It’s dawn, the morning after Florida’s powerhouse of a presidential primary, in an election year that very well could be the weirdest we see in our lifetimes.
For politicos, it was perhaps one of the most fascinating Tuesdays to date this election cycle. Billionaire Donald Trump easily took Florida, knocking Senator Marco Rubio out in his home state on the Republican side and further exposing a deep fissure within the Republican party. On the other side, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bested Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders nearly two to one, though Sanders supporters insist this battle is far from over.
The dynamic nature of each contest drew record voter turnout throughout the state, including the Tampa Bay area.
Florida might be in the bag for Trump and Clinton, but there’s still a long way to go in terms of primary state contests and the delegates they yield.
On Tuesday, Republican voters will weigh in on primaries in American Samoa, Arizona and Utah, which have nine, 58 and 40 delegates, respectively (Arizona’s are winner-take-all for Republicans).
Trump has 621 of the 1,237 delegates needed; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz trails him at 396. Since Trump didn’t win Ohio — that state’s governor, John Kasich, did — he’s not exactly a shoo-in for the nomination, to the delight of his GOP establishment detractors.
On the Democrat side, Arizona, Idaho and Utah also have primaries that day. Of the delegates won (as opposed to superdelegates), Clinton has 1,064 to Sanders’s 762.
Primaries extend into June, which means we’re not even at the halfway point chronologically, and the conventions don’t start until July. Judging by how eventful (to say the least) this election cycle has been to date, damn near anything can happen.
Trump vs. the GOP
At the two campaign events he held in Tampa in February and March, it was quite clear that Trump has an adoring fan base, one that numbers in the thousands. Many of them are willing to drive for hours to get a glimpse of the phenomenon that is his candidacy and cheer on his bombastic, at-times divisive rhetoric.
It’s not just the celebrity that attracts them.
Former Tampa Bay Young Republicans president Adam Smith, who owns a Tampa accounting firm, said he likes Trump’s bluntness, his position on immigration and his business acumen.
“I like the fact that Donald Trump is a 100 percent private sector guy, he’s a job creator, a businessman, a master negotiator, and that’s what I want to see in office,” he said at a TBYRs election night event in Tampa. “And I like the fact that he speaks his mind. Political correctness, in my opinion, has helped destroy this country and our society and our identity. And it’s refreshing to have a guy who says what he wants, and he can’t be paid for by special interests.”
Apparently, nearly half (46 percent) of Florida’s Republican voters agree.
But some are petrified at the effect a Trump general election candidacy would have on the party, fearing that down-ballot races in some districts could be negatively impacted were his name to top the ticket.
Others worry about what an actual Trump presidency would look like.
“He’s racist,” said Dave Miller, 59, outside his St. Petersburg polling place. “I can’t say it any nicer. He’s not my cup of tea.”
Miller said although he likes Ohio Governor John Kasich best, he voted for Rubio because he thought he had the best shot against Trump in Florida, and that could help push a contested convention in July.
Rob Haddad, 54, also of St. Petersburg, said he voted for Kasich, explaining that he’s concerned about how divisive the process has become. If the election were to come down to Clinton and Trump, he said he’s not sure what he would do.
“It scares the hell out of me,” he said. “If that’s the best we can do, then that’s a shame.”
The morning after Florida’s primary, Mac Stipanovich, a GOP attorney and lobbyist in Florida, told NPR Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep that he would “support a tree stump” over Trump, and would be part of a third-party effort to stop him.
“I absolutely believe he’s a menace to the country,” he said.
Even if moderate members of the GOP find Trump too brash and bigoted for their tastes, many Republicans still say they’ll back whoever becomes the nominee.
“He grabs a lot of attention, he’s a very smart businessman,” said Holly Holobyn, 31, vice president of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans (and a then-Rubio supporter), at the group’s watch party. “He filed for bankruptcy four times. But he knows what he’s doing at the end of the day. Whether it’s in his interest or in the country’s best interest, if he’s our guy, then so be it.”
Sandbagging Sanders?
In the wake of a debate between the two Democratic candidates (and as he introduced Clinton to about 1,000 Clinton supporters in Ybor), Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn said he thought “the Bern got extinguished,” expecting that the outcome of Florida’s primary would help narrow down the Democratic primary contest to one candidate (Clinton, of course).
Well, that’s apparently not going to happen.
Sanders supporters scoff at the notion that defeats in Florida as well as Ohio and North Carolina should be the final coffin nails for the Sanders candidacy, saying that they knew Clinton would win Florida and all the other Southern states (and Ohio).
