BETH MATUGA Guest Blog: How We (Actually) Won HD35

Steve note: Beth Matuga is the general consultant for the Florida House Democratic Campaign Committee's District 35 special election victory.  More important to me, she a dear friend and is one of my favorite co-members of the rational, results-oriented wing of the Florida Democratic Party.  This is her story - and I am happy to let her borrow my blog to tell it. 

How We (Actually) Won HD35

Preamble

Florida Democrats, I know things are bad and have been for a while. I’ve been at this since 2000, so I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Most of it’s been ugly, but there have been bright spots. I’m not hijacking Steve’s blog to tell you about the bad or the ugly. (That’s a book/my retirement plan.) Let’s talk instead about our recent victory in House District 35 and how we actually won this race. Spoiler alert: it was money.

But first, why am I qualified to write about this? Aside from my 23 year prison term working Democratic politics in Florida, I’m currently the general consultant for the Florida House Democratic Campaign Committee, the artist formerly known as House Victory. 

Isn’t our new seal pretty?

For the last 17 years I have also taught graduate courses in political fundraising and campaign finance at FSU in the Master’s of Applied American Politics & Policy program. Teaching has turned out to be fulfilling in a way my political work has not, and I am grateful every day for the opportunity. If you’re a young person reading this, and are interested in working in politics, please reach out!

I spent my thirties working on Florida State Senate races for some incredible leaders, during which time we went from 12 to 17 members, the closest to parity we’ve been in a long while. We’re now back in a super-minority in the Senate - as we are in the House.  Though I am tired and old, I simply can’t sit back and watch us cede a permanent - in both chambers. We can claw our way out of this like we did last decade, but it’s going to take, well, a decade. And it’s going to take doing a lot of things that aren’t glamorous, fun or make folks a ton of money. Sorry.

So the purpose of this blog is to explain a little about how we won HD35 and all the not-fun things it takes to do that five more times in November. Because that’s my job: we have to flip another 5 state House seats (and now defend Tom Keen and our other incumbents) this November in order to end the Republican supermajority in the state House. We can do it, or else I wouldn’t be wasting my time or other people’s money. 

Background

I have very rarely been lucky in this work, but I got really lucky with my current House Democratic Leader, Fentrice Driskell. She’s in charge of the Florida House Democratic Campaign Committee (FHDCC). It’s her responsibility to raise the funds for and organize the political efforts to defend incumbent House Democratic members and grow our numbers out of the superminority. I want to be clear: her job sucks. She not only has to lead a caucus, hold down a day job, run a multi-million dollar political operation, run her own campaign…you get the picture. I’ve worked for about a dozen House and Senate leaders and I’m here to tell you: this is not a job you take for the glamour.

She’s also breaking caucus fundraising records left and right. I’ve been around a long time so I know traditionally how much caucus operations raise. For example, she raised $1 million more during the calendar year 2023 as any previous House caucus operation ever. We’re on track to continue this fundraising and you may say well, isn’t that just a pittance compared to Republicans? Yes. But bear with me.

Mechanics of the Race

To dive right in, the FHDCC - which is not the FDP, not the DECs, not the Tom Keen campaign, not any other outside organizations, though they were all wonderful partners - spent $1.2m on the special election in House District 35. If this isn’t the single largest spend on a Florida State House Democrat in a special election, I don’t know what is.

Because Leader Driskell got an extended leadership term due to the unfortunate departure of the previous leader, she had a golden opportunity: She can build a strong, battle-tested and stable caucus operation with professional staff and durable infrastructure. We were raising money the day after the 2022 election, which, I assure you, was not a walk in the park. I am honored that Leader Driskell asked me to come back to caucus work, and grateful the young, smart, kind kids at the FHDCC put up with this old lady.

Said nice kids and old lady. FHDCC 2024 Cycle Prospectus.

The FHDCC was neutral in a competitive Democratic primary in HD35, but we weren’t doing nothing. Within days of the special election being called, the FHDCC had a voter contact program running in House District 35. We also had an ready-made campaign team for Tom, composed of some of our most well-respected, seasoned Florida political veterans whom I’m proud to call friends. 

…and that’s exactly what it did! FHDCC 2024 Cycle Prospectus.

The goal of the program was to close the vote-by-mail gap that we identified early on.  A few years ago, Republicans passed laws to remove folks from VBM rolls every two years, meaning there would be a ton of Democrats expecting a VBM ballot that would never come.  In a low turnout special election…over the holidays…yikes!

