cawacko
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From the Essay section of the weekend Journal. Good read for political junkies.
How Florida Became America’s GOP Hot Spot
Once the nation’s biggest swing state, it’s now the power center for conservative policies and dueling Republican White House hopefuls
On a recent day in the Miami area, conservative activist Charlie Kirk shared morning coffee with commentator Dave Rubin before meeting with Republican donors who relocated to Florida from the Northeast. He recorded his radio show and hosted an event for the former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, then capped the night off at dinner with conservative influencers who recently moved in-state.
“I feel like how I used to feel in New York,” said Mr. Kirk, who splits his time between Arizona and Florida. “I can just keep myself busy all day long.”
Once the biggest battleground state in the U.S., Florida has morphed in recent years into the nerve center and idea laboratory for the Republican Party, home to growing legions of conservative activists, thought leaders and donors. It has become a model under Gov. Ron DeSantis of a new right that embraces muscular use of state power to pursue a conservative agenda and reshape institutions. Other states are emulating its policies by advancing parental bills of rights and bans on instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.
The GOP’s two most towering figures reside there—former President Donald Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach is a bustling hub for political gatherings and fundraisers, and Mr. DeSantis, the young new star of the party whose 19-point reelection victory last year solidified Florida’s status as a red state.
The political shift is brought on by a confluence of demographic, ideological and economic changes that the Covid-19 pandemic catalyzed. As lockdowns in left-leaning states closed schools and businesses, many residents who chafed against such restrictions relocated to Florida, which Mr. DeSantis reopened quickly. That decision also earned the loyalty of many existing Florida residents, including working-class voters. Republicans invested heavily in voter registration and outreach and won over Latinos with an aspirational economic message that cast Democrats as out of touch.
In 2021, registered Republicans eclipsed Democrats as a share of Florida voters for the first time since at least the early 1970s, according to state data. Between the end of 2018 and end of 2022, Republicans gained 593,402 voters while Democrats lost 47,727.
Some of the GOP’s growth in vote share stems from new arrivals to Florida, which has consistently ranked among the nation’s fastest-growing states in census counts. Of voters who moved to Florida between the 2018 and 2022 general elections, 45% are registered as Republicans and 24% as Democrats, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from L2, a nonpartisan voter file vendor.
While Florida’s status as a GOP power center expanded its ritzy fundraising ecosystem, it also generated new pride in cultural distinctions. The term “Florida Man” had gained attention a decade ago when a Twitter account began aggregating stories about bizarre accidents and crimes in the Sunshine State. “Florida Man used to be a pejorative,” said Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz. “I wear it as a badge of honor.”
Among the conservatives who have moved to Florida in the past few years are political commentators like Mr. Rubin, Ben Shapiro and Lisa Boothe. Billionaire Republican donor Ken Griffin relocated his hedge-fund firm Citadel from Chicago to Miami last year and bought a new home there. Jeffrey Henley, vice chairman of Oracle Corp. and also a GOP donor, bought a place in Naples in 2020.
Conservative scholars are trying to build out the state’s intellectual infrastructure to more easily export Florida’s policy innovations around the U.S. The Claremont Institute, an influential conservative think tank, started a new operation in Tallahassee, the state capital, in February.
Rumble, a video-sharing site popular with right-leaning users, announced in early March that it was opening its new U.S. headquarters in Longboat Key. Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit organization that promotes parental rights and has become a national force on education issues, got its start in Melbourne and nearby Vero Beach.
“Florida has emerged as the epicenter, the ground zero, for conservative life in America,” said Josh Hammer, a conservative commentator and opinion editor for Newsweek who moved to Miami from Colorado in 2021.
The change has pushed the Florida Democratic Party, plagued for years by dysfunction and insufficient investment in voter registration and turnout, to the brink of irrelevance in the state. Democrats decry what they consider Republican assaults on schools, immigrants and the LGBT community, but some concede that the governor’s messaging has been effective in winning voter support.
