At a Tampa event sponsored by the Hillsborough County Democratic LGBTQ+ Caucus, local Democrats discussed the party’s repeated losses in Florida following Trump’s 2024 victory. Speakers, including Mike Drapak and Logan Mueller, emphasized the need for self-reflection rather than finger-pointing, criticizing outdated campaign methods and poor messaging. Sabrina Bousbar and Mueller highlighted the party’s overly complex messaging and lack of economic optimism, which alienates voters. Tamika Lyles urged earlier and consistent engagement with voters, while Latino outreach was identified as crucial, with suggestions to target Venezuelan and Cuban communities affected by recent immigration policies to regain support.
Donald Trump’s victory in November had led the Democratic Party nationally to engage in some serious soul searching. In Florida, it was the second successive electoral blowout, and the conversations about how to cope with that reality are underway.
Take the discussion held last Thursday night, sponsored by the Hillsborough County Democratic LGBTQ+ Caucus in Tampa.
“Democrats are the best at losing, losing, losing,” said Mike Drapak of The Hillsborough Society, a political commitee formed in the aftermath of party infighting with the Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Committee. “And that’s really where we need to start, and we need to start being self-reflective.”
Party members need to stop “pointing fingers” and instead look at themselves in the mirror start “understanding exactly what it is we’re doing that’s making people dislike us,” Drapak said.
The descent of the party has been well documented at this point. After losing all statewide races by double-digit deficits in 2022 and 2024, the party saw two members of their already super-minority in the state House of Representatives flip to the GOP last December, followed up last month with their then state Senate leader, South Florida’s Jason Pizzo, dramatically announcing on the floor that he was leaving the party because it was “dead.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis couldn’t resist pouncing on the party’s problems last week, declaring that Pizzo’s announcement that he would run for governor as a political independent was necessary “because people know if you have a ‘D’ next to your name in this state, you are dead meat. Because this party is a disaster.”
Much of the discussion last week among the Tampa Democrats last week centered on messaging. Nick Clemente, who lost a state House race to Republican Traci Koster in November, said the Florida Democratic brand is “unequivocally broken.”
“How do we talk about regular folks who might listen to podcasts about UFC, who might listen to podcasts about NASCAR or speed metal and not about politics?” he asked the audience of around 50 people. “How do we connect with them on our values and the things that we have in common that maybe we can help fix the brand, so people aren’t ashamed to be Democrats?”
Logan Mueller, president of the University of Tampa Democrats, said a major problem in his opinion is that the Democrats were still campaigning “like it’s 1996.”
“They’ve won the information battle right now,” he said of the GOP.
“With the internet and podcasts and videos, we do not have any boots on the ground. All the largest podcasts and these things that people are connected to are all very conservative. There is no means that we can push a message, and on top of that, we don’t have a unified message that we can share with everybody. We don’t have a positive economic message that everybody wants. The reason Trump was also partially successful was that he sold optimism. He sold making America great again.”
‘Too complicated’
Sabrina Bousbar agreed with Mueller.
The 28-year-old Pinellas native campaigned for Joe Biden in 2020 and later served as a senior adviser in his U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response. She ran for Congress last summer, finishing second behind fellow Democrat Whitney Fox in Florida’s 13th District. (Fox went on to lose to GOP incumbent Anna Paulina Luna).
“We’re a little too complicated,” she said. “We try to have messaging for every single silo, but we don’t have a cohesive message with everyone.”
Mueller said he encounters a lot of his fellow students at UT who prefer registering as non-party-affiliated rather than a Democrat.
“They don’t want to associate with a party that has kind of lost the messaging war,” Mueller added. “[The party] has a lot of negative strings attached to it. And by registering as an independent, it kind of avoids the mess that has kind of been created over a long period of time. And the way forward is actually running an economic positive message, because young people do care about the economy, just as much as anyone else does.”
The fourth member of the panel was Tamika Lyles, an Osceola County Democrat seeking the party’s’s nomination for U.S. Senate next year. She complained that Democratic candidates wait too long to connect with the electorate.
“They don’t see us until it’s primary time or general election time, when we’re knocking on a door and we’re trying to give them that message. They’re not hearing it,” she said.”Because the first thing they say is, ‘Where have you been the whole year? What have you been doing the whole year?’ What was the messaging like the whole year when all of this was going on? So we need someone who is continuously speaking that language.”
