In recent weeks in conversations with activists across Florida, I have heard a consistent theme – the Florida Democratic Party is out of touch because its political staff is based in Tallahassee. I was even told this by a well-connected Tallahassee insider. Quite honestly, I found this attitude surprising.
Personally, I do not necessarily subscribe to this line of thinking, as Tallahassee is the capital of the state, and state parties are based in state capitals. However, Florida has more metropolitan areas over 350,000 people and more medium-sized and large TV markets than other state. Tallahassee is arguably highly misplaced geographically to run a modern statewide operation from it.
To be honest with our readers, the idea of the state party relocating most of its staff outside Tallahassee was not something I had seriously considered raising on this website until these recent conversations took place.
Contingent on the poll results this week, we will ask where the party’s staff should relocated next week (Tallahassee will be an option on that poll.)
The Florida Squeeze 
You’ve got to be kidding! I think it’s a no brainer.
When northerners invade Hollywood for the JJ, the people act like tourists, talk in funny southern accents and have absolutely no idea what Miami, with its metropolitan form of government, is all about and even dress differently. The North Florida folks haven’t a clue about the southern part of the State.state.
And do you think we southerners know how the northerners think? It’s almost like they belong in Alabama.
The diversity in Florida is amazing. The geography is conducive to keeping us divided unless we make the effort to unify ourselves.
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As a north Floridian from Jacksonville I find this idea ridiculous. Tallahassee of any city in Florida has, because of the capital and Florida State University, a mix of population that is very similar to what the state is as a whole. It is also a deep blue island in a sea of red. Lastly it game Florida and the US it’s only real victory in the last elections, Rep. Graham. North Florida it seems might be the only place that can give this state winning Democrats. Sure, it’s small by South Florida standards, but small doesn’t mean that they don’t have the same internet, the same media, the same communications that are found other places. Moving the party from the capital would only serve to make it more irrelevant than it has become.
It was South Florida that forced Charlie Crist on us and his disastrous VP pick, it was South Florida who gave us Alex Sink, while many of us in North Florida were fighting for real progressive candidates who actually resonate with not only democrats but Florida’s largest group of voters, independents, who don’t want more moderate candidates but rather more inspirational ones. It was the Duval County Democrats in Jacksonville who sent the first resolution to the Party demanding a Nan Rich and Charlie Crist debate. Keep those bad candidates in South Florida and keep your Republicans like Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush too, for the love of God.
When north Florida had more power we elected Democrats, forget not that great Governors like Fuller Warren, LeRoy Collins, Rubin Askew, Speakers of the Florida House like TK Weatherall, Mills, Thompson, Tucker and on and on… were North Florida Democrats.
This party does not lose because of proximity to voters, but because of fearful leadership who support terrible candidates that do not resonate with voters beyond South Florida. It does not matter where you put those leaders, they will lose from Miami just as well as they lose from Tallahassee until they wake up, realize that the party must engage with all voters in all parts of the state, and paint an inspirational vision of Florida’s future that people will vote for, and not give us another g##d damned lesser of two evils election. North Florida is where the party needs to win, and it’s where the party needs to headquarter itself.
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Wetherell backed Jeb Bush for Governor twice. I believe Thompson played ball also. I would not cite these as examples.
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Yes, the party offices should be moved out of Tallahassee to a more central location. What does proximity to government employees and lobbying firms/associations have to do with getting Democrats elected?
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Tallahassee is a microcosm of the state and the best place to understand the state from.
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Okay folks, I am really concerned about this poll. I wasn’t going to weigh in and am neutral but this seems to be highly skewed and we have gotten more votes than usual by this time on Tuesday.
Let me state the case for Tallahassee as I see it.
1- Tallahassee is the state capital.
2- Tallahassee and the region around it are the traditional home of the party in this state.
3- Tallahassee is arguably the center of African-American culture in the state. African-Americans are the most reliable Democratic voters.
4- Many of the types of areas Democrats need to understand better are similar to counties easily drive-able from Tallahassee.
5- Some of the best and brightest political minds in the state would rather live in Tallahassee than anywhere else in Florida.
6- Tallahassee is the most educated city in the state.
7- Tallahassee is the home to two major universities, a talent base for the party to tap into and a place to recruit workers and activists.
I am sure those of you who are the overwhelming majority of voters in this poll can refute many of my points here but I felt it needed to be stated because Tallahassee is not getting a fair shake from some of you based on the results.
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“Tallahassee and the region around it are the traditional home of the party in this state.”
GREAT IDEA! Let’s get the KKK and the others around Tallahassee to rejoin the party.
Man, you play one hell of a devil’s advocate unless you are in fact a devil in sheeps clothing.
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Nice try Kartik.
I don’t know why you would’ve expected otherwise.
