The two men couldn’t have been more different, leading Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi to wonder if the problem is one of organization and tactics. | Daniel Ducassi/POLITICO 'Soul crushing': Trump wave bewilders Florida Democrats

TALLAHASSEE — The blue wave in Florida was trumped Tuesday by red turnout.

Florida’s sole statewide elected Democrat, Sen. Bill Nelson, was on track to lose his seat. The party’s exciting new candidate for governor, Andrew Gillum, conceded. Democrats running for attorney general and state chief financial officer all lost; and the Democratic agriculture commissioner candidate trails in a race headed for a recount. The Legislature is still controlled by Republicans.


Tuesday night brought home two truths: Florida is Trump Country, and the Florida Democratic Party is lost from what one activist called “soul crushing” defeats.

Democrats’ failure to win the high-profile races in a key presidential swing state tempered the party’s Tuesday night triumph in taking back control of the House of Representatives.

For the third straight general election in a row, the Florida Democratic Party’s top candidates got shellacked. But unlike in past election losses, there are no easy scapegoats, no simple answers to what happened to Gillum and Nelson, who has not conceded the race.

Gillum is the new, young face of the party, 39 years old, black and describing himself as “unapologetically progressive.” Nelson is the face of the old guard, 76 years old, white and someone who campaigns as a nonconfrontational moderate.

The two men couldn’t have been more different, leading Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi to wonder if the problem is one of organization and tactics.

“Florida Democrats continue making the same strategic mistakes, cycle after cycle and then crying when they again come up 1 point short. We can’t continue to operate like the general election campaign begins the night after the primary,” Amandi said. “Rather than starting two months out, the party needs to get serious about investing resources in research and outreach two years out if they ever hope to slay the Republican colossus and flip Florida blue.”

The party did have some wins. It flipped two Republican-held congressional seats in Miami-Dade County and flipped a net of six Florida House seats. However the Florida Legislature remains firmly controlled by the GOP. Florida Senate Democrats also won none of their targeted races, but one of the contests is headed to a recount.

Compounding Tuesday's results by Gillum and Nelson was that their opponents were Gov. Rick Scott and former Rep. Ron DeSantis, two top Trump acolytes. Their performances will only embolden Trump as he hits the 2020 reelection campaign trail in Florida, his second home, which he won in 2016.

For Democrats, this midterm was supposed to be a warmup to taking on Trump.

Across Florida, the Democratic Party worked on an unprecedented field campaign this year in conjunction with two liberal groups — For Our Future and the Win Justice Coalition — that targeted low-propensity voters, including young people and minorities. Judging by the turnout in early voters before Election Day, the effort was successful, as record numbers of young and minority voters turned out this midterm when compared to last.

But older, white voters turned out in mammoth numbers as well. And older, white voters have higher turnout rates.

Meanwhile, the white vote is increasingly coalescing around the Republican Party in the Trump era, leading to a racially divided political system. Florida’s Democratic Party is now majority nonwhite while the Republican Party of Florida, compared with Florida’s general population demographics, is disproportionately white.

The racial realignment of the parties may be disadvantaging the Democratic Party, which increasingly relies on voters with low turnout rates while the most reliable voting demographic turns toward the GOP.

“I agree with Democrat strategists on the left who have acknowledged their problem with the white electorate for now over four years. And I failed to ever see in this election [Gillum’s] campaign acknowledge that problem,” said Ryan Tyson, assistant political director for Associated Industries of Florida, a conservative-leaning business group that’s a hub for in-depth political research in the state.

Tuesday’s results also showed the Democratic Party’s stronghold counties, especially in the two largest counties of Miami-Dade and Broward, had some of the lowest turnout rates in the state — even after an unprecedented campaign to get them to vote.

Democratic consultant Steve Schale was among the Democrats still reeling from Tuesday night. He acknowledged the party has multiple problems, but he wasn’t sure how to solve them.

“We have to find a way to authentically talk to those people,” Schale said. “It’s not just a problem we have here.”

The day before the election, one Democratic organizer acknowledged that party insiders were nervous about the strong early vote from Republicans heading into Election Day. The person said dual losses by Nelson and Gillum would be “soul crushing.”

The Florida Democratic Party has been in a long slow decline since the 1990s, when Republicans took control of the Florida Legislature. In 1999, newly elected Jeb Bush became the first Republican governor since Reconstruction to have a GOP-controlled Legislature. That era’s lawmakers altered the state’s politics and policies, making sure Florida was a friendly state for wealthy retirees who have continued to flock there and bolster its ranks of Republican voters.

In 2002, Bush easily won reelection and oversaw the complete Republican takeover of the Florida Cabinet.

At the time, former Democratic state Rep. Dan Gelber quipped that Democrats “fell to the bottom of the abyss and found ... more abyss.”

Asked Tuesday where the party goes from here, Gelber, who’s now Miami Beach’s mayor, said: “If any of us had the answer, we wouldn’t be 20 years in the desert.”