With the results of Tuesday's midterm elections, Florida went from being one of the great Republican strongholds in the United States to a war trench where the party barely survives.
"Let's be clear about what happened. For Republicans, in many parts of the country, this amounts to almost an extinction-level event, probably the most severe in the last 100 years," Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday of the vote, where his party lost majorities in both Houses of Congress, several governorships and other local offices.
“It is the political equivalent of a meteorite impact that went through the entire United States, Democratic States, Republican States, everything in between, and the only State that was able to resist and stand firm is right here, in the Free State of Florida,” the governor added.
While the southern states have been painted blue, Florida stands out on the map as one of the few territories where Republicans won all local offices - the governorship, the prosecutor's office, the majority in the state house - and re-elected their legislators to Congress and the Senate, although by very narrow margins. Politicians and supporters attribute the decline in Republican votes to the rising cost of living and the impact of immigration policies promoted by the party now led by Donald Trump.
Along with Texas, Florida is also one of the states in the country where local governments have implemented the most conservative policies promoted by Republicans in recent years: the banning of books, abortion, the elimination of diversity policies, the control of education. Even before Trump returned to power, DeSantis had waged his own war against progressivism, and was emerging as a contender for the 2028 presidential election to succeed Trump.
But Byron Donalds — the governor-elect, also a Republican, who will replace DeSantis — won by just 1.3 percentage points, despite the fact that Republicans have more registered voters in Florida than Democrats. Although he had the support of DeSantis and Trump, his campaign focused on the same central issue that the opposition used: the high cost of living. And it was the first thing he talked about when celebrating the narrow victory.
"The truth is, there are people in our state who are struggling, looking at their insurance bills, looking at their bank accounts, not month by month, but day by day, trying to figure out how they're going to make ends meet. And my mission as Florida's next governor is to make sure that they can build a great life here," Donalds told supporters on election night.
“Mr. President, I want you to hear from Florida that we are still a red state,” he added.
The reds win, but the vote shifts to the blues
Voters also took a toll on Republican state legislators who have supported decisions in both Houses on increasing the budget and operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and on local governments that have provided support to their police forces through agreements known as 287(g).
In all House districts there was a shift in votes towards Democrats, between 4 and 23 percentage points, compared to the 2024 elections.
In Florida, the aggressiveness of these policies has generated rejection, even among the most convinced militants.
Cleide Carmenati, a 73-year-old Brazilian decorator, has been working with the party during election times for 30 years and also voting for them. On Election Day, he was campaigning for a Republican candidate for the Florida Senate, Fabián Basabe, at a polling station in North Beach, Miami. When asked about what she hopes will happen after these midterm elections, she responded without hesitation: "I hope respect for immigrants improves. It's not that because I'm a Republican I don't see the things that are happening." He also hopes the economy will improve and street violence in his Miami Beach neighborhood will decrease.
Floridians also had a special election for the seat vacated by Marco Rubio to serve as secretary of state in the Trump Administration. There, the senator appointed temporarily by DeSantis and candidate for re-election, Ahsley Moody, won by 2.8 percentage points over the Democratic and socialist candidate Angie Nixon. Although he was competing with a great disadvantage in resources and practically without the support of the Democratic establishment, Nixon came closer than predicted: he was left behind with 47.9%, compared to 50.87% for the Republican, whom the polls gave up to 10 percentage points ahead.
Salazar's teleprompter
In the speech she had prepared for when her re-election was up for grabs, which was already within reach of appearing on the two teleprompters that she would read, Cuban-American Republican Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar had planned to instruct Trump and give him specific advice so that he would turn around the aggressive immigration policies that have cost the party so many votes in this election.
As he had already done in a video he published less than two months before the elections, he planned to speak to him directly. But when it came time for the results, he chose not to read that speech.
The margin that gave him an advantage over Democrat Elliot Rodríguez in the election for the 27th district was just over a thousand votes, which is equivalent to 0.44 percentage points of the total. A difference that falls within the 0.50% threshold established in Florida to activate the automatic vote recount.
Even though he won, the result has been a hard blow to his re-election, which in past processes he had obtained with an advantage of 15 and 20 percentage points over the Democrats. It is an advantage that is no longer enough for him to advise or challenge the president.
In the end, Salazar opted for a generic message, no longer directed at the president but at his party: "Voters have said loud and clear in the 27th district, in Florida and in the rest of the country that my Republican Party must correct course on the economy and on immigration. Those are the two most important issues for the average American in all the polls," Salazar admitted.
Then the congresswoman insisted that she needed support to carry out the Dignidad project, which she presented to Congress in 2022 together with the Democratic representative of Texas Verónica Escobar. This bill offers a path to regularize undocumented immigrants who have been in the country for more than five years without committing crimes, but it does not open a path to citizenship; So far it has only achieved the support of about 40 legislators from both parties and has not reached a vote in the plenary session.
When he finished speaking, one of the sound technicians was indignant. Not only because she had been rehearsing the speech with Salazar on the teleprompters since midday, but also because the congresswoman's Dignity project does not solve the problem of her Cuban mother-in-law, who does not have legal status to remain in Miami with her only remaining daughter and family: "What dignity are you going to be talking about to my mother-in-law? If she will never be able to have citizenship, that is not dignity."