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Thus far the “other” answers are:
Multiple offices around the state 3
Keep headquarters in capital city and have staff deployed to other regions 2
Have more than one office. 2
Split offices 2
Multiple offices 2
Spli offices 1
Finance staff stays. Everyone else moves. 1
Split between Tallahassee and Tampa 1
Political staff stays. Rest leave to south Florida 1
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Fair enough on the Wetherell support for Jeb, but the point stands that the man was elected and lead Democrats.
I think if we take anything from the last election if should be the lesson learned in sleepy, some might even say redneck, Putnam County, located on the unfashionable west bank of the St. Johns River, about halfway between Orlando and Jacksonville. The Counties hay-days were at the turn of the last century as the terminus for tourist steamers from Jacksonville, and before that as the place cattle were put onto trains to feed the Confederacy. Any hope of a resurgance were dashed with the death of the cross-Florida barge canal. What’s happened in the town since then? Well, not much. It has like many Florida counties gone from Dixiecrat lily white, to Republican red in national elections, and by all conventional logic should have been the place Charlie Crist outperformed his arch-liberal rival in the primary, a woman, and a Jew.
What did happen in Putnam country though was a resounding win for Nan Rich. She won Holmes, She won a near plurality in places like rural Bradford and Calhoun, Dixie, DeSoto and Gulf, Okaloosa, and Suwanee, and Washington too. The path to Florida Democrats winning Florida is found in Nan Rich’s loss, by digging even deeper to see where and how this candidate with Zero money, zero name recognition, zero statewide organization won so many counties in exactly the part of the state that Democrats need to pick up pockets of votes and push margins closer so the massive voting block in South Florida can slam dunk it in. These were counties an entire state away from her voters, from who is supposed to vote for her by prevailing Florida Democratic logic.
Why did she win there? She worked hard, and she identified die hard supporters who got the word out, who talked to their friends and knocked on doors, who earnestly asked their friends and neighbors to go and vote. She talked about bread and butter issues. She courted unions (and while the state AFL-CIO backed Crist, for the first time in any election I’ve see individual unions here in North Florida broke off in droves to support Rich). She talked to women and to working class voters. She came to more spaghetti dinners and fish fry’s than anyone’s stomach should be asked to handle. She’s been to more Baptist churches than maybe any Jewish woman alive, She painted a picture in those counties, counties small enough where a firm handshake and meeting the candidate face to face, or at least meeting the community opinion leaders matters so much more than a media blitz and big ad buys. Hell, some of these folks might not even live in places where they get but one or two network TV stations.
The secret for Democrats taking back Florida is this, we need an inspirational candidate who is willing to spend months before the primaries to work small counties the way Nan did, and then who has the resources (or who the state party or national party will fund) to do the big ad buys in the big counties where that is what brings out and wins elections.
We cannot continue to have state wide candidates who feel North Florida does not have the vote numbers needed to bother with, who feels like it does not matter if a Democrat living in a single wide trailer at the end of a dirt road 20 minutes out from their sleepy county seat gets out to vote or not. We do not need one part of the state over the other, we need both parts of the state marching to the same drum. Lawton Chiles won by walkin’, he won because he was the ole’ he coon, and this party loses again and again for 20 years because they just do not make the damn connection that North Florida matters. That every voter matters, that real issues matter, and that people north of Orlando despite different speech, different cultural ways, and a different history get it, we understand the issues, we are not all so conservative and backwards, we just have a different way of coming to a decision, and no one has much bothered to do it since Lawton Chiles. Lawton Chiles closed those margins and he won. The next winning Democrat will do the same.
Tell me please, anyone, how does taking the party out of the area we need to win most help North Florida voters feel like they matter to the party, that their votes matter, that what they do that Tuesday in November every few years is worth the bother? How does it help candidates understand that they must get to know half a state most choose to ignore?
Even if y’all disagree, put yourselves in our shoes and chew on it for awhile.
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Great analysis, Mike. I really like Nan Rich and respected her when she was in the legislature. She done good and prevented the automatic coronation of Charlie Crist as manipulated by the powers that be way up north, Bill Nelson and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
But, I think you miss the point that supporters of moving the Party HQ are expressing. As long as the HQ is in the north end of the State, there will be a disconnect with the southern end.
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The party and the capital should move to Orlando!
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Best solution –
Finance in south Florida
Political in central Florida
Communications in Tallahassee
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The “leaders” of the FDP are out of touch precisely because they have consistently ignored the needs of the small counties. The FDP needs to recognize that the majority of Democrats do not live in the big cities in Florida. It is this very kind of geographic problem that Democrats left when they moved to Florida.
One specific Issuesof importance to Democrats is the protection of the Indian River Lagoon and no one in Tallahassee has a clue on how to tranform environmental propopents into Democrats who will consistently vote to protect Florida. It is time to leave the high rises and join the real people of Florida who want the FDP to protect the Florida ecology.
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