A common theme among Democrats in the aftermath of the 2024 election nationally and in Florida is “meeting voters where they are.”
As someone who has worked with organized labor around the country, Drapek said, he’s found “a significant amount” of misogyny, homophobia, and racism in the American heartland.
“We need to understand that,” he said. “And we need to learn on how we can message in a way that doesn’t actually bring the most radical people of that end to the table, but some of the people who want some of the same things that we do.”
While there was plenty of talk about messaging, or the lack thereof, there wasn’t as much dialogue about policy and how to adjust to an electorate that has shifted to the right over the past five years.
Latino vote
When it comes to the Latino vote, a key demographic in Florida that supported Trump by double-digits over Kamala Harris last fall, a member of the Pinellas Hispanic Caucus suggested a possible opening would be to reengage specifically with Venezuelans who are upset about a U.S. Supreme Court decision last week that immediately strips Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, from hundreds of thousands of themselves.
In a survey of 408 Venezuelan residents in Florida conducted last month by Florida International University’s Latino Public Opinion Forum, nearly half of those who reported voting for Donald Trump in 2024 now say they either regret their decision or have mixed feelings about it. More than 70% say they oppose Trump’s decision to end humanitarian parole for Venezuelans.
“We should use this as ammunition,” said Bousbar, who is of Moroccan and Columbian descent. The GOP has targeted Latinos in Florida since Barack Obama left the political scene more than a decade ago.
“Latinos started going more Republican each election cycle. And so now, though, that we’re seeing the actual impact of this anti-immigration — illegally sending people back to their countries, or also putting them in jails without notification or telling their families or any form of legal structured procedure that they should have in the state and in the U.S. — we have to take that and communicate to them,” she said.
“We should be putting Spanish radio ads, Spanish TV messaging around the laws that Donald Trump has done around the Latino communities, specifically Venezuelans and Cubans and within the state of Florida because maybe we can get that pendulum to come back our way.”
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
SUPPORT
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
This article presents a critical yet introspective view of the Democratic Party’s struggles in Florida following recent electoral losses. It emphasizes the party’s need for self-reflection, improved messaging, and outreach to key demographics without dismissing conservative viewpoints outright. The focus is primarily on Democratic voices analyzing their own shortcomings and strategizing on how to reconnect with voters, which aligns with a center-left perspective that supports progressive reform while acknowledging political challenges. The coverage appears balanced in highlighting GOP successes and criticisms but centers on Democratic discourse and solutions.
SUMMARY: Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed House Bill 6017, which sought to repeal Florida’s 35-year-old Wrongful Death Act limiting economic damages families can seek if an unmarried loved one over 25 dies due to medical negligence. DeSantis argued repeal would raise malpractice premiums and worsen the state’s physician shortage without caps on damages or attorney fees. Families impacted by the law criticized the veto, disputing claims that premiums would rise and warning caps would block justice. The decision aligns with healthcare industry interests, while affected families continue advocacy despite limited access to the Governor. Senator Clay Yarborough respects the veto and won’t push for an override.
www.news4jax.com – Patrick Whittle And Michael Casey, Associated Press – 2025-05-29 10:29:00
SUMMARY: Karen Read’s second trial resumed after the prosecution rested following a month of testimony focusing on evidence and witnesses who reported Read repeatedly saying “I hit him” about the death of her boyfriend, Boston officer John O’Keefe. She is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter, and leaving the scene after allegedly backing her SUV into O’Keefe on a snowy night in January 2022. The prosecution avoided controversial witnesses from the first trial, emphasizing physical evidence like a broken taillight and cocktail glass with O’Keefe’s DNA. Read’s defense plans a robust case with over 90 witnesses, maintaining she was framed.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Tate Miller | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-29 10:25:00
A National Taxpayers Union Foundation report highlights interstate migration trends, showing Florida and Texas gaining residents and tax revenue, while California, New York, and Illinois experience significant losses due to high tax burdens. Over the past decade, New York lost $111 billion, California $102 billion, and Illinois $63 billion in net adjusted gross income, while Florida and Texas gained $196 billion and $54 billion, respectively. The report attributes migration primarily to tax policies, with many high-income earners moving to states with lower taxes. Remote work has accelerated this trend. States losing residents face shrinking tax bases and should reform tax codes to retain populations and promote economic growth.