“It feels like the earth is caving in and we can’t breathe,” said Alex Sink, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in 2010. She said she can’t convince her daughter, a pediatrician in Washington, D.C., to move back to Florida because of its rightward turn.
For decades, Florida has received newcomers drawn to the warm weather and lack of state income tax. The diverse mix of arrivals, from white retirees to Puerto Rican migrants, generally kept the state evenly split politically. Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election when he clinched Florida by just 537 votes after a recount battle that reached the Supreme Court. In 2016, Mr. Trump carried the state by one percentage point, helping deliver him the presidency, and two years later, Mr. DeSantis won by less than half a percentage point.
After Mr. Trump’s election, the state’s political profile slowly began to change. Palm Beach, long a haven for the wealthy, became a hive of activity after he embraced Mar-a-Lago as the Southern White House. The Mediterranean-style complex hosted a stream of elected officials, candidates, operatives, donors and dignitaries. In 2017, Mr. Trump hosted a summit there with Chinese President Xi Jinping, informing him of a missile strike on Syria after eating what the American president called “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you have ever seen.”
Mr. Trump, once an icon of the Manhattan business and social scenes, made Florida his primary residence in 2019, ahead of his re-election bid, saying New York state and city politicians had treated him poorly. “He’s all yours, Florida,” then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo hit back on Twitter. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump is expected back in New York to surrender on charges related to paying hush-money to a porn star before his 2016 election.
Mr. DeSantis’s election in 2018 accelerated the state’s transformation. Though he started off promoting some centrist policies, including increased education spending and funding for Everglades restoration, the pandemic opened a new phase of his governorship. He gained national prominence by resisting Covid-19 mask and vaccine mandates and sparring with public-health specialists over restrictions on businesses and gatherings. He began cultivating the brand of the “Free State of Florida,” highlighting resistance to what he considers onerous restrictions and left-wing ideologies that he says pervade some bureaucracies and institutions.
Pandemic restrictions in other states prompted organizers of summits like the Conservative Political Action Conference and the National Conservatism Conference, both previously held in the Washington area, to relocate them to Orlando and Miami. The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, held its first “A Celebration of Ideas” event in Palm Beach in 2021.
Mr. Kirk, who bought a home in Longboat Key in 2019, began spending more time in the state. The organization he founded—Turning Point USA, which advocates for conservative policies in schools and universities—holds its annual Student Action Summit, which draws more than 5,000 students, in Tampa, and plans to convene it in Palm Beach County this year. Turning Point has doubled its staff to a dozen in Florida in the past few years, Mr. Kirk said.
A growing assortment of conservative podcasters, commentators and authors moved to Florida during the pandemic’s early years, each new arrival helping entice others. David Reaboi, a Claremont Institute fellow who moved to Miami Beach from the Washington area in 2019, said he felt isolated at first. Then the pandemic sent flocks of friends his way.
Mr. Reaboi said he spent long stretches on the real-estate site Zillow.com helping acquaintances who were considering a move to evaluate home listings. One day while grabbing coffee in Miami’s Brickell financial district, he said, he ran into three people he knew who had just relocated to South Florida. He said he periodically issued calls on Twitter for meet-ups at restaurants and other venues, and despite little advance notice, would draw 40 or 50 people.
In Mr. Reaboi’s view, Florida has now overtaken Texas, where he lived in the mid-2010s, as the nexus of right-wing dynamism. The Lone Star State’s libertarian streak and emphasis on economic issues have faded as animating forces for conservatives, who are eager for political leaders to take on social issues, he said.
The shift is brought on by a confluence of demographic, ideological and economic changes that the Covid-19 pandemic catalyzed.
Though right-leaning transplants have settled across the state, several conservative clusters have emerged. Palm Beach is the GOP’s glitzy financial hub. The Breakers resort is a popular gathering place, where guests can catch a high-level Trump campaign official or Republican operative at the HMF lounge, with its $20 martinis and club music pumping as the night wears on.
