It took guts for Democrat Lorena Grizzle, a teacher and former Florida Lottery official, to take on an established Republican incumbent in Pinellas County's safely Republican State House District 66 in the 2014 midterm elections, when Democrats are notoriously bad at turning out.
Like many of her fellow Democratic candidates that ran in that off year, she didn't win. In fact, she lost 57-43 percent against State Rep. Larry Ahern, who was first elected to his post during the 2010 Tea Party wave.
Two years later, the daughter of popular former State Senator Mary Grizzle, a Republican, is having another go.
“Because of what he does, and what he doesn't do,” Grizzle said of her opponent, a staunch conservative. “Our education system, it's just been death by a thousand cuts based on what they're doing. We're hoping that we can get a lot of women running, and we have this year, and change the whole house. So it's kind of been a collective effort across the state. I hope it works.”
Even in a presidential year, when Democrats traditionally turn out in higher numbers than Republicans, someone like Grizzle is going to have a tough time convincing the area's many conservative and independent voters to choose her over her much better-known opponent. He's got plenty of name recognition and access to all the money he needs to fend off another challenge.
Yet even though coming off of two terms of a Democratic presidency traditionally could offset the higher Democratic turnout and thus benefit Republicans, the unpredictable nature of this year's election could mean Democratic candidates in state and local (partisan) races in the Tampa Bay area have an unexpected tool at their disposal: Donald Trump's name at the top of the ticket.
The controversial Republican presidential nominee has had trouble uniting his party behind him. In Florida's 13th Congressional District, of which State House District 66 occupies the west-central portion, a recent St. Pete Polls survey reported 47 percent of those polled would vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton and 37 percent would vote for Trump.
At the House District level, voter registration records suggest a large number of independent and non-party voters will likely carry a lot of weight in November.
State Division of Elections records from Feb. 16 of this year show that while Republicans outnumber Democrats 44,721 to 35,698, there are over 31,000 independent and non-party voters and hundreds of residents belonging to a minor party.
In this and other districts, voter behavior is going to be highly unpredictable. A polarizing nominee like Trump could be a boon to moderate Democrats like Grizzle.
“I think it's going to be very challenging for independent voters to connect with Donald Trump, and that certainly is going to favor Democrats,” said Democratic political consultant and analyst Ana Cruz. “Particularly, when elections are won and lost in small margins. Now that it's a presidential cycle with a high voter turnout, with a very divisive Republican nominee, I think that we will see independents shifting toward voting Democratic or for the Democratic top of the ticket. That will certainly help down-ballot races.”
But even though she can use Ahern's early support of Trump against him in appeals to independents and moderate Republicans (Ahern endorsed Trump even as colleagues in neighboring districts were still holding out hope for Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio), Grizzle said, it would not be wise to assume the district is in the bag for Clinton or any other Democrat.
“You can't take any election for granted,” she said. “You can't even take that for granted with Trump, because nobody thought he'd get to where he is now.”
Former State Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat who lost the governor's race to Rick Scott in 2010, echoed those sentiments.
“As we all have learned in the past few years, anything can happen in an election,” she said. “So I think it would be wrong for anyone to celebrate the fact that he is the Republican nominee. I think it speaks very poorly of our country and certainly speaks very poorly of the Republican Party that has nominated him.”
Arguably, one thing Trump and down-ballot Republicans may have going for them is multiple decades of Clinton-bashing and playing up of scandals involving Clinton. The Democratic primary that pitted her against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders means that some of the nastiest jabs are still fresh in the memories of many voters.
No matter, said Cruz.
“They're going to continue their nasty rhetoric, but what I've seen in the past couple of days is women and progressives excited and coalescing around her much more quickly than [Republicans] have around Donald Trump,” she said. “Donald Trump has had five weeks to get his house in order, and to get his shit together, and Republicans have not embraced him. He continues to say nasty things about people that have spent a lifetime working hard and achieving great heights… the party establishment and party leaders have yet to embrace Donald Trump. That's a problem.”
This article appears in Jun 16-23, 2016.