Politically divided Florida has long frustrated Democrats, and Marco Rubio is a testament to that. He has managed to win two Senate elections with relatively small shares of the vote: 49% in 2010 and 52% in 2016.
August polls suggest Rubio, after 11 years in office, has not broadened his base of support ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. The right candidate in the right political conditions will be able to pick him off. While we can’t know yet what the conditions will be, we do know that Rep. Demings is the right candidate.
Quinnipiac found that Rubio holds a 49 percent job approval rating, with only 47 percent saying he deserves re-election. Three other polls tested a Rubio-Demings match, with two showing a close race: Future Majority shows Rubio leading 47 to 44 percent, and St. Pete Polls has an even smaller lead of 48 to 46 percent.
Moreover, at this early point in the race, Demings almost certainly trails Rubio in name identification, as the Orlando-area congresswoman has never before run for statewide office. As she becomes better known over the course of her Senate primary campaign, she has a great opportunity to overcome that narrow deficit for the general election, in large part because her background is a great fit for Florida.
Central Florida’s “I-4 Corridor” is known as the key swing area, and Demings represents Orange County inside the corridor. The county is the bluest part of Central Florida, but nevertheless, as a three-term congresswoman Demings is a familiar figure in the region. Furthermore, Demings was born and raised in Jacksonville, in the more Republican northern part of the state. (In 2020 Duval County, where Jacksonville is located, voted Democrat for president for the first time since 1976.) Demings will be able to campaign up north as a homegrown success story, not an unfamiliar outsider.
Demings’ experience as Orlando’s former police chief should also help her connect with Florida’s swing voters, while maintaining support from the Democratic base. As New York City’s Eric Adams showed this summer, when we won the Democratic mayoral primary, an African-American candidate with background in law enforcement can credibly campaign as tough on crime and tough on police brutality. And such a candidate is harder for Republicans to caricature as outside the mainstream.
Rubio, meanwhile, after 11 years has failed to live up to the hype. He used to be breathlessly hailed as the “savior” of the Republican Party. But instead he’s been a bystander as his party descended into bigotry and conspiracy-mongering. In 2013, he flinched when anti-immigrant voices in hi party rebelled against bipartisan immigration reform. After voting for it in the Senate, Rubio abandoned it and argued against a House vote. After getting steamrolled by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential primary, he re-styled himself as a Trump loyalist. Now that Trump is no longer in office, Rubio continues to operate of fear of his party’s base. Rubio claimed to be supportive of an infrastructure bill, but couldn’t bring himself to support the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure the came before the Senate and passed with the help of 19 other Republicans.
Of course, there are plenty of Trump loyalists in Florida. Trump did win the state twice, albeit narrowly. But if swing voters start to turn against Trumpism, Rubio won’t have any safe harbor. This summer’s spike in Florida COVID-19 cases is seriously damaging the standing of Trump’s favorite governor, Ron DeSantis, who won narrowly in 2018 and is also up for re-election in 2022. The fates of Rubio and DeSantis may be intertwined.
Demings is well suited to seize any opportunity created by Republican incompetence and intransigence. For Democrats to keep the Senate, they need to not only play defense to protect their incumbents, they must also play offense wherever pickup opportunities exist. One exists in Florida and Demings is the candidate best prepared to take advantage.
Written by guest contributor Bill Scher. Bill is a contributing editor at Politico magazine. He is the author of the book, “Wait! Don’t Move to Canada.” His writing has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic and several other outlets.