Florida is voting: Twelve storylines to watch

A dozen reminders of why it's so important to help turn out the vote — wherever in Florida you live.

Photo credit: Michael Rivera

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Early voting began yesterday across much of Florida, and today marks two weeks until Election Day. So I figure it’s as good a time as any to remind folks just how many high-stakes issues are riding on this election.  

The New York Times threw cold water on the notion that Florida might be in play at the presidential level. But there is so much more on the state ballot.

So much more that I gave up trying to fit it all into a top 10 and did a dozen instead:

12. U.S. Senate

It’s still a bit hard to know what exactly to make of Florida’s U.S. Senate race, which is why I’ve got it at the bottom of this list. Polls consistently show Republican incumbent Rick Scott ahead, and the former governor has a history of closing out close wins. But Democratic challenger Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former member of Congress from Miami, has run a surprisingly competitive campaign and the race has never felt completely out of reach. More importantly, the national stakes are enormous: Control of the United States Senate, and, with it, the power to confirm or deny federal judges. The Senate majority may once again end up as a one-seat margin. And with Republicans in strong position to defeat a Democratic incumbent in Montana, Florida and Texas are the only two places where Democrats could plausibly pick off a Republican (three, if you count Nebraska).

11. Senate District 3

There are 40 seats in the Florida Senate. But thanks to gerrymandering, this is the only one that both parties are truly contesting. The race pits incumbent Sen. Corey Simon (R-Tallahassee), a former college and NFL football star, against Democrat Darryl Parks, a civil-rights attorney from Tallahassee, in a district that spans much of north Florida, from Cross City to Port St. Joe. So why doesn’t the only tossup state Senate race rank a bit higher? Because even if Parks wins, Republicans will still command a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate. But then again, the Florida Senate is still a place where a single vote can matter.

10. The other amendments

There are two amendments on this year’s ballot that got there through citizen petition drives, and we’ll get to them in just a bit. But there are another four amendments that have been proposed by Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature. Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell recently wrote a handy guide to all of them. But two are particularly important.

Amendment 1 would turn local school board elections into partisan races. That’s an idea that has been pushed by right-wing groups in Florida like Moms for Liberty and the Foundation for Government Accountability.

Then there’s Amendment 2, which would turn hunting and fishing into constitutionally protected activities and make it more difficult for governments to regulate things like the types of weapons that can be used. But more than that, the amendment would make hunting and fishing the “preferred means” of managing wildlife populations — which would make it harder to stop stuff like black bear hunts. This seems to be another one of those issues that sounds simple on the surface but could lead to some far-reaching legal consequences.

9. Judges

We’ve spilled a bit of digital ink over the last couple of weeks on some of this year’s more interesting judicial-retention elections. Bottom line: If you want to vote for or against the Supreme Court justices who tried to keep abortion access and marijuana legalization off the ballot, you can do that. And if you want to vote for or against appellate-court judges trying to cut off abortion access for young people, you can do that, too.

8. School Boards

The biggest story to emerge from Florida’s August primary elections was the widespread rejections of right-wing School Board candidates supported by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the censorship group Moms for Liberty. But that story isn’t done yet, because there are still a bunch of big School Board races to be decided in November. Here’s a list of 10. But, for my money, the most interesting ones are in Miami-Dade, Pinellas, and Lee counties.

7. Local referendums

The constitutional amendments get all the attention but there are plenty of interesting and important local referendums across the state. Many have to do with raising taxes for area schools or borrowing money for regional infrastructure. But there are a few that will probably have statewide repercussions. Voters in Orange County will decide a pair of charter amendments that would make it much harder for real-estate developers to chew up rural land. And voters in the city of Gainesville could wrest back control of their public power company after it was seized by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republicans in the Florida Legislature.

6. Cities and counties

There are also critical local campaigns up and down the peninsula. Ron DeSantis and Big Sugar have joined forces in a race that could decide partisan control of the Palm Beach County Commission. Progressives in Leon County are trying to build a majority on the Tallahassee City Commission. And a trio of races in Orange County could lead to big changes on tourism taxes and suburban sprawl.

5. Marijuana

This is — for me, at least — the toughest call on this year’s ballot. Amendment 3, which would legalize recreational marijuana in Florida, has been largely bankrolled by one big corporation: Tallahassee-based marijuana producer Trulieve Inc. And passing it would reward a company with a disgusting origin story and cement Matt Gaetz’s grossest legacy in Florida. (No libelous comments, please.)

