The Florida GOP Is All Shook Up

Jacksonville, Fla. — The headline from Florida’s election is that Charlie Crist, who seemed to be dead in the water only a month ago, surged to an impressive victory in the gubernatorial primary and now poses a credible threat to Ron DeSantis. In mid August polling, Crist had closed to within six to eight points of “America’s governor,” though DeSantis remains the front-runner. With a bump from his win yesterday over an aggressive and well-financed opponent, Crist could begin the general-election campaign within the margin of error. Crist will run in 2022 as a Florida version of Biden 2020 — as the calm and decent and normal choice.

What happened? What bent the race out of shape? What happened was a raid in south Florida. Across the country, it was a big story. Here in Florida, it was a seismic event.

(I use the word “raid” in its generally accepted sense. When 30 FBI agents armed with automatic weapons rush into your home uninvited, it’s a raid. When it happens to the guy down the street, it’s a court-approved search.)

Here’s where the leading GOP players stand.

Donald Trump. If Trump wants GOP support here for a 2024 campaign, it’s now his for the asking. The Raid didn’t just stop the steady erosion of support to more viable GOP alternatives. It packed outraged, middle-roading Republicans atop his hard base, giving Trump enough sway for at least short-term party control. If the Democrats’ intention was to revive Trump’s flagging prospects, The Raid was an unqualified success.

Ron DeSantis. Over the past four years, DeSantis has played politics in Trump World with remarkable discipline. The governor has stayed just close enough to Trump to avoid an open rift and public reprisal, but just far enough away to build his own constituency. It’s been a high-wire act and, for a young politician, DeSantis has walked it with impressive maturity. But he has now been knocked off-kilter. After The Raid, DeSantis had no choice but to embrace Trump, and he did so with no apparent reluctance. To some extent — the dimensions of which will manifest themselves over the coming weeks — the gubernatorial race has just become more about Trump and less about DeSantis, which is good news for Crist and bad news for DeSantis.

The Raid itself, in simultaneously boosting Trump and damaging DeSantis, may have been the most effective August Surprise ever devised. Somewhere, Chuck Colson is paying his professional respects.

Rick Scott. The junior senator arrived in Washington in 2019 and, playing to form, immediately assessed his prospects of becoming the GOP nominee in 2024. Those prospects ranged, even in the estimate of the irrepressible Scott, from none to almost none. So Scott, playing to form yet again, took the big swing. He accepted the thankless job of electing a GOP Senate majority in a year that tilted sharply Democrat. As of this writing, he is coming up short, thanks in large part to flawed Trump favorites — Oz in Pennsylvania, Masters in Arizona, and Walker in Georgia. A bright red tide could save one or more of them, but Scott never walks away from the table empty-handed. A close Trump associate tells me that, if Trump makes it back to the White House, his candidate for GOP Senate leader will be Rick Scott.

Marco Rubio. The senior senator never seems to catch a break. This year, with crime a leading issue across the urban centers of the state, and with many independent Florida voters both old and scared, Rubio has drawn an opponent seemingly escaped from a bioweapons lab at the Democratic National Committee — a telegenic, black, female cop. Her name is Val Demings, and it matters little that she was not a very good cop. (A large majority of her peers in law enforcement loudly support Rubio.) The political reality is that Demings, now a congresswoman from the Orlando area, is custom-designed for contemporary Florida.

In a much-hyped but outlying poll taken August 8–12, Demings had pulled ahead of Rubio, 48–44. Yeah, maybe. More ominous for Rubio were the July fundraising numbers. Demings took in $4.7 million, Rubio $2 million. Rubio has the reputation of being a fast closer, but he may need a red tide rising this year.

Susie Wiles. The exquisitely named Ms. Wiles is the best political operator in the state of Florida. She managed the controversial businessman Rick Scott from nowhere to the governor’s mansion. She carried Florida for Trump. And in 2018 she picked up the floundering gubernatorial campaign of the little-known Congressman DeSantis and shoved it across the victory line. She’s tough and smart and — did I mention tough? (As a bonus for readers of a certain age, this gratuitous factoid: She is the daughter of Pat Summerall, who for many years shared the NFL broadcast booth with John Madden.)

In September of 2019, with DeSantis’s reelection and follow-on national campaigns moving into the planning stage, and for reasons never satisfyingly explained, DeSantis fired her. To the surprise of nobody who knows her, Wiles landed on her feet. She now runs a Trump PAC, and there are those who think that Wiles, who is said to be almost native-Irish in her capacity to nurse grudges, might poke a stick in the spokes of the DeSantis campaign bicycle.

Francis Suarez. Last winter, the antsy and mediagenic mayor of Miami saw some daylight and began to run toward it. With both Rubio and Scott seemingly dead-ended, and with Trump and DeSantis hardening into postures of mutual assured destruction, Suarez looked in the mirror one morning and asked himself not unreasonably, “If Pete Buttigieg can run nationally as the mayor of Flyspeckia, why can’t the mayor of a real city in a political superstate do even better?” Suarez ordered up a national press blitz, launched some precision-targeted criticism at Trump, let it be known that he had not voted for DeSantis, and began running digital ads in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Suarez was off and running. Then came The Raid. Oops! Suarez now finds himself in no-man’s land, and it will be interesting to see which way he runs now.

The Codel. Florida’s congressional delegation now stands at 16 Republicans and eleven Democrats. Last spring, the Republican-controlled legislature drew maps that, with the addition of the state’s new post-census seat, would in a normal year produce an 18–10 delegation. DeSantis vetoed that plan and forced through one of his own that, in a good GOP year, could produce a 20–8 split. It was a gutsy call. If successful — if the red tide actually materializes — it could mean the difference in control of the U.S. House. If the red tide recedes before cresting, however, the DeSantis plan could put two safe Republican seats in jeopardy this cycle and, sometime later in the decade, two or three more.

It’s campaign season in Florida, ladies and gentlemen, the fastest 77 days in your political calendar.