From the moment the November ballot was set, Republicans' message about Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum's platform has been consistent: Florida can't afford to adopt his "socialist" agenda.

It's a dubious theme, but one that the GOP has stressed since President Donald Trump called the Tallahassee politician a "failed socialist mayor" only hours after Gillum won the Democratic primary. It's a talking point that Republican gubernatorial nominee Ron DeSantis and Gov. Rick Scott repeated Thursday in Orlando, and are guaranteed to broadcast until election day as Gillum pushes for a $15 minimum wage, Medicare-for-All and a 40 percent increase in the corporate tax rate to fund education.

(Socialism, by comparison, is a political and economic theory that generally promotes government control of industry. Gillum is not advocating anything close to that.).

How that characterization of Gillum as a socialist — ruled "false" Thursday by fact-checking website PolitiFact — will play around the state is hard to predict. But it's highly likely that the strategy is intended in heavily Democratic Miami-Dade County, where Republicans are courting hundreds of thousands of exiles who've fled communist and socialist nations in an effort to keep Gillum from running up the score.

"Socialism would be a disaster for Florida," DeSantis said in Miami Thursday night, drawing cheers from a crowd that packed the Manuel Artime Theatre in Little Havana to hear the conservative congressman speak. "We can't let socialist policies win in this free land."

Miami-Dade County is a Democratic stronghold, and turnout during the August primary was the highest in at least a decade, with nearly 300,000 ballots cast and Gillum scoring nearly 40 percent of the vote in a crowded and competitive field. Democrats, particularly those down the ballot in competitive races, are encouraged by Gillum's ability to turn out unlikely voters during the August primary election.

But DeSantis was explicit Thursday about his plans to fight for votes in Miami, where his newly named running mate, Jeanette Nuñez, a Cuban-American state representative from Kendall, should help him greatly. Nuñez appeared with DeSantis Thursday at the Manuel Artime Theater, the same venue where Trump announced new diplomatic restrictions on Cuba last year.

DeSantis, who was hosted by Inspire America Foundation, a group that promotes the spread of democracy in Cuba and the Americas, said he would have supported military action against Cuba when the island's military shot down two Brothers to the Rescue plans in the Florida Straits in 1996.

"When I met Ron the first time … just about the first words out of his mouth were, 'Cuban-Americans are the backbone of the Republican Party in Florida,'" Marcell Felipe, the founder of Inspire America Foundation, told the Miami Herald.

Nuñez said Gillum's message is a non-starter in Miami-Dade.

"I think we stand for the principles, that so many in this community fled from their countries to avoid socialism, to avoid communism, and I think that anything that smacks of socialism is going to be a problem for the other side," she said.

— This story was written by David Smiley and Martin Vassolo