A postmortem report on the Florida Democratic Party

Florida’s loss by the Democrats was not an oversight or the result of data errors. It was a deliberate decision by the leadership of the Florida Democratic Party to ignore and sideline Black, Latino, AAPI, immigrant, and Muslim voters. The red flags had been raised for months by activists and local organizers. The deep wounds from 2016 and 2018 were fresh. We can now also add 2020 to the column of Florida losses. 

Establishment Democrats in Florida are so accustomed to losing they are popping sparkling wine bottles and puffing cigars to celebrate a national victory on a hangover without remorse.

While a lot of finger pointing has been happening, what has not been happening is accountability. The Establishment Democrats, who control the Florida Democrat Party and ran the Joe Biden campaign, mistakenly catered to the narrow foreign policy interests of Israel. And whereas Donald Trump pandered to his base, Establishment Democrats have all but abandoned their base: progressives and the working class. 

Bloomberg’s millions

The Florida Democrats hedged their bets on millions from Michael Bloomberg, making Jewish votes and Muslim votes exchangeable instead of a combined block. It seems Bloomberg’s money to the Florida Democrats would not come without strings attached. 

During his presidential run in 2020, Bloomberg repeated his earlier racist support for targeted surveillance and secret monitoring of Muslims by the New York Police Department was part of a larger intelligence-gathering tactic to keep Americans safe. 

He said on PBS News Hour: “We sent some officers into some mosques to listen to the sermon that the imam gave. We were very careful. And the authorities that looked at us said, yes you complied with the law. But we had every intention of going every place we could legally to get as much information to protect this country. We had just lost 3,000 people at 9/11. Of course we’re supposed to do that.”

Bloomberg also was unable to shake his legacy of stop and frisk policing in New York while he served as mayor. As a media titan, Bloomberg sought to buy the election with targeted campaign ads. The money that could have been used for outreach and voter turnout instead was spent on advertising, which clearly missed the mark. He bought his way to the DNC stage. 

When Bloomberg poured millions into Florida, Texas, and Ohio, it seems this money in practice served as hush money to silence any voter outreach to these marginalized communities, namely Muslims, who constitute 162,000 registered voters in Florida. When I complained to a Democratic Party staffer about my difficulties organizing, I was told, “What can you expect with the millions rolling in from Bloomberg?” I had not thought of the link between Bloomberg money and lack of resources to Muslim Democratic activists until someone working for the Democratic Party said so.

Perhaps the thinking of Bloomberg and/or those associated with the disbursement of Bloomberg’s ad and grassroots funding was that the “Jewish vote” would be enough to carry Florida, Texas, and Ohio, and the Muslim vote would be not needed. I heard talk that the Florida Jewish vote is more important than the Florida Muslim vote. But this was not true. Data strategist Ali Bin Zahid analyzed data from all 67 counties and determined that the Muslim, South Asian, AAPI, and immigrant populations in Pinellas, Seminole, and Duval counties could flip in favor of Biden. 

Bloomberg dumped over $100 million into these three swing states. The New York Post reports, “Bloomberg’s money was used to finance anti-Trump ads and pro-Biden ads, initially in the Sunshine State, but later in the other two swing states as well. His resources were also used to help boost black and Latino turnout.”

But Black, Latino, and other activists of color complained for months about a lack of resources. The funds were likely also directed to insider lobbying efforts and self-dealings with consultancy groups with allegations of corporate money being used to control the party. 

Abandoning youth and people of color

The thinking of the Establishment Dems was TV commercials could buy elections. But most youth voters don’t watch TV on television anymore. Even my 3 year old was fed up with political ads on YouTube. Establishment Democrats ceded too much ground to the GOP.

Last month, activist Hanieh Jodat Barnes and I wrote in the LA Progressive, “To boost turn out amongst youth and people of color, the campaign should adopt a distributive organizing model and allow anyone access to digital tools to host events, power map, and leverage their personal networks to get out the vote.” The campaign ignored us at all levels. We powered ahead anyway. If we had wanted to organize with the Republicans, they would have welcomed us with open arms.

Back in 2018, the Andrew Gillum campaign suffered a heartbreaking loss due to a deliberate misinformation campaign by the GOP, but also lack of engagement again with working class voters, Latinos, immigrants, and Muslims. The Florida Democratic Party blacklisted Palestinian activist Rasha Mubarak in 2018 for her stance on human rights in her family’s homeland and canceled its only event for Muslim voter outreach in 2020. 

Even after being dismissed by the Florida Democratic Party, we kept organizing for Joe Biden. But I’m thinking like everyone else, what went wrong and where? Publicly, we claimed we would win Florida, but privately we weren’t so sure. 

I wondered if the Bloomberg money was misused or misdirected. Every time I asked for anything from the campaign, whether ordinary items like bumper stickers, yard signs, opportunities to host webinars, and an autodialer to make calls to our targeted demographics, the FDP acted like beggars. The FDP was flush with cash and still greedy–with taxpayers’ money. The FDP wanted $1,000 from us to sponsor a webinar on voter protection they never properly promoted. There were 14 attendees, seven of which were speakers. 

In fact, in July 2020, Politico reported that the Florida Democratic Party, “was returning at least $780,000 in small-business loans after its own lawmakers criticized the acceptance of the money as highly questionable if not illegal and unethical.” The FDP had applied for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan right away despite concerns that such PPP funds should go to neither lobbyists nor political causes.” Marc Caputo and Matt Dixon wrote, “In May [2020], the chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, Terrie Rizzo, blasted PPP as a ‘disaster’ that ‘funneled’ money to large corporations. She failed to disclose that her own party had applied for a loan of $350,000 to $1 million.”