But the amendment has also triggered some of the most anti-democratic behavior we’ve ever seen from Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is abusing power across state government to stop this and Amendment 4 (more on that in a bit). And there are some strong criminal justice arguments in favor of legalization.

So…I don’t know. Wherever you land, it’s probably going to be close, since constitutional amendments in Florida need 60 percent support to pass.

4. State Attorneys

Speaking of Ron DeSantis’ anti-democratic tendencies, Ron DeSantis has twice removed locally elected prosecutors based on nothing more than policy differences and flimsy pretenses. Both of them — Andrew Warren in Tampa and Monique Worrell — are back and running for their old jobs against DeSantis’ hand-picked replacements.

But these elections are about much bigger things than Ron DeSantis. Bolts, a national online magazine dedicated to covering local policy, recently identified the twin state attorney races as two of the most important criminal justice elections in the country. That’s because both Warren and Worrell implemented criminal justice reforms, some of which their DeSantis-appointed successors — Suzy Lopez in Tampa and Andrew Bain in Orlando — have rolled back. These two races have also been the subject of big money and brazen election schemes.

There’s also a significant state attorney election happening in Palm Beach County — the home of Donald Trump and where a bunch of Trump-backing billionaires are trying to buy the race.

3. U.S. House of Representatives

One of the most fascinating stories in Florida politics the past few weeks has been the sudden transformation of Republican U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna from grandstanding MAGA grenade-tosser to bipartisan Biden-defender. It’s a sign of how nervous she is about the challenge she’s facing from Democrat Whitney Fox in Florida’s 13^th Congressional district.

The Tampa Bay-area contest is the most competitive U.S. House race in Florida this cycle. Which also makes it a race of national importance, since Congress is so narrowly divided and control of the lower chamber is up for grabs once again this November.

If Florida ends up tilting heavily in one direction or another, then maybe Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Salazar or Democratic Rep. Darren Soto need to be nervous, too. Theirs are the only other Florida seats that show up on Cook Political Report’s House Race ratings.  

2. The Republican supermajority

Florida Republicans are in complete control of state government and that won’t change no matter what happens next month. But Democrats could claw back a modicum of power if they can flip five seats in the state House, which would break the GOP’s supermajority in Tallahassee.

This overview of the battleground races from early September still holds up reasonably well, though if I did it over again, I might add yet another Orlando-area seat to the watchlist: House District 36, where Republicans are spending aggressively to defend Rep. Rachel Plakon (R-Lake Mary) against Democratic challenger Kelly Diona Miller.

What’s even more interesting, though, is where Republicans aren’t spending money. Judging just by the TV ad buys, GOP leaders in Tallahassee don’t seem to be doing much to defend two of their most vulnerable incumbents: Reps. Carolina Amesty (R-Windermere) and Fabian Basabe (R-Miami Beach). On the other hand, some Democratic activists say party leaders in Tallahassee aren’t seriously pursuing the swing seat currently held by Rep. Vicki Lopez (R-Miami).  

1. Abortion

Republican politicians in Tallahassee have imposed one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation — a ban that prohibits most abortions after just six weeks of pregnancy and has led to delayed and denied healthcare for women whose lives were endangered by their pregnancies. And some Republican politicians in Tallahassee want to go even further and completely ban abortion from the moment of conception, without even any exceptions for women who have been raped or victimized by incest.

Those two points alone would make Amendment 4 — which would overturn the statewide abortion ban and prohibit further government interference with abortion care — the most important thing on the ballot this year.

But then you add in the fact that Ron DeSantis has become utterly deranged over it. The Florida governor has sent state election police after Amendment 4 supporters. He’s overruled the state’s top economist, undercut independent elections officials, and lobbed unsubstantiated allegations of fraud. He’s forced state lawyers to threaten TV stations with criminal charges — prompting one of his lawyers to resign in protest and a federal judge to slap him with a restraining order.

And DeSantis has taken an estimated $18 million and counting from his own taxpayers, burning it on publicly subsidized political campaigns against both Amendment 4 and Amendment 3.

Despite it all, the outcome might not even be in doubt right now if Amendment 4 only needed a majority to pass. Instead, it’s likely to wind up as one of the closest contests of the night.