gap was unprecedented, driven by a massive resource disparity, and it especially hit Hispanic districts. Nevertheless, such tantalizing results left Republicans seeing if they could have a real shot at taking on Soto, who has otherwise been easily won re-election since taking the district in 2016. In March of 2023, Republicans named Soto as a target for defeat. With that, three Republicans lined up to take on Soto.

By far the best candidate for Republicans would have been John “Q” Quinones. Back in 2002, Quinones became the first Puerto Rican Republican State Representative. In a 2007 special election, he was elected to a Hispanic-majority Osceola County Commission seat. Then in 2012, Quinones was recruited by national Republicans to run for the newly-drawn Hispanic-access 9th and take on white Democrat Alan Grayson. To avoid this matchup, Grayson spent big money to hurt Quinones in the Republican primary; allowing Tea Party conservative Todd Long to win that contest.

I documented the story of this primary much more in my Alan Grayson series, which can be viewed here under Issue 2. Quinones was hurt by the Grayson ads, which basically aimed to turn him off to conservative voters, but was also hurt by the Republican primary being majority white. Then in 2014, weakened by the 2012 debacle and sitting in a blue county commission seat, Quinones lost his re-election along with another GOP member; giving Democrats control of the commission. Since then, Quinones has been out of the electoral game. However, he returned for this race and sought to take on Soto. As a fellow Puerto Rican official, he’d have the best shot at eating into Soto’s ability to out-perform the ticket. Fun fact, Soto’s first electoral success was when he won the house seat Quinones left to become a county commissioner.

However, the real frontrunner through most of the primary campaign was not Quinones, but rather Thomas Chalifoux, a former Osceola County School Board member. Chalifoux, who is white, was a school board member from 2000 to 2008, so he has been out of the electoral light longer than Quinones. However, Chalifoux was able to fund his campaign with $2,000,000 in personal funds; far outpacing the $150,000 Quinones had managed to raise. A third Republican candidate was Jose Castillo, who drew national attention for going on Fox News to criticize the company’s fight with DeSantis over “Don’t Say Gay” back in 2022 when he was an employee there. Castillo lagged in fundraising but loaned his campaign $75,000.

Heading into the primary, it seemed clear to me that Chalifoux was the frontrunner due to the money lead. This came to pass, with Chalifoux taking just under 50%. Quinones, meanwhile, barely managed to eek past Castillo.

The weak showing for Quinones really cements that his time as an electoral force has truly passed. At one time, he would have been seen as destined to be a congressman for the area. No doubt he would have been an underdog against Soto, but not nominating a Hispanic Republican for this seat is a mistake for the GOP. Chalifoux can self-fund to some degree, but he will still struggle to break any new ground against Soto, who is a guaranteed to outperform Harris in the district with Hispanic voters. On top of this, Harris is almost sure to take the district as turnout returns to normal.

Soto should have no problem besting Chalifoux in November. Expect a major increase in support from 2022; driven mostly by better turnout. Republicans don’t have a strong bench in this district for candidates to run, and this primary list of candidates was a reflection of that.

The 23rd Congressional District

Down in Southeast Florida, Democrat Jared Moskowitz, a former state lawmaker, replaced retiring Congressman Ted Deutch for a district that covers parts of Northern Broward and Southeast Palm Beach. The new 23rd, nearly identical to the old 22nd, is normally a solidly Democratic seat; backing Biden by 13 points in 2020. The district includes white Democrat suburbs, are large Democratic-leaning Jewish population, and upper-income Republican towns. Moskowitz was a natural fit for the district; having risen to national prominence as he advocate for the Parkland families after the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting. I wrote much more about the district and Moskowitz in this December 2022 piece.

Moskowitz was considered a lock for the district. However, while he did secure his election in 2022, he did so by only 5 points. Charlie Crist lost to Ron DeSantis by 1% in the same district.

A key aid for Moskowitz was his stronger showing with Jewish voters; especially those around Parkland. I have some additional maps and analysis in my December 2022 article.