(The Center Square) – Florida and Texas have gained the most by interstate migration, while California, Illinois, and New York have lost the most, according to a new analysis, with the report’s author saying such shifts are due to tax policies: “Americans seek greener pastures.”
The National Taxpayers Union Foundation report revealed that “California, New York, Illinois, and other states with high tax burdens continue to hemorrhage taxpayers and tax revenue, while Florida remains the undeniable winner from movement of taxpayers and their dollars from state to state.”
The National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) is a nonprofit research and educational organization focused on taxes, government spending, and regulations, according to its website.
The report notes that “in the last decade, New York lost $111 billion in net adjusted gross income (AGI), California lost $102 billion, and Illinois lost $63 billion to interstate migration.”
“On the other hand, Florida gained $196 billion, and Texas gained $54 billion,” according to the report.
National Taxpayers Union Foundation with permission
The report acknowledges that the money loss states face due to interstate migration “does not account for the fact that taxpayers no longer paying taxes are also no longer drawing upon government services.”
“However, estimated revenue changes are driven primarily by the movement of high-income earners, who tend to pay far more in taxes than they receive back in government services,” according to the report.
The report’s author and director of the Interstate Commerce Initiative at NTUF Andrew Wilford told The Center Square that “Americans are voting with their feet and saying that they are tired of tax-and-spend policies and the stagnant economies they result in.”
“States that insist on doubling down on these policies will only be left with a shrinking population as overtaxed Americans seek greener pastures,” Wilford said.
Wilford told The Center Square that “interstate migration trends have only accelerated over the last decade as remote work has given taxpayers more freedom to move to more favorable tax environments.”
“States that fail to adapt can only expect faster ‘dollar drain’ to states that have taken steps to provide residents with a competitive tax code and economic opportunity,” Wilford said.
National Taxpayers Union Foundation with permission
“Interstate migration has a clear impact on state revenue,” Wilford said.
“California, New York, and Illinois are projected to lose a combined $10 billion in tax revenue this year, revenue that, since they refuse to cut spending, will have to come from higher taxes on taxpayers who are still there,” Wilford said.
“On the other hand, despite its low taxes, the influx of taxpayers from other states is projected to lead to $4.2 billion in additional revenue for Florida this year alone,” Wilford said.
Factors inducing interstate migration besides tax rates identifed in Wilford’s report include “family, weather, housing availability, education, transportation infrastructure, employment opportunities, and cost of living generally.”
However, it appears that taxes are the biggest factor for state moves, for the report’s data shows that taxpayers’ location changes are from high-tax states to low-tax states.
“The American federalist system is a double-edged sword,” the report states, meaning that while states have the power to each set their own tax policies, taxpayers hold the power of refusal and can move to another state with preferable policies.
The report calls this competition “one of the most valuable tools in taxpayers’ arsenals to get their individual voices heard.”
“Though a simple majority gets a state legislator elected, residency decisions are made at the household level,” the report said.
“While they have the power to set their own tax policies, taxpayers retain the freedom to leave for greener pastures should tax burdens in those states become overwhelming.”
Wilford’s report advised that “states should recognize that a tax code that attracts businesses and workers and allows them to thrive is the path to long-term prosperity.”
“Meanwhile, states on the losing end of the interstate migration battle should stop trying to make up for lost revenue with higher taxes on residents and nonresidents alike, and start trying to fix what is making their residents leave in the first place,” the report said.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
The article primarily reports on the findings of a National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) report concerning interstate migration driven by tax policies. While the article is framed as reporting, it endorses and promotes the report’s viewpoint, which clearly favors lower taxation and criticizes “tax-and-spend” policies in states like California, New York, and Illinois. The language used—such as “Americans are voting with their feet,” “taxpayers seek greener pastures,” and the emphasis on “competitive tax codes” and “economic opportunity”—reflects a pro-tax-cut and limited government spending ideological stance. These elements align with a center-right economic perspective that champions market-based solutions and fiscal conservatism. Hence, even in the guise of reporting, the article leans toward a center-right bias through its selection of sources, framing, and tone advocating for tax reductions and criticizing high-tax states’ policies.