As more people move to the area or arrive for weekend getaways, reservations at hotspots such as Le Bilboquet, Café L’Europe, Palm Beach Grill and Buccan have become harder to get, spurring the growth of private dining clubs with fees as high as $250,000.
“It’s like Washington with palm trees,” said GOP consultant Ryan Williams, who moved to Palm Beach fulltime last year and says Republican friends, clients and colleagues now come to him.
During last year’s midterm election, candidates flocked to Palm Beach, hoping for an endorsement from Mr. Trump. He is known to make surprise appearances at events, mingling with guests and playing host. “Is the shrimp as good as it looks?” he frequently asks. Some nights Mr. Trump takes a turn as DJ, taking out an iPad to play songs like “Y.M.C.A.” by Village People and other staples of his rallies. Clusters of Trump supporters often wait outside the road leading from Mar-a-Lago hoping for a glimpse of him heading to play golf or board his jet, Trump Force One.
Tension between Messrs. Trump and DeSantis has steadily grown as their widely expected competition for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination nears, though only Mr. Trump has declared his candidacy.
In late February, Mr. DeSantis held a three-day retreat for supporters, including major GOP donors, at the Four Seasons Resort just down the road from Mar-a-Lago, where a day earlier Mr. Trump appeared at a smaller candlelight fundraiser. The hotel was brimming with bold-face names, including a number of former Trump supporters, who gossiped over steak dinners, cigars and cocktails about how viciously Mr. Trump would attack Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Trump’s team thinks he can dismantle the governor just as he vanquished two of Florida’s other star Republicans in the 2016 presidential race: former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio.
“For those of you that didn’t notice, Florida was doing great long before Ron DeSanctus got there,” Mr. Trump said in a recent video, using one of the nicknames he has tried out for the governor. “Sunshine and ocean are very alluring. It’s not too hard to work with those factors.”
The Miami area has especially become a center for conservative intellectuals and media figures, said Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow who lives in the Seattle area but visits often. He said he crosses paths with his counterparts at dinners, events and bill-signing ceremonies, while also soaking up the amenities of a vibrant international city. “Miami is really the most exciting city for conservatives in the U.S. right now,” said Mr. Rufo, whom Mr. DeSantis named as a trustee earlier this year at the New College of Florida in Sarasota.
On the state’s west coast, the corridor from Naples to Tampa Bay has become another destination for conservative commentators. Fox News host Tucker Carlson bought a home on that stretch in 2020. Social-media influencer Will Witt, who said he became fed up with Covid-19 policies while living in Los Angeles, moved to Tampa last year and launched the Florida Standard, a right-leaning news outlet, where he landed a rare interview with Mr. DeSantis.
Mr. DeSantis has cultivated connections with the growing network of conservative activists and organizations—speaking at their events, joining their podcasts and inviting them to the governor’s mansion. He has tapped scholars from the Claremont Institute and the Manhattan Institute to help craft policies on civics-education standards and diversity, equity and inclusion crackdowns at universities.
In February, the governor and his wife, Casey DeSantis, held a roundtable discussion with Claremont Institute leaders to celebrate the hiring of a new staffer, Scott Yenor, who will be based in Tallahassee, and the organization’s plans to open an office there. “Protecting Americans from infringing woke ideology is important work,” Mrs. DeSantis tweeted.
The new Claremont outpost will focus on advising Florida officials on areas of mutual interest, including identity politics and immigration, said Ryan Williams, president of the institute. “We would love to use our experience in Florida working on policy solutions to put together a kind of red-state blueprint for the rest of the country,” he said.
Some conservatives say the state will need to build more-robust research and policy institutions to have enduring impact. Said Mr. Hammer, “The first thing that a lot of us are trying to be vigilant about is to make sure that this is not a fad that will go away after DeSantis’s time in Tallahassee is over.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-republican-state-trump-desantis-2b9b588
How Florida Became America’s GOP Hot Spot
Once the nation’s biggest swing state, it’s now the power center for conservative policies and dueling Republican White House hopefuls
On a recent day in the Miami area, conservative activist Charlie Kirk shared morning coffee with commentator Dave Rubin before meeting with Republican donors who relocated to Florida from the Northeast. He recorded his radio show and hosted an event for the former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, then capped the night off at dinner with conservative influencers who recently moved in-state.
“I feel like how I used to feel in New York,” said Mr. Kirk, who splits his time between Arizona and Florida. “I can just keep myself busy all day long.”
Once the biggest battleground state in the U.S., Florida has morphed in recent years into the nerve center and idea laboratory for the Republican Party, home to growing legions of conservative activists, thought leaders and donors. It has become a model under Gov. Ron DeSantis of a new right that embraces muscular use of state power to pursue a conservative agenda and reshape institutions. Other states are emulating its policies by advancing parental bills of rights and bans on instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.
The GOP’s two most towering figures reside there—former President Donald Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach is a bustling hub for political gatherings and fundraisers, and Mr. DeSantis, the young new star of the party whose 19-point reelection victory last year solidified Florida’s status as a red state.
The political shift is brought on by a confluence of demographic, ideological and economic changes that the Covid-19 pandemic catalyzed. As lockdowns in left-leaning states closed schools and businesses, many residents who chafed against such restrictions relocated to Florida, which Mr. DeSantis reopened quickly. That decision also earned the loyalty of many existing Florida residents, including working-class voters. Republicans invested heavily in voter registration and outreach and won over Latinos with an aspirational economic message that cast Democrats as out of touch.
In 2021, registered Republicans eclipsed Democrats as a share of Florida voters for the first time since at least the early 1970s, according to state data. Between the end of 2018 and end of 2022, Republicans gained 593,402 voters while Democrats lost 47,727.
Some of the GOP’s growth in vote share stems from new arrivals to Florida, which has consistently ranked among the nation’s fastest-growing states in census counts. Of voters who moved to Florida between the 2018 and 2022 general elections, 45% are registered as Republicans and 24% as Democrats, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from L2, a nonpartisan voter file vendor.
While Florida’s status as a GOP power center expanded its ritzy fundraising ecosystem, it also generated new pride in cultural distinctions. The term “Florida Man” had gained attention a decade ago when a Twitter account began aggregating stories about bizarre accidents and crimes in the Sunshine State. “Florida Man used to be a pejorative,” said Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz. “I wear it as a badge of honor.”
Among the conservatives who have moved to Florida in the past few years are political commentators like Mr. Rubin, Ben Shapiro and Lisa Boothe. Billionaire Republican donor Ken Griffin relocated his hedge-fund firm Citadel from Chicago to Miami last year and bought a new home there. Jeffrey Henley, vice chairman of Oracle Corp. and also a GOP donor, bought a place in Naples in 2020.
Conservative scholars are trying to build out the state’s intellectual infrastructure to more easily export Florida’s policy innovations around the U.S. The Claremont Institute, an influential conservative think tank, started a new operation in Tallahassee, the state capital, in February.
Rumble, a video-sharing site popular with right-leaning users, announced in early March that it was opening its new U.S. headquarters in Longboat Key. Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit organization that promotes parental rights and has become a national force on education issues, got its start in Melbourne and nearby Vero Beach.
“Florida has emerged as the epicenter, the ground zero, for conservative life in America,” said Josh Hammer, a conservative commentator and opinion editor for Newsweek who moved to Miami from Colorado in 2021.
The change has pushed the Florida Democratic Party, plagued for years by dysfunction and insufficient investment in voter registration and turnout, to the brink of irrelevance in the state. Democrats decry what they consider Republican assaults on schools, immigrants and the LGBT community, but some concede that the governor’s messaging has been effective in winning voter support.
“It feels like the earth is caving in and we can’t breathe,” said Alex Sink, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in 2010. She said she can’t convince her daughter, a pediatrician in Washington, D.C., to move back to Florida because of its rightward turn.
For decades, Florida has received newcomers drawn to the warm weather and lack of state income tax. The diverse mix of arrivals, from white retirees to Puerto Rican migrants, generally kept the state evenly split politically. Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election when he clinched Florida by just 537 votes after a recount battle that reached the Supreme Court. In 2016, Mr. Trump carried the state by one percentage point, helping deliver him the presidency, and two years later, Mr. DeSantis won by less than half a percentage point.
After Mr. Trump’s election, the state’s political profile slowly began to change. Palm Beach, long a haven for the wealthy, became a hive of activity after he embraced Mar-a-Lago as the Southern White House. The Mediterranean-style complex hosted a stream of elected officials, candidates, operatives, donors and dignitaries. In 2017, Mr. Trump hosted a summit there with Chinese President Xi Jinping, informing him of a missile strike on Syria after eating what the American president called “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you have ever seen.”
Mr. Trump, once an icon of the Manhattan business and social scenes, made Florida his primary residence in 2019, ahead of his re-election bid, saying New York state and city politicians had treated him poorly. “He’s all yours, Florida,” then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo hit back on Twitter. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump is expected back in New York to surrender on charges related to paying hush-money to a porn star before his 2016 election.
Mr. DeSantis’s election in 2018 accelerated the state’s transformation. Though he started off promoting some centrist policies, including increased education spending and funding for Everglades restoration, the pandemic opened a new phase of his governorship. He gained national prominence by resisting Covid-19 mask and vaccine mandates and sparring with public-health specialists over restrictions on businesses and gatherings. He began cultivating the brand of the “Free State of Florida,” highlighting resistance to what he considers onerous restrictions and left-wing ideologies that he says pervade some bureaucracies and institutions.
Pandemic restrictions in other states prompted organizers of summits like the Conservative Political Action Conference and the National Conservatism Conference, both previously held in the Washington area, to relocate them to Orlando and Miami. The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, held its first “A Celebration of Ideas” event in Palm Beach in 2021.
Mr. Kirk, who bought a home in Longboat Key in 2019, began spending more time in the state. The organization he founded—Turning Point USA, which advocates for conservative policies in schools and universities—holds its annual Student Action Summit, which draws more than 5,000 students, in Tampa, and plans to convene it in Palm Beach County this year. Turning Point has doubled its staff to a dozen in Florida in the past few years, Mr. Kirk said.
A growing assortment of conservative podcasters, commentators and authors moved to Florida during the pandemic’s early years, each new arrival helping entice others. David Reaboi, a Claremont Institute fellow who moved to Miami Beach from the Washington area in 2019, said he felt isolated at first. Then the pandemic sent flocks of friends his way.
Mr. Reaboi said he spent long stretches on the real-estate site Zillow.com helping acquaintances who were considering a move to evaluate home listings. One day while grabbing coffee in Miami’s Brickell financial district, he said, he ran into three people he knew who had just relocated to South Florida. He said he periodically issued calls on Twitter for meet-ups at restaurants and other venues, and despite little advance notice, would draw 40 or 50 people.
In Mr. Reaboi’s view, Florida has now overtaken Texas, where he lived in the mid-2010s, as the nexus of right-wing dynamism. The Lone Star State’s libertarian streak and emphasis on economic issues have faded as animating forces for conservatives, who are eager for political leaders to take on social issues, he said.
The shift is brought on by a confluence of demographic, ideological and economic changes that the Covid-19 pandemic catalyzed.
Though right-leaning transplants have settled across the state, several conservative clusters have emerged. Palm Beach is the GOP’s glitzy financial hub. The Breakers resort is a popular gathering place, where guests can catch a high-level Trump campaign official or Republican operative at the HMF lounge, with its $20 martinis and club music pumping as the night wears on.