We went from a roughly negative 3 point Democratic disadvantage at the start of the program to, at its height, an 11 point Democratic advantage. This paid program ultimately knocked on more than SIXTY-EIGHT THOUSAND doors. Yes, I said 68,000. That is not a typo. I want to point out some features of this program that are very different (with the exception of my Senate field programs in the last decade, which were similar) from the way Democrats have been doing field operations for the last 10-15 years:

1. It was a PAID canvass. Volunteer field efforts MUST be supplemented by paid, accountable, electorally reliable programs.

2. It was done through the party apparatus of the FHDCC, which means it was a partisan contact program. Unlike non-profit organizations, we can say things to voters like, “I’m a Democrat, and I want you to vote for this Democrat.” This matters. 

3. It was managed in-house, not farmed out to third-party organizations who do not have the same accountability.

4. It was targeted, narrow and discrete in its focus. The program was designed to close a VBM gap on the margins, not flip the entire district by itself. It was part of a holistic campaign that was fully-funded by the FHDCC in all other ways.

5. It is replicable in our targeted districts with appropriate funding.

Internal FHDCC tracking chart of total VBM returns in HD35, January 16, 2024.

And speaking of the rest of the campaign, the FHDCC’s theory of the race hinged on the following:

• Tested, potent, properly sequenced messaging on abortion and property insurance to persuade NPAs 

• VBM and early-vote front-loading of Dem voters to absorb the traditional Republican election-day onslaught (no surprise Rs want to destroy VBM, is it?)

• Parity or close to it on most mass-media communications, especially television

All these things are Very Expensive (Steve added the emphasis - you don't win elections on the cheap), particularly TV.  Because of Leader Driskell’s strong fundraising, and a professional staff who were ready to go, we weren’t caught dead in the water. Unlike most off-years, we were better funded than (I think) anyone thought we were, and (I think) we caught a lot of people by surprise.

And as it turned out, our theory of the campaign was right. NPAs broke HARD for Tom Keen (by some estimates as high as 70% which…woof) and while Republicans had eaten through our VBM and early-vote lead by noon on election day, the NPAs and whatever GOP crossover vote was enough for Tom Keen to prevail by 2.6%. I had personally predicted the margin at 2% but I won’t complain.

So we, the FHDCC, spent about $1.2m and we estimate that the Republicans spent somewhere between $2m and $2.5m. Obviously they don’t share these figures with me so we have to track it on media buys and guesstimates. My friends on the other side are welcome to correct me! In any scenario, we were grossly outspent as usual. But we weren’t obliterated. I’ve been saying this for years: Democrats in Florida can win when being outspent. We can win when being outspent 2:1 or 2.5:1. Our message is better and voters like us if we can afford to communicate. But we CAN’T win being outspent 4:1. All the hoping and trying and praying and wanting won’t change this fact. 

We MUST maintain reasonable parity in paid comms to win races. Hot takes from online commentators attributing this victory to anything other than reasonable spending parity are just wrong. And that misconception is how we got in this fix, guys. We can’t social media our way out of superminorities. We have to raise and spend our way out. (Steve Note:  See Also - Twitter isn't Real Life)

(Additional Steve Note:  I am going to repeat Beth's statement: We can’t social media our way out of superminorities. We have to raise and spend our way out.)

So, yeah, this one seat is great and as usual, success has many fathers. For the FHDCC and Leader Driskell’s efforts, this is proof of concept for our larger mission: breaking the Republican supermajority by flipping 5 more seats. How will we do that? Well, turns out I’m gonna spend my forties in much the same was I spent my thirties:

• Expand our in-house field program to our targeted flip districts. This is also Very Expensive and different from how we having been doing voter contact, but absolutely necessary.

• Defend our incumbents, including Tom Keen!

• Keep our focus narrow, which requires incredible institutional discipline. There ARE such things as unwinnable races, sorry not sorry. We cannot be tempted to expand the goals of this program beyond flipping the 5 seats required to break the supermajority, which is our Prime Directive. When we allow ourselves to indulge in fever dreams, like flipping a chamber in one cycle, we create funding stream fragmentation that prevents us from reaching the spending parity described above, thus endangering the races that are actually winnable. Are you listening, billionaires?

• Just for funsies…HD35 is the NINTH best seat on our map by partisanship. Flipping 5 seats is a clear and reasonable goal.

• Raise a metric shit ton of money. Y’all can do the math. We will need A Lot for the Very Expensive Things. If there’s anyone who can do it, it’s Fentrice Driskell. (And maybe I’ll help a little.) We expect our Republican counterparts to raise $30m - that we can see - in comparison. Fun!