The district’s drop in Democratic support is partially related to turnout. In 2020, both Democrats and Republicans had near even turnout, with the GOP just 1% better. However, in 2022 the Republican turnout was 61% vs 53% for Democrats; an 8% gap. However, the story wasn’t just turnout, as data shows that the upper-income suburbs that have rejected Trump were ready to back DeSantis this go around.

So like the 9th, turnout was a big reason for the swings, but the 23rd was also not as blue as the 9th even in 2020. On top of that, the district having a solid Republican base in its upper-income communities meant that having a strong GOP nominee could keep up pressure on Moskowitz. Considering Moskowitz has been spending the last two years making life miserable for House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer, exposing all their nonsense investigations, you’d think Republicans would love to distract him for his re-election.

The strongest Republican would have no doubt been former Broward Commissioner and current State Representative Chip LaMarca; who represents a swing house seat in coastal northern Broward. However, with LaMarca opting to instead run or re-election in the house, the party had another strong choice in former Palm Beach Commissioner Robert Weinroth; who was originally elected to the County Commission as a DEMOCRAT.

Weinroth, a moderate Democrat and former Boca Raton city commissioner, flipped the Palm Beach 4th district in the 2018 midterm. However, in 2022, amid the red wave, he lost his seat in an upset. I covered the story of Palm Beach in this article.

Weinroth’s loss was thanks to a massive Democratic collapse in Palm Beach, which saw DeSantis actually narrowly take the county. However, while Weinroth lost by 3.6%, his was far better than the 10% Crist loss. Weinroth suffered from too many swing-voter suburbanites not showing up; leaving a much more hardened Republican electorate that was there to vote GOP down the ticket.

Shortly after his loss, Weinroth announced he was switching parties. He insisted he voted for Trump in 2020, and talked about feeling like a DINO for a long time. Much of this strikes me as opportunistic, but regardless, it made him a strong potential candidate against Moskowitz for the Congressional seat. Weinroth raised $200,000 and loaned his campaign another $150,000.

However, Weinroth did not have the field to himself. He had five opponents, with two of them being multi-time candidates. Carla Spalding, a conservative Jamaican activist who has run for Congress in the area multiple times, outraised the field by taking in $700,000. Spalding ran and lost against Debbie Wasserman Shultz in 2020 and 2022 after winning Republican primaries. She’d lost a 2018 primary to counter-terrorism researcher Joe Kaufman, another candidate in this race. Kaufman has likewise run for Congress in the area many times; often against Debbie Wasserman Shultz. The primary became especially heated between Weinroth and Kaufman; with Weinroth taking hits from Kaufman for previous liberal positions he held. Weinroth countered that Kaufman, who’s lost several bids for office, is doomed to fail again.

“These are, you know, people who are going out there because they think lightning is gonna strike and somehow they’re going to get elected,”

Indeed, Kaufman is the definitions of a perennial candidate. His list of runs can be seen below. All these bids were for the old 23rd, which is now the 25th and covers South Broward - basically the area Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has led for two decades.

• Lost 2012 GOP Primary to Karen Harrington

• Won 2014 GOP Primary, lost to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in general

• Won 2016 GOP Primary, lost to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in general

• Won 2018 GOP Primary, lost to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in general

Kaufman and Spaulding are what I consider part of a class of “professional conservative candidates” who run against high-profile Democrats; allowing them to raise money but never win.

For Republican voters of the district, Weinroth was a no brainer if you actually want a long shot at flipping the district. However, the result were an easy win for Kaufman, who beat Weinroth by 15 points. Weinroth managed to win Palm Beach County by just 8 votes, but came in a distant third in Broward.

This now leaves Republicans in the 23rd with a candidate who has tried and failed to win office several times in a different part of the county. It was no surprise to recently see different forecasts move the district from “Likely Democratic” to “Safe Democratic.”

Looking Ahead to November

As far as I see it, both these districts are safe for the Democrats in November. However, there is a few other races to watch. The 13th, held by the controversial Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, seems to be a real competitive fight despite being a Trump +7 district. Meanwhile the 15th and 27th are very close districts on paper but have stronger Republican incumbents. That said, I’ll be looking at these three races later in October to see if any Democratic flipping opportunities can be forged.

But for sure, I don’t see any major risk of Democratic losses here in Florida.