Florida, the New Capital of Red State America
Gov. Ron DeSantis led one of the only sweeping GOP victories on Election Night.
by Josh Hammer
November 10, 2022, 11:03 PM
In what was an overall frustrating election night for Republicans, in which the oft-predicted “red wave” failed to materialize nationally, there was one state above all that provided a clear beacon of hope. That would be my adopted state of Florida.
In the Sunshine State Tuesday evening, Gov. Ron DeSantis cruised to a second term with an astounding near-20-point margin of victory over former Gov. Charlie Crist, and Sen. Marco Rubio routed challenger Rep. Val Demings by over 16 points. Both DeSantis and Rubio won the state’s most populous county, 70-plus percent Hispanic Miami-Dade County — DeSantis by double digits. Both Republican standard-bearers won majority-Hispanic Osceola County, in the Orlando area, and DeSantis also flipped Palm Beach County from blue to red.
All other Florida Republicans running statewide also won, and Republicans secured supermajority status in both the State Senate and the State House. U.S. congressional races in Florida that were labeled before the election as toss-ups, such as the 13th and 27th congressional districts, uniformly broke for Republicans — and often not in particularly close fashion. Some other states, such as Texas and Iowa, also had good election nights for Republicans; but in no state did the GOP perform better, up and down the ballot, than in Florida.
All of this is simply astonishing from Florida, the one-time paradigmatic “swing” state that famously decided the 2000 presidential election by a paltry 537 votes out of nearly six million cast. Indeed, just four years ago, DeSantis himself eked out his first statewide victory over Democrat Andrew Gillum by a margin of 0.4 percent. And DeSantis’ victory over Gillum was not even the closest statewide race in Florida that cycle; Rick Scott won his U.S. Senate race over Bill Nelson that same year by a microscopic 0.12 percent margin.
The “Florida miracle” story is impossible to understand without the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Floridian who shepherded the Sunshine State through it: Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Yet, just four years later, Florida is no longer a purple state. It is a red state — in fact, a dark red state. Consider, as but one more data point, that DeSantis won reelection by a larger statewide margin than did Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who won his reelection race Tuesday night by just under 14 percent. Oklahoma is perhaps the nation’s reddest state; in every presidential election since George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004, every single Oklahoma county has voted for the Republican presidential candidate. But in 2022, DeSantis won in former “swing” state Florida by a wider margin than Stitt did in ruby red Oklahoma.
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https://spectator.org/florida-new-capital-red-state-america/
