By Charles C. W. Cooke
Tuesday, April 05, 2022
There really is no end to the baffling
nonsense that Florida’s agriculture secretary, Nikki Fried, is prepared
to say in public. Here’s her latest:
This is just tosh. It’s fine if Fried thinks
that Florida should be a “blue state,” or if she’s working
to make it a “blue state,” or if she believes that, by running
for governor, she is likely to alter its future. But Florida, as it actually
currently exists, is less of a “blue state” than it has been for a quite a long
time. Can the Democrats win here? Yes, they
can. First, though, they’ll need to own up to their delusions.
In October of last year, Florida announced that it was
home to more registered Republicans than registered Democrats for the first
time in its history, and in the six months that have followed that
announcement, that gap has grown by another 100,000 people.
Florida went for the Republican candidate in the last two presidential
elections, has two Republican Senators, has a House delegation of 16-11, has
voted for the Republican gubernatorial candidate in every election since 1998,
and has chosen a Republican majority in the state legislature every two years
since 1994. Six of the state’s seven State Supreme Court nominees have been
appointed by Republicans; the state’s constitution bars an income tax and
requires any new taxes or fees (or an increase in existing ones) to be passed
by two-thirds vote of each chamber the legislature; its largest city by area
(Jacksonville) has a Republican mayor, as does its most famous city (Miami);
and its most recent claims to fame were bucking the 2018 Democratic wave and
going out on a limb against COVID-19 excesses.
“Blue state”? Sure.
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