Yesterday it became all but official that former state legislator and prosecutor Rod Smith from Alachua County will become the next state party chief for the Florida Democratic Party.
But the two biggest challenges for Smith (or whomever is to lead the party) are formidable, at least as it looks a month after the midterm elections. Those challenges are to see Barack Obama win the critical state of Florida as he did in 2008, and also to get Bill Nelson re-elected to a third term in the U.S. Senate.
President Obama's re-election chances will reside a lot on the U.S. economy improving, which these days translates to the unemployment rate. Today that rate just went up (to 9.8%), so it's not getting any easier. And as for Senator Nelson? Well, as we've already written, you can trust that he will be voting a lot with Republicans on certain issues – no, not when it comes to protecting Florida's coasts from offshore drilling, where he's been a leader (and that issue is now off the table after Obama's announcement earlier this week that there will be no drilling in the Eastern Gulf for the next 7 years), but on key fiscal and social issues.
As blogger Mike Cantone, the former campaign manager for Democratic Congressional candidate Heather Beaven wrote yesterday, the only way to create some effective immediate change at the grass roots level is with local DEC's, or Democratic Executive Committees.
This coming Monday night, the Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Committee will vote on its new leaders. Currently, there is no competition amongst the candidates vying for the leadership roles, so at least on that point alone, there should be little dissension.
Of course, dissension has frequently been a part of the Hillsborough DEC, and maybe some of that tension won't ever go away. But one thing does need to happen: they need to get bigger. I attended several of their monthly meetings this year, as well as attending Hillsborough Republican meetings – in terms of body counts, it wasn't even close. The enthusiasm at the local level was overwhelmingly on the GOP's side in 2010.
But the local Dems need to recruit more people to be part of their regular events. Frankly, too many of those events are frequented by the same hard-working loyal members. They need to bulk up. And this goes for throughout the state. There will be changes with the Pinellas County DEC as well, as Ramsey McLaughlan steps down and new officers are elected next week in Clearwater.
Yesterday afternoon CL spoke with Andrew Gillum, who officially announced that he was stepping down from challenging Rod Smith for the party chair position. Gillum said he was now firmly behind Smith and would lend his support in any fashion to help him, particularly in recruiting candidates. But Gillum didn't sugarcoat things, saying "the reality is that there are some major issues in our party."
He said that Florida Democrats can't "make the mistake of looking to the president to be the end all and be all solution to all of our problems," saying that the same holds true of whomever the state party selects as its leader. "If we generate this cult of personality around Rod or anyone believing they can help to save this party single-handedly.. we're mistaken."
Gillum also spoke to the fact that frankly, though Rod Smith may have all of the support of the Democratic establishment in Florida, he raises suspicions amongst some progressives, simply by the nature that he's always been a centrist in his political philosophy. "If he's smart, he'll reach out to bring in strong voice from diverse community that makes up the Democratic party, " Gillum said.
It won't be easy. Especially these days, when at the local level, much of the progressive community seems to enraged at President Obama for his perceived lack of toughness in dealing with Congressional Republicans (check out today's column by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has perhaps his most devastating critique on the President to date).
But historically, both of our major political parties have been at low ebbs at times and rebounded successfully. The problem for Florida Democrats is that they've had pockets of success (such as in 2008) but a lot of failure, at least over the past twelve years when it comes to races for governor and the state legislature.
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2010.