Forgot Your Password?

New to The Nation? Subscribe

Print subscriber? Activate your online access

.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}

Florida Isn’t Red. Democrats Just Stopped Showing Up.

With more than 900,000 Puerto Rican voters, Florida can be won in 2026 and put in play for 2028. Give Angie Nixon the chance she deserves.

It’s Groundhog Day in Florida, and this time a US Senate seat is on the line. While Democratic institutions and Washington pundits may count Florida out, Florida is in play. This week, Angie Nixon said Chuck Schumer and the Democratic leadership will be investing. This is good, and now it’s time to make sure we focus on Latino voters.

Florida is not a red state. It is an under-invested one. And Angie Nixon has a path to victory—but it requires turning out Latino voters, especially Florida’s large Puerto Rican community.

Florida has over 900,000 Puerto Rican voters; it’s time to bring them back and turn them out. In 2016 and ’24, we learned an important lesson: The key to winning is not just turning out the base but also cultivating voters years in advance.

As a political strategist, I’ve worked on many campaigns across this nation, especially around the Latino vote. I could tell when the investment was there because we won when we invested in Latinos. Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico built the Southwest wall around Latino voