Why President Trump Should Write a Love Letter to Florida

In addition to Fathers’ Day, this past weekend marked another important occasion: the fourth anniversary of President Trump’s campaign launch.  Brian Stelter celebrated by describing his announcement speech, which took place at Trump Tower in New York City, as “entertaining and shocking,” adding “there was some racism involved involving Mexicans.” 

While President Trump may owe his entire career to the City of New York, where he announced his first presidential campaign, he owes his entire political career (and his political future) to the state of Florida.  Perhaps with that in mind, President Trump will officially kick off his re-election campaign tonight in Orlando tonight. 

While President Trump would have won the White House without Florida, the Sunshine State, more so than any other state, likely enabled him to win the Republican nomination in the first place.  Unlike the Democratic Presidential primaries, where every state allocates delegates on a proportional basis, the Republican presidential primaries have both proportional states as well as “winner-take-all” states; where the person who gets the most votes gets all the delegates.

In 2016, the Florida primary took place on March 15.  While the Republican primary initially featured two Floridians, one of them, Jeb Bush, dropped out after a poor showing in the South Carolina primary.  At the time of the Florida primary, four candidates remained: Trump, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Ohio governor John Kasich, and Florida’s own Marco Rubio.  In terms of the popular vote, number of states carried, and number of delegates, Trump and Cruz found themselves well ahead of the other two candidates.  Cruz had won Iowa, Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Kansas, Alaska, and Maine while Trump had won New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia.  Rubio had only managed to carry one state so far (Minnesota) and Kasich had yet to win a single contest.

Both Rubio and Kasich had contests in their home states on March 15.  At the time, talk of a contested convention loomed large; as many Republicans remained steadfastly opposed to the idea of a Trump presidency.  Establishment Republicans thought that a Rubio win in Florida and a Kasich win in Ohio would slow Trump’s momentum.  The establishment got half of their wish to come true.  Kasich won his home state of Ohio but the winner-take-all, delegate-rich state of Florida effectively paved the way for Trump to  become the Republican nominee.  Trump, who owns the Mar-a-Lago golf course in Florida, beat the state’s native son by a nearly 2-1 margin.  At the time, most of the establishment Republicans had rallied around Rubio as their favorite candidate but they would soon have to find somewhere else to throw their support.  Rubio dropped out of the race shortly after losing his home state primary.

For the next several weeks, President Trump won an overwhelming majority of the contests and delegates and effectively secured the nomination in early May; when both Cruz and Kasich dropped out. While Trump had secured the Republican nomination, a general election victory remained a very arduous task.

In addition to having to worry about the presidential contest, Republicans had to play a lot of defense in the Senate races.  Republicans had to defend seven seats in states that President Obama won in 2012: Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennnsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa, Ohio, and Florida.  By the time Trump clinched the Republican nomination, Illinois and Wisconsin looked like lost causes, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania looked like coin flips, and Florida looked like an uphill battle simply because of Rubio’s absence on the ticket.  Rubio had to forego running for re-election in order to pursue a presidential bid because Florida law does not allow candidates to run for two different races simultaneously.

Rubio had become a darling of the conservative movement in 2010, when it looked like the establishment Republican governor at the time, Charlie Crist, would become the Republican nominee for the state’s open Senate seat.  However, Rubio had other ideas.  Rubio ended up running for the Senate, causing  Crist to withdraw from the Republican primary. Rubio won the general election, while Crist ran as an independent in the general election, coming in second.  Democrat Kendrick Meek came in third.  Rubio disappointed many in the conservative movement by signing on to the “gang of eight” amnesty bill, which likely explains why his presidential bid never gained traction. On the day following his withdrawal from the presidential race, Ann Coulter wrote a column titled “Voters Deliver Subtle Message: Die Donor Scum,” arguing that the immigration issue fueled the surge of Trump and Cruz and the demise of Rubio.

In the spring of 2016, Senate candidates Congressman David Jolly, who would later call for President Trump’s impeachment, and conservative Congressman Ron DeSantis had thrown their hats in the ring for the Senate race.  Rubio technically could have re-entered the Senate race after suspending his presidential bid but he initially chose not to do so. Following the shooting at the Pulse nightclub, Rubio changed his mind and decided to run for a second term in the Senate.  Both Jolly and DeSantis dropped out of the Senate race upon Rubio’s re-entry.  DeSantis won re-election to his seat while Jolly narrowly lost to Crist, who had switched his party affiliation to the Democratic Party. While Republicans immediately felt better about their prospects of holding onto the Senate seat in the Sunshine State, they still had concerns about Trump’s prospects in the general election.