Every which way marginalized groups tried to organize they were silenced and sidelined. When I organized the Muslim Day of Voter Outreach, sponsored by the Florida Democratic Party, it was canceled last minute due to the participation of a Palestinian female activist. 

What happened with the Muslim community happened also with the Black, Latino, AAPI and immigrant community. The Florida Democratic Party is a relic of the confederacy. White. Uppity. Ritzy. Can’t Win.

Florida Dems ignore the Muslim community

One month before the campaign, we had no Joe Biden yard signs. No bumper stickers. The Democrats themselves had written off Florida. There is no way to win a state when it’s marked unwinnable. The Democrats focused on the Blue Wall and squeaked by. 

Even when I offered to make free t-shirts for the campaign, I was told I had to get approval for the design. The approval never came. Then I was told to make the t-shirts anyway with not enough time to have them printed and distributed widely.

I spent hours and hours phone banking, texting, organizing, and hosting events for a Joe Biden campaign that wanted nothing to do with either me or my co-organizer, Hanieh Jodat Barnes. 

But what was quite astonishing was that through Muslims for Biden 50 State Voter Mobilization and Immigrants for Biden, which was a grassroots coalition group, we organized over 1,000 volunteers from all over America from North Dakota to Puerto Rico and hosted over 60 events. Based on Ali Bin Zahid’s analysis, we focused our daily phone bank events on Pinellas, Seminole, and Duval counties. We made close to 15,000 phone calls in these areas. Ali himself made over 3,000 calls. 

All three of these counties flipped blue. For Seminole County, it was the first time they voted for Democratic candidate in a Presidential campaign since 1948. For Duval county, it was the first time since 1976 that it voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate. Pinellas County was won by only 1,300 votes. 

The Muslim, South Asian, AAPI, and immigrant vote and our voter outreach in three counties flipped them. Political pundits and journalists were surprised on election night for these victories in GOP strongholds. But those victories were not a shock to us, instead they were validation as we had spent the last 40 days focused on these counties. 

I thought to myself, “Forget the Florida Dems. I don’t need them. But if they want to win the state, they need us.”

Florida Democrats lost local and state down ballot races and even gave up seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The irony is that the Democratic Party of Orange County of California helped us more than the Florida Democratic Party, because its leaders knew how crucial Florida was. 

Trump had a strategy for targeting African American voters. Ivanka Trump was doing outreach in person in Orlando to Chinese Americans. Meanwhile, Emgage PAC Florida Chair Yasir Billoo was on record the week before the election singing the praises of the GOP and making homophobic comments as a self-professed Trump supporter. Emgage’s misdealing with Zionist and RSS-affiliated organizations led to its expulsion from the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations. Florida Democrats are still organizing with Emgage leaders, including Afifa Khaliq, even though Emgage Florida’s leader is an unabashed Trump supporter and homophobe. When Emgage leaders act as gatekeepers of the Muslim community for Democrats, play both sides and undermine their community’s interests, the message to mainstream Muslims is of distrust and disgust. 

Privately, Florida’s Muslim leaders would bring up conservative religious values to block support of Democrats, saying there was no difference between Biden and Trump. They would spout out about abortion, gay rights, and drone strikes and forget the Muslim Ban, the Mexico border wall, and the children in cages. They did no outreach to our community, relying on Emgage’s sham outreach. Our phone banking event was the only daily AAPI phone banking event in Florida for Joe Biden. The Florida Democratic Party did not even try. 

More so, leaders from the Democratic National Committee hoisted up Emgage leaders from the DNC Convention and throughout the campaign as Emgage played interference on Muslim issues. 

The plan to conquer Trump country

In the end we did everything we could, even without the party’s help. I squeezed in every minute I could for organizing and voter outreach. I picked up the phone and spoke to people I hadn’t spoken to in 10 or 20 years and told them to vote and worked to convince them to vote if they were on the fence. Our ranks grew days by day. Even after the election, folks were joining our WhatsApp group, because we had built a bond by conquering Trump territory and set our sites on helping get out the vote in Georgia. 

On the way to a kid’s birthday party in mid-October, I went to a Biden field office on Grand National Parkway in Orlando to pick up 65 yard signs that had finally arrived. Then I drove around after the party delivering them. My days, nights, and weekends were all centered around the “Make Calls for Joe Biden” in Florida, Vote Joe App trainings, and delivering yard signs.  

When my uncle took the Biden sign and placed it in his yard in Kissimmee, it was removed that night and three Trump signs were placed on top of his car. I even went to a funeral to deliver yard signs. Yes, I had gone so low to go to a funeral to deliver Biden yard signs in Seminole County! But I wanted to rid the scourge of Trump’s fascism in any way possible. Another Trump term would be worse than death for so many. I felt guilty only because I missed the first hour of our daily Biden phone bank to voters in Seminole, Pinellas and Duval counties. 

After some introspection, I have come to the conclusion that if the Florida Democratic Party did not exist we could have won the state and picked up far more down ballot races. The only way to win in Florida is to dismantle FDP or completely blow past the Florida Democratic Party to avoid another bloodbath in 2022 and beyond.