Lighting Campaign Money on Fire -- the story of Florida's two Congressional special elections.

Let's talk about the two Congressional races last night in Florida. 

I am not a moral victory guy.  Elections are win/lose propositions.  

Several reporters asked me what I thought we should take from the two Florida Congressional races, and truthfully, I don’t think much. There is no doubt some Trump backlash played into the margin, and in both cases, there were unique local circumstances that impacted Republicans more than Democrats. 

But in the end, neither race was all that close - notwithstanding a massive amount of money spent in both. And by a lot of money, I suspect when we see the final FEC reports, the total amount between the two races will fall between $20 and 25 million.

What did we get for that? 

Some kind of moral victory?   A participation trophy? 

As national reporters and pundits were lauding the meaning of Florida’s results, the texts from my friends in Florida were almost all identical: frustration.  Fellow Florida hack Chris Mitchell opined on this last weekend, calling out the fundraising tactics and focus on the race. Another buddy said to a group of us: “we need the same enthusiasm around doing the things that matter like voter reg as we do when random R +30 districts comes “online.” I expressed this frustration last week when I called the efforts in Florida “pouring money down a rabbit hole.” 

If I had to take a wild guess, the total spending in FL 1 and FL 6 was 3-4x what the Florida Democratic Party has raised for voter registration and organizing over the last decade. And that’s not a knock on the FDP — while we see donors more than happy to throw a few bucks at trying to beat Marjorie Taylor Greene, no one wants to give to boring, rote organizing efforts.

This isn't an issue unique to Florida. Most state parties deal with this problem — especially state parties in states that do not have a Democratic Governor actively raising money to support party infrastucture. As my good friend Sam Cornale, who was the ED of the DNC for many years has often said to me: we can see where there is no real and permanent state party apparatus in election results. 

Not to be Debbie Downer, but for the good news that can be read out of some of the specials, there are also data points that do not paint as rosy of a picture. Here is one to give you pause: In the four states that were battlegrounds in 2024 that allow voters to register with a political party (not every state does), we’ve lost ground to the Republicans in every single one: 

Arizona. Nevada. North Carolina. Pennsylvania.

All have gone the wrong way

These aren’t new trends. All four states (plus Florida) have seen real erosion over the last five years. In Pennsylvania alone, more than 50,000 more Dems have switched to the GOP since January 1, 2024 than GOP to Democrats. And overall in Pennsylvania, Democrats have seen a 666,000 vote advantage in 2020 erode to roughly 175,000 today. 

And don’t get me started on Florida. As a Democratic friend of mine said to me tonight, if Democrats had raised half of that money for infrastructure in 2017, Bill Nelson would have remained in the US Senate, and Dems probably would have won the Governorship.

The truth is we are really good at getting grassroots donors jazzed up about things that are tangible — and often unachievable. Take the 2020 Senate races: Three of the 5 most expensive races that year were places that Democrats lost by 8, 10, and 19. Or as we just saw here in Florida. 

But we suck at is creating interest in long term investments - organizing, research, registration, candidate recruitment, etc. — the stuff that really matters, but doesn’t come with an emotional connection.

(One place that has really done this: Wisconsin. And it showed last night)

A lot of it is incentive structure. In today’s era of online fundraising, the digital fundraising consultants live off anger, fear, and misplaced hope. Democrats today want a silver bullet - and I get it. If I thought my $25 dollars could change the trajectory of politics, heck yeah I am chipping in, so I don’t blame activists for wanting to do something tangible to fight back. But as to the incentive structure, in today’s world, the more money that is raised, the more money the people who place the fundraising ads make. 

And unfortunately in these two recent races, while plenty of national voices decided to take the opportunity to show they were out there “fighting” in places like FL-1 and FL-6, there weren't enough voices saying: “hey now, let’s be real about these races.” 

In the same breath, getting people fired up to fund a volunteer capacity building program, or a swing-district registration effort isn’t nearly a much fun. You aren’t gonna “stick it to Trump” or “show Elon” or whatever the next ad says by giving $10 bucks to a voter registration effort in Seminole County, FL or Macomb County, MI, or $25 bucks to pay for some focus groups to better understand what is happening with Hispanics in a place like Pima County, Arizona.

But truthfully, those things are so much more important than whether we lose FL 6 by 14 points or 17 points. Those thing create real infrastructure. Those things train the next generation of operatives and identify future leaders. Those things create the conditions to win races. The problem is, they don’t come with the immediate result of an election, don’t have an easy audience, nor do they make people in the business any real money. 

I used to tell our kids on the campaigns that we can only control what we can control. We can’t change the mood of the day, but we can control what we do to each day to build a better campaign. More than ever, we need to take that approach how we think about funding longer-term organizing. 

I don’t know what they answer is, but we need to real conversation about figuring it out. Yes, some good stuff happened tonight. Yes, Republicans in Florida underperformed. Yes, the Wisconsin win was resounding and positive. And yes, at the same time, Democrats continue to lose ground in places we have to win, in part because the investment isn’t there. 

The one upside of Florida - we saw donors want to get engaged. That enthusiasm, even if driven by unreasonable hope, is a good thing. Now, if we can just now figure out how to channel it to truly productive efforts…