As it turns out, President Trump did just fine in Florida.  Even after the Access Hollywood tape and relentless pounding from the mainstream media, President Trump ended up winning Florida by a bigger margin than President Obama did in 2012.  Rubio simultaneously won re-election to the Senate and Republicans suffered a net loss of one seat in the House of Representatives because of court-ordered redistricting.

Two years later, Florida retained its status as a battleground state; with an open gubernatorial contest and a competitive Senate contest.  #TheResistance hoped that changing demographics would enable them to flip the governor’s mansion blue for the first time in twenty years.  In addition, Democrats set their sights on two South Florida districts that Hillary Clinton carried by double digits; later expanding their list of targets to include some districts in central Florida.

Outgoing Republican Governor Rick Scott had mediocre approval ratings for much of his first term; although he did manage to win re-election in 2014 against Crist.  His rising approval ratings throughout the latter half of his second term made him a desirable candidate for the United States Senate against three-term Democratic Senator Bill Nelson.  Scott began pursuing the Senate seat while Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam and DeSantis entered the contest to succeed Scott. 

President Trump had played kingmaker in several races throughout 2017 and 2018.  Two of his attempts to play kingmaker blew up in his face.  President Trump threw his support behind appointed Senator Luther Strange in the 2017 Republican Primary runoff in the special election to fill Jeff Sessions’ Senate seat in Alabama.  Alabama Republicans chose Roy Moore instead.  Moore went on to lose the general election after decades-old sexual assault allegations emerged against him.  The following year, President Trump played kingmaker in the Republican primary for the Kansas governors’ race.  Term limits would have barred Kansas’s Republican governor from running for re-election but President Trump appointed him the U.S. Ambassador for Religious Freedom; elevating Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer to the position of Kansas Governor.  Colyer had sought a full term but Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a favorite of Ann Coulter, decided to mount a primary challenge against Colyer.  President Trump supported Kobach over Colyer in the Republican primary because Kobach had demonstrated strong loyalty to him and shared his views on immigration.  Kobach beat Colyer in the Republican primary but went on to lose in the general election in a state President Trump won by double digits.

President Trump’s role as kingmaker paid off handsomely in the Florida gubernatorial election. President Trump supported DeSantis, an outspoken support of his, over Putnam, who most of the establishment got behind.  President Trump’s influence made a difference and DeSantis won the Republican primary.  DeSantis still had to face off against far-left, Bernie Sanders-backed Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in the general election.  Observers thought DeSantis saying “we cannot afford to monkey this up,” referring to the Florida economy, would do him in.  Liberals tried to paint this phrase as a racist attack against the African-American Gillum, when in reality, DeSantis had used “monkey” as a synonym for the word “screw,” “mess,” or even “f***.” 

In most of the other swing states, voters did “revolt” against President Trump, or at the very least, his supporters crucial to his victory in 2016 did not show up in large enough numbers to outperform #TheResistance. However, the results of most of the 2018 statewide races in Florida closely mirrored the results of the 2016 Presidential race, more so than in any other swing state.  Floridians ousted Nelson in favor of Scott and sent a Republican to Tallahassee for the sixth straight election.  The Democrats can point to their capture of two House seats in the southeast part of the state but let’s face it; Republicans deserved to lose those districts. 

Because of Republicans’ performance on Election Day 2018, President Trump should have quite an ensemble of Florida Republicans joining him at his rally tonight; a Republican governor, two Republican Senators, a Republican Attorney General, and possibly the Republican leaders of the Florida State legislature. It definitely will not hurt President Trump to have these surrogates campaigning for him in Florida in 2020 but keep in mind that President Obama managed to win several key states despite his party not controlling every (or almost every) statewide elected office.   

Looking ahead to 2020, Florida actually looks like the easiest swing state for President Trump to win; according to some data. According to The Morning Consult, President Trump has a net approval of “0” in Florida.  In the swing states of Ohio and Iowa, which President Trump won by larger margins than the Sunshine State, he has a net approval of -4 and -12, respectively.  President Trump finds himself slightly underwater in North Carolina.  As far as the swing states go, only in Texas and Georgia does President Trump have a higher net approval rating than he does in Florida.

While President Trump likes to talk about how the morbidly obese and paranoid North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un wrote him a “beautiful letter,” perhaps President Trump should consider writing a love letter himself; addressing it to the state of Florida.  In many ways, he already has; he stopped in Orlando as part of his “thank-you tour.” It bears repeating that without Florida, President Trump might not have become the Republican nominee and therefore he would not have become President. It looks like Florida has not lost its enthusiasm for President Trump, as some of his most die-hard supporters lined up more than 24 hours in advance of his re-election campaign kickoff.  Winning Florida serves as an important step on achieving President Trump’s goal of keeping America great.  Based on the more than 100,000 people who requested tickets for his Florida rally, it looks like he’s off to a good start.