President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have made history, securing more votes than any previous candidates and shattering the glass ceiling for women and people of color.
While a number of key states flipped from red to blue as mail ballots brought on a slow motion landslide for the Democrats, Florida was not one of them. Donald Trump won the state by spending massively to keep the terrain he won in 2016. The work to mobilize and organize progressive Florida voters forced Trump to fight for every inch of ground in our state and drained his resources in other battlegrounds to the Biden ticket’s benefit.
At Equality Florida we raised $1.5 million to launch the most ambitious pro-equality voter mobilization program in our history, turning out more than 1 million pro-LGBTQ voters. We expanded our field staff to 15, organized more than 400 volunteers and spent months reaching out to 565,000 infrequent pro-equality voters who we knew wouldn’t cast a ballot unless pushed to the polls by a trusted messenger.
By election day we had convinced 109,000 voters who sat out the 2016 election to cast their ballots early. In a state where the Senate race was decided by less than 10,000 votes and the Governor’s race by less than 30,000, pro-equality voters are a decisive voice.
I wish I could write that a majority of voters in our state rejected outright the racist dog whistles, red scare tactics or QAnon disinformation campaigns that have become standard right-wing election tactics. But this is Florida. Progress here is rarely a straight line. To understand how our state is changing, we must look deeper. In doing so, we find signs of progress and gains that should give all of us hope.
In 2020, 48 LGBTQ candidates qualified for the Florida ballot in races spanning North Florida to Key West, and 12 openly LGBTQ members of our tribe won the support of voters. We are in every corner of this state and we are stepping into the fray with perspectives and courage that make Florida better.
Shevrin Jones and Michele Rayner made history by becoming the first Black LGBTQ candidates to win seats in the Florida Legislature. Sen.-elect Jones is now the highest-ranking LGBTQ official in the legislature and Rep.-elect Rayner is the first Black queer woman ever elected in the state.
Orange and Hillsborough counties showed again they are pro-equality power bases. Candidates who attack our families in these markets do so at their own peril. In Orange County, our own community hero Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith won his reelection decisively. Right next door, pro-equality powerhouse Anna Eskamani also won re-election. Their resounding victories – in what were previously swing districts – highlight how long-term investments in progressive organizing and infrastructure can shift this state.
An unquestionable loss for our community is the voice of Rep. Jennifer Webb, Florida’s first lesbian lawmaker. In her first term she served as the lead sponsor of the Florida Competitive Workforce Act, helped grow the Republican coalition of support for it and helped defeat countless anti-LGBTQ bills. This cycle Jennifer endured a barrage of attacks fueled by $2.5 million in ads by the Republican Party of Florida, leading to a narrow loss.
Homophobic incumbents also lost while anti-LGBTQ candidates tried to hide their records. The August primary saw the ousting of notoriously homophobic Rep. Mike Hill, Rep. Kimberly Daniels and Rep. Al Jaquet. All three have made headlines for their homophobia.
In Seminole County, we saw former Rep. Jason Brodeur work hard to rewrite history. In 2015, he pushed legislation to allow adoption agencies to reject LGBTQ prospective parents. This year, facing a tight race against a pro-LGBTQ candidate, he flat out lied to voters and claimed he was responsible for ending Florida’s discriminatory ban. He won the seat, but not before a complete (and dishonest) repackaging of his anti-LGBTQ record.
In the coming months, there will be much discussion about “what went wrong” in Florida. For the donors and activists asking these hard questions, I say “Breathe.” There is much to unpack and many puzzles to solve.
This cycle we saw historic investment in our state, but historic spending isn’t enough if the voice delivering it has no relationship with voters. Decades ago Equality Florida began investing deeply in shifting Orange and Hillsborough counties. We did the hard work of changing hearts and minds, building infrastructure and slowly moving seats of power – while deepening our relationship with the growing bloc of pro-equality voters who factor LGBTQ rights strongly in who they support for office.
Despite being under-resourced this cycle, walking into election day our programs motivated 109,000 pro-equality voters who hadn’t voted in 2016 to vote early. We have cracked an important code for LGBTQ and ally mobilization but imagine if we had the resources to do this work on a larger scale. Now imagine it was happening in every swing state to shift our country from city halls to legislatures to the White House.
Florida played a role in this victory. We made them fight for every inch. The $100+ million Trump spent here was money not spent in Pennsylvania or Georgia or Arizona. We sapped resources that could have closed the gap elsewhere. We did this together and we took our democracy back, but we’ve only scratched the surface of what is possible with a deeper investment in the growing pro-equality vote.
Joe Saunders is Equality Florida’s Senior Political Director where he leads the policy and political programs for the country’s largest state-based LGBTQ rights organization. In 2012, Joe was elected to the Florida House of Representatives becoming the first LGBTQ state lawmaker in Florida to take the oath of office.
