Issue #96: The Electoral Failures of the Florida Republican Party Chair Candidates

Both candidates have failures at the ballot

Tomorrow, on Saturday the 18th, Florida Republicans will gather to elect their new party chair. The race is, by all accounts, between two people: Evan Power and Christian Ziegler. While former State House member, failed Congressional candidate, and current Lake County Chair Anthony Sabatini was rumored to be interested in the post, he has apparently opted not to run.

Sabatini was behind a push to get Florida Republican Party to give a vote of no confidence on RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel. Supporters of McDaniel told members to not show up to prevent a quorum. Indeed a quorum was not met, and hence no vote was binding.

Since Sabatini could not persuade a majority of members to show up, he clearly saw he did not have the votes for Chair.

So today, I am going to discuss Power and Ziegler - and specifically their personal failures at the ballot box. That’s right, both of these folks have been in the electoral arena, and both have some embarrassing feats.

Now I know what all you Republicans reading are saying. “Oh look at sad-boy Florida Democrat mock us for electoral failures. He is just trying to cope!” Well, to that I say…..

Hey I point out Democratic failures all the time in this substack. The Florida GOP has been overdue for some zings.

Evan Power’s Failure

For those of you who do not know, Evan Power is the Chair of the Leon County Republican Party. He took the post in 2014. From 2010 to 2014 he was the party’s Vice Chair, and in that time, he ran for office. In 2012, he ran for Leon County Soil and Water Board.

That is right, every county in Florida elects a soil and water board. The post is unpaid (I believe everywhere) and what a board does or doesn’t can vary by county. These races are often unopposed and when they are contested, the races often generate no fundraising outside of self-funding. In 2012, Leon broke all the fundraising records for the post. Three county-wide seats were up, and all three had contests. In Seat 3, Evan Power filed and in seat 5, fellow Leon GOP member Bill Helmich filed. Both candidates raised just under $9,000 from donations and self-funding, To be clear, 9K for soil and water board was record-breaking.

Both candidates, who’s campaigns were heavily coordinated, ran small mail and some radio highlighting their “environmental” beliefs. This would be a shocking message to anyone who knew them as hardcore conservatives. Here is their radio ad.

The wide belief at the time was they just wanted to the posts as possible step-stones for future office, or to try and generate right-wing money from anti-environment groups.

Power benefitted from a split in the Democratic ranks. See, all these races are non-partisan and happen in November of election years, with no runoffs. Appointed Incumbent Tabitha Frazier, a liberal Democratic activist who would be elected Leon Democratic Committeewoman later that year, had another Democrat, Phyllis Smith, in her race. If Power could get Republican votes in the northside, he could win. Frazier raised just under $3,000 while Smith raised almost nothing. The Leon Republicans pushed Power and Helmich while Leon Democrats made sure to highlight the GOP affiliation of the two. This race is all so fresh in my head because I was heavily involved with the Leon Democratic committee at this time.

When the votes came in, Power easily lost, getting just 30% to Frazier’s 43%.

Power was strongest in GOP areas in the northside and the southern rural precincts. The environmental message did not generate enough cross-over support, and the more people knew about the candidates, the less likely this deep blue county was going to pack Power.

With this loss, Power did not run for office again. He has been heavily involved with the Florida GOP for many years since then. He is currently the RPOF’s Chair of Chairs, and has been building the infrastructure to run or this post for some time.

Christian Ziegler’s Failure

The other candidate for the job is Florida Republican Party Vice Chair Christian Ziegler. Until last year, Ziegler was a county commissioner for Sarasota. He was initially elected in 2018 when the board was at-large.

However, that same day, Sarasota voted for a ballot measure that would move future elections to single-member districts.

This referendum meant Sarasota would be cut into 5 districts, with seats 1, 3, and 5 elected in 2020, and seats 2, and 4 elected in 2022. Since Ziegler was in seat 2, he’d get to hold off till 2022 before running again. Unfortunately for him, the map for the commission had seat 2 as a heavy Biden district.

During the line drawing, Ziegler offered alternative maps that weakened the Democratic strength in the district. When this did not happen, he was part of an effort to move the commission back to at-large races. The commission agreed to put a measure on the spring ballot, where YES would mean going back to at-large races. The YES side raised over $100,000 while NO had about $50,000. I wrote about this race here.

In the end, the measure did not pass, so single-member districts remained.

The vote was a blow to Ziegler, who now faced re-election in a district that many local observers believed would go Democratic. Facing this reality, Ziegler opted to not run for re-election at all. He claims this was to focus on his wife’s school board race.

And I’m not the only one questioning the sincerity of his reasoning, some of Ziegler’s opponents in the GOP have highlighted it as well.

The great irony is had he run, his loss wouldn’t have been a guarantee. The Democratic turnout collapse, which I’ve documented heavily, led to district 2 being far less Democratic. In the Senate race, Demings only won it by 2%.

Meanwhile, in the Governor’s contest, DeSantis won the district by just under 1%.

A note, many precincts were split by district lines, so hence I am rounding to the whole number because there is definitely a bit of marginal fluctuations in these figures. As for the commission race itself, Republican candidate Mark Smith actually won the election over Democrat Fredd Atkins.

The race was close, but it was still a GOP win, leaving the board at 5-0 GOP. Ziegler bailed and turns out he had a shot. Compared to Power, this is not a direct rebuke, but the referendum failure and his bolting sure does not look good.

Conclusion

Whoever wins the Chair race on Saturday, it will have little impact on 2024. There is insider grumbling about who is closer to DeSantis vs Trump, but that possible GOP civil war is a topic for another day.