The Big Takeaways

Tom Keen’s victory in HD35 and the FHDCC’s efforts comport with a larger national trend we’ve been tracking in 2023. Back in September, the New York Times pointed out that in 21 of 27 special legislative elections around the country, Democrats have outperformed President Biden by an average of 7 points.

In HD35, the swing from DeSantis in 2022 to Keen was 13 points. Do I think every state legislative seat in Florida will swing by 13 or even 7 points? No. Do I think we will be able to maintain the spending ratio in 5 seats that we broke the bank to achieve in HD35? Probably also no. But NPAs breaking this hard in both HD35 and the less-discussed special election in December in HD118, means that NPAs are fed up and we just proved that if Democrats can communicate with them, we can persuade them and turn them out. 

Messaging

Republicans have also generously handed us a potent and unique combination of pocketbook and social issues that combine into their very own kryptonite: abortion and property insurance. I can scarcely remember a more effective one-two punch for NPAs and some GOP voters. This is, literally, all Democratic candidates in Florida should be talking about from now until November 5. Don’t get clever, Dems. Don’t overthink it. Abortion and property insurance. Say it with me. No, not that. No, also not that. We don’t need a 14-point plan. Abortion and property insurance! 

Impact Research polling memo dated November 28, 2023.

National Atmospherics

One unique feature of special elections is that they are entirely unmoored from the top of the ticket. I am reminded of Margaret Good and Annette Taddeo’s special elections last decade and how those wins and HD35 prove that Florida Democrats can succeed in a vacuum. We have a pulse down here, national donors!

In 2020, the Biden campaign made a strategic decision that they could win the presidency without Florida, and they were right. But the direct consequence of that decision was a catastrophic cratering of turnout in Florida in 2022, and I’m not sure the arithmetic is the same for the Biden campaign in 2024. I am sure my friend Steve Schale is making sure they’re paying attention to these trends, because the Florida electorate is clearly not in the same mindset it was in 2020 and 2022. 

Forced Focus

Another feature of special elections is how everyone in the Democratic ecosystem is forced to focus on one thing. There’s no arguing over which races are priorities or even winnable. This is one reason we had so many helpful partners in this race, and we appreciate each and every one of them. One of our biggest infrastructure challenges as Democrats across the country and Florida in particular (with lots of donors and lots of special interest groups) is the fragmentation of our efforts across different entities and the difficulty it causes with coordination.

It’s no secret that I’m a big supporter of hard-side, partisan electoral efforts and I won’t belabor this point except to say: when everyone is forced to row the boat in the same direction, we all get there faster.

Partisan Voter Contact

Relatedly, we must reinvest in partisan voter contact efforts. Republican voters now outnumber Democrats by 700,000 and there’s no reason to think that figure won’t be 1,000,000 by November. We need Democrats to contact, register, persuade and turnout other Democrats. To fix our Democratic “brand” problem, we must be able to say to a voter at a door, “I’m a Democrat and I want you to be one, too.” Party entities are the only vehicles through which we can legally do this and must be funded to carry out this vital task.

Leadership & Money

Finally, leadership matters! Money matters! Fentrice Driskell has improved the culture of the Hous Democratic Caucus, instituted remarkable infrastructure improvements, stabilized a program in repeated disarray, raised record sums of money and just won a special election no one expected. Her work reshaping Florida has only just begun. I think we have shown a path forward for Democrats in Florida in 2024 and I hope this blog post can help clarify some takeaways. The FHDCC has proved that we can achieve our goal of breaking the Republican supermajority in the House in 2024, and we'd love your support in this effort.

Closing

People frequently ask me why I continue to work in Democratic politics in Florida, and I’m pretty self-aware that these 23 years haven't amounted to much. But this work is important and important to me. People’s lives hang in the balance. Leaving aside that I have no other marketable skills, my will to live is refreshed by wins like HD35, which show a clear picture of how and why Democrats can win in Florida, if only we rededicate ourselves to fundamentals. They are unglamorous, difficult and expensive, but so am I. 

Great thanks to Steve Schale, who has been a stalwart supporter of party efforts, caucus operations and Democrats in general (you may have heard of this guy named Obama?) 

 You can yell at me on Twitter @bethmatuga or email me beth@bethmatuga.com. Thanks for reading!

(NOTE FROM STEVE - YOU SHOULD FOLLOW BETH -- AND YOU SHOULD YELL AT HER!)