A virtual tie between St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman and challenger Rick Baker in a mayoral primary Tuesday has left Florida Democrats giddy and Republicans groping for ways to rebrand their candidate. Baker, a Republican former mayor who remained wildly popular years after leaving office, led Kriseman in polls and fundraising throughout the campaign.
Whether it’s on a boat or at the beach, setting off fireworks or firing up the grill, Floridians are expected to kick off Fourth of July weekend in style. An estimated 2.3 million Floridians are expected to travel during the holiday weekend, part of a historic holiday travel weekend travel pattern, according to AAA – The Auto Club Group. The company forecasts an estimated 44.2 million Americans will travel between Friday and Tuesday. The group expects 2 million Floridians will…
Florida has more registered Democrats than Republicans, but the balance of power in government doesn’t even come close to reflecting that. Despite a 2010 constitutional amendment aimed at preventing political gerrymandering, Republicans dominate Florida politics. Democrats only hold 41 of 120 state House seats, 15 of 40 Senate seats and are outnumbered in in the U.S. House 16-11. While it would be easy to say Republicans built their power because they draw the political boundaries for Congress and the Legislature,…
Pink is what distinguishes the last day of Florida’s Legislative Sessions. Lobbyists, consultants, former lawmakers and observers, clad in pink outfits, roam the Capitol hallways during the session’s final hours. Pink is the tradition for Capitol veterans to pay tribute to the late lobbyist Marvin Arrington. “Marvin was here for a long time, and he had a tradition of wearing a pink sports coat on the last day of Session,” said Wayne Malaney, who lobbies for newspaper publishers. In 2002, Arrington succumbed…
It is time for one last big data piece on Florida 2016. For about 18 hours a day over 2+ weeks, I found myself living and breathing early voting data. So now that all the data have been reported from counties, I wanted to look back at some assumptions, and compare them to the actual voting data. Before I begin, there are five things to keep in mind: 1. Every time I talk in percentages, those percentages are relative to…
Democratic political strategist Steve Schale realized that Donald Trump would win Florida 45 minutes after the polling places closed. “Going into Election Day, I thought that Hillary Clinton had a 200,000 vote lead,” Schale, who managed Barack Obama’s Florida campaigns in 2008 and 2012, but sat out 2016, told the Tiger Bay Club in Tallahassee Wednesday. “By comparison, Barack Obama had a 150,000 vote lead going into Election Day in 2008. Donald Trump would have to win Election Day by…
Incoming Florida House Minority Leader Janet Cruz is in Miami, overlooking the the automatic recount expected to begin Friday between House District 118 Democrat Robert Asencio and Republican David Rivera, which ended Tuesday night with Asencio defeating Rivera by 68 votes out of nearly 63,000 cast. If Ascencio prevails, he would give Cruz and the Florida Democratic Party’s House Victory division a net gain of three seats in this election cycle. Though not as the goal she had originally targeted to move from red to blue this fall,…
