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Even before polls closed on the devastation for Democrats in Florida, Val Demings Senate campaign was calling around with a message: It wasn't her fault, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis swamped everyone, including helping to doom her campaign, due to his full frontal assault on Charlie Crist and spending in Spanish-language media.
DeSantis didn't just coast to reelection, he beat Crist by nearly 20 points.
But he also flipped Miami-Dade County, Florida's political crown jewel, which completed a stunning reversal in just six years, after backing Hillary Clinton by 30 points in 2016, Joe Biden by 7 in 2020, and now DeSantis by 11 points.
In running up the score, DeSantis also secured another major win, becoming the first Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate to win the Latino vote in 20 years, and the first Republican governor to do so since Brian Sandoval in Nevada in 2014.
"This was a realignment election in Florida," the top consultant for Obama's Latino voter polling during both campaigns, Fernand Amandi, told Newsweek.
Amandi noted that just a decade ago, Democrats had won Florida for the second straight time, and were feeling that they had "picked the GOP lock" on the state, never to lose again. But he said now Florida is "likely to be in Republican control, and its 30 electoral votes along with it, for the next five to ten years or longer."
"It's more a case of demolition by neglect," Amandi explained. "The state didn't become Utah or Wyoming or North Dakota overnight. But the results last night made clear Democrats have abandoned Florida."
Devon Murphy-Anderson, the former finance director for the Florida Democratic Party and cofounder of Mi Vecino, which works to activate Latino voters in Florida, told Newsweek that while Miami-Dade is getting all of the attention, DeSantis' complete and total win also impressively flipped traditional blue areas like Palm Beach County and Hillsborough County.
"It's important to know this was a strategy from Florida Republicans, and not to shift the blame to Latino voters," she argued, seeing the results as "a response to strategic investment by a political party."
Just one year ago, Donald Trump's grip on the party was unquestioned, such that even in Florida, with a powerful Republican governor, Latino Republicans went to pains to say they loved both men. Now one thing is clear: DeSantis is king of Florida, at least for now.
That's the takeaway for Nelson Diaz, the former chair of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, who told Newsweek in January that he "adored" both men, calling them both "incredible leaders."
Less than 10 months later, Diaz has bent the knee to DeSantis.
"I'm with Ron DeSantis," he said, endorsing him for president, and underscoring "the massiveness of the sea change that occurred in Miami-Dade last night."
While DeSantis has risen in the eyes of Republicans in just the last 24 hours, Trump has fallen in the same time period with many establishment Republicans. This change of perception came after his high-profile misfires on endorsements in critical Senate races in Pennsylvania, where Mehmet Oz lost, and in Georgia, where Herschel Walker drastically underperformed Republican Governor Brian Kemp, and is now headed to a runoff.
"His endorsements during this cycle were terrible, they were not great," Diaz said of Trump. "We don't have control of the Senate."
Mi Vecino surveyed 500 Hispanic Republicans via text to find out if they preferred DeSantis or Trump, with 41.7% coming out as pro-DeSantis and anti-Trump, 29% supportive of Trump and seeing DeSantis as a usurper, and only 15% supportive of both.
"This definitely was a shift," Murphy-Anderson said. "If we had done this survey two years ago, the pro-Trump rhetoric would have been much higher."
"Desantis has invested in getting these Latino Republicans in his column," she added.
A veteran Florida Republican agreed, lauding DeSantis for "turning Florida more Republican than New York is Democratic."
The source said DeSantis not only understood the diversity of Hispanics in Florida, but also followed through by showing up in Cuban, Venezuelan and Puerto Rican communities from south Florida to Orlando and beyond.
Republicans feel pride in DeSantis because he stuck to his guns on avoiding pandemic lockdowns, which allowed Hispanic small business owners to remain open.
"Anyone who goes to Miami understands Miami is run by the Hispanic small business industry," the source stressed, noting that Florida remained open despite the national narrative against DeSantis.
"People believed they should not be on lockdown," the source said, "and when the media criticized DeSantis, people saw that as criticism of them and their state."
But Amandi cautioned against jumping to conclusions that DeSantis has superseded Trump in the eyes of Republican voters just because of Tuesday's election results.
"I don't buy that in Florida," Amandi said. "They've never squared off before — they had dueling rallies in Florida the other night, and Trump's was the one bursting at the seams with Hispanic voters, not DeSantis'."
During a debate with Crist, DeSantis refused to say he would serve his entire four-year term as governor if he won on Tuesday. He has amassed a $200 million war chest should he decide to run for president. And as DeSantis' profile continues to rise, Trump has increasingly been taking shots at him, nicknaming him "Ron DeSanctimonious" over the weekend at a rally in Pennsylvania, and sending a warning through Fox News that it would be a "mistake" for DeSantis to run.
"I would tell you things about him that won't be very flattering — I know more about him than anybody — other than, perhaps his wife," Trump told Fox News.
Amandi believes DeSantis will tread very carefully.
"Instinctually, DeSantis understands Trump is a predator shark," Amandi said. "He will seek and destroy anything he perceives as a threat — be they Republican, Democrat, or Department of Justice — it doesn't matter to him. Trump has told us, and Republicans, and the country, that he sees DeSantis as an immediate political threat and is threatening to destroy him."
When asked what sea creature DeSantis is in the analogy, Amandi said he's a "pilot fish" — which follows the shark around.
Murphy-Anderson said Tuesday's results will lead more Democratic donors to bail on Florida, as many already have, citing record-low investment, as noted by Florida Democratic Party chair Manny Diaz in a memo he released Tuesday.
That would be a mistake, she argued, because after Clinton won Miami-Dade by historic margins in 2016, Republicans continued to invest consistently until it went their way.
As for DeSantis, he now can make a forceful argument to national Republicans and donors that he can take the strategies he successfully employed with Latinos in Florida "and export it to other states," she said, recalling a warning she was making to Democrats before the cycle fearing this exact result.
"Two years ago, we said DeSantis is our problem now," she said, "but he's going to be your problem two years from now."
About the writer
Adrian Carrasquillo is a political reporter for Newsweek reporting on the 2020 election, who has covered national politics and Latino ... Read more