As more people move to the area or arrive for weekend getaways, reservations at hotspots such as Le Bilboquet, Café L’Europe, Palm Beach Grill and Buccan have become harder to get, spurring the growth of private dining clubs with fees as high as $250,000.
“It’s like Washington with palm trees,” said GOP consultant Ryan Williams, who moved to Palm Beach fulltime last year and says Republican friends, clients and colleagues now come to him.
During last year’s midterm election, candidates flocked to Palm Beach, hoping for an endorsement from Mr. Trump. He is known to make surprise appearances at events, mingling with guests and playing host. “Is the shrimp as good as it looks?” he frequently asks. Some nights Mr. Trump takes a turn as DJ, taking out an iPad to play songs like “Y.M.C.A.” by Village People and other staples of his rallies. Clusters of Trump supporters often wait outside the road leading from Mar-a-Lago hoping for a glimpse of him heading to play golf or board his jet, Trump Force One.
Tension between Messrs. Trump and DeSantis has steadily grown as their widely expected competition for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination nears, though only Mr. Trump has declared his candidacy.
In late February, Mr. DeSantis held a three-day retreat for supporters, including major GOP donors, at the Four Seasons Resort just down the road from Mar-a-Lago, where a day earlier Mr. Trump appeared at a smaller candlelight fundraiser. The hotel was brimming with bold-face names, including a number of former Trump supporters, who gossiped over steak dinners, cigars and cocktails about how viciously Mr. Trump would attack Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Trump’s team thinks he can dismantle the governor just as he vanquished two of Florida’s other star Republicans in the 2016 presidential race: former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio.
“For those of you that didn’t notice, Florida was doing great long before Ron DeSanctus got there,” Mr. Trump said in a recent video, using one of the nicknames he has tried out for the governor. “Sunshine and ocean are very alluring. It’s not too hard to work with those factors.”
The Miami area has especially become a center for conservative intellectuals and media figures, said Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow who lives in the Seattle area but visits often. He said he crosses paths with his counterparts at dinners, events and bill-signing ceremonies, while also soaking up the amenities of a vibrant international city. “Miami is really the most exciting city for conservatives in the U.S. right now,” said Mr. Rufo, whom Mr. DeSantis named as a trustee earlier this year at the New College of Florida in Sarasota.
On the state’s west coast, the corridor from Naples to Tampa Bay has become another destination for conservative commentators. Fox News host Tucker Carlson bought a home on that stretch in 2020. Social-media influencer Will Witt, who said he became fed up with Covid-19 policies while living in Los Angeles, moved to Tampa last year and launched the Florida Standard, a right-leaning news outlet, where he landed a rare interview with Mr. DeSantis.
Mr. DeSantis has cultivated connections with the growing network of conservative activists and organizations—speaking at their events, joining their podcasts and inviting them to the governor’s mansion. He has tapped scholars from the Claremont Institute and the Manhattan Institute to help craft policies on civics-education standards and diversity, equity and inclusion crackdowns at universities.
In February, the governor and his wife, Casey DeSantis, held a roundtable discussion with Claremont Institute leaders to celebrate the hiring of a new staffer, Scott Yenor, who will be based in Tallahassee, and the organization’s plans to open an office there. “Protecting Americans from infringing woke ideology is important work,” Mrs. DeSantis tweeted.
The new Claremont outpost will focus on advising Florida officials on areas of mutual interest, including identity politics and immigration, said Ryan Williams, president of the institute. “We would love to use our experience in Florida working on policy solutions to put together a kind of red-state blueprint for the rest of the country,” he said.
Some conservatives say the state will need to build more-robust research and policy institutions to have enduring impact. Said Mr. Hammer, “The first thing that a lot of us are trying to be vigilant about is to make sure that this is not a fad that will go away after DeSantis’s time in Tallahassee is over.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-republican-state-trump-desantis-2b9b588