“Yawn,” said Mike Fox, Progressive Democrats of America, the first national organization to endorse Sanders. “Yawn. About expected. The good news is, at the end of tonight, the Confederacy is now over and we move forward with a real election across the country.”
As for Ohio, he said: “No worries.”
His rationale?
The Sanders camp expects the bulk of the delegates in Western states, many of which have stronger progressive leanings, to go to Sanders in the coming weeks and months.
“Here’s the math: Number one, Bernie has a Pacific firewall that nobody in the media talks about. He will win Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and California, the single largest state in the union. He will crush in California for the following reason: next Tuesday, Arizona,” Fox said. “Bernie has been campaigning [there] for over a year.”
Clinton may have the name recognition in the Southern states, he said, but building momentum could translate to wins out West for Sanders.
But political science professor Judithanne Scourfield-McLauchlan said she’s skeptical that the West could yield the volume of delegates Sanders needs to best Clinton, given that delegates in Democratic primaries are proportional; none are winner-take all. Sanders would have to win by some incredibly strong margins in order to pull past Clinton.
“At some point it comes down to the math, and even if he’s winning some states, he’s not going to win by enough,” she said. “His supporters are going to be doing some soul-searching.”
Plus, moving the needle would be expensive. Sanders lost by a hair in Missouri Tuesday night, a state in which he outspent Clinton two to one. In North Carolina, he outspent her three to one and still lost, according to Politico.
Scourfield-McLauchlan said she sees Sanders’s role as more of a dialogue-steering one that has helped Clinton stay abreast of the issues and hone her campaign messaging.
“Early on Bernie had said he was running because he wanted to bring attention to certain issues,” she said. “So he’s message-driven — and not necessarily running because he thinks he’s going to win the nomination. He may continue on, but I think for the Democrats, as soon as there’s a nominee and people are rallying around one nominee [the better].”
Fox said he doesn’t see the Sanders team dismantling anytime soon, though.
“We are in this for the long haul,” he said. “How can your morale collapse when you’re working for a guy who, at age 74, did five rallies in three states yesterday? You can’t. “FDR never lost his support. And that’s what we’re talking about. He is the FDR of the 21st century.”
What the voters said
Throughout the day Tuesday — even during what’s typically downtime — polls had a relatively steady stream of voters coming through.
While quite a few were reluctant to speak to media about who they voted for and why, St. Petersburg resident Rachel Jones said she was an Independent voter, but registered Democrat to vote in the primary.
“To be honest, I really like what Bernie Sanders is saying and I think he could bring about change,” she said.
Jones added that she was disgusted by the bulk of the Republican roster — that the dialogue on that side has degraded to a quality akin to a Kardashian-style reality show.
Terri Suite, 60, also of St. Pete, said she went for Clinton.
“They’re kind of the same on most of the issues except gun control,” she said, noting Sanders’s position on Second Amendment rights and the NRA’s past high rating of his voting record.
There were other things about Sanders that scared her, she said.
“And I think it’s the age,” Suite said. “He scares me with his age. And I’m also scared of who he’s going to pick as a running mate.”
Rob Haddad, the 54-year-old Kasich supporter, said he doesn’t agree with everything the Ohio governor says, but he doesn’t like the idea of someone governing in black and white, either.
“I think it’s very divisive, and I don’t think just on issues or personalities,” he said.” The process has become divisive… And if we don’t like something about somebody, we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don’t think that’s the way we’re supposed to be. It’s the whole person and the whole platform, and I think John Kasich, I don’t agree with everything in his platform, but there’s enough to make me gravitate toward him.”
Having such a tempered approach to choosing a candidate seems to buck the national trend of supporting anti-establishment, insurgent candidates like Trump and Sanders.
“What has been seeming to catch fire is — well, on the left — is, ‘We need a revolution.’ That’s a strong word, revolution. That is violent and that evokes all kinds of passion,” Scourfield-McLauchlan said. “And the same on the right, the same thing on the Republican side with Donald Trump. His supporters are also coming from a place of profound… of total distrust of the process.”
She said she finds the electorate’s increasing attraction to candidates who don’t want to challenge the system from within, but would rather blow the whole thing up, alarming.
“If the response is ‘We can’t have anybody who has any experience in government, we have to bring someone in who’s never done anything like this before and that’s going to make it better,’ I feel like we have failed as a democracy to train citizens to be empowered to work within the system,” Scourfield-McLauchlan said.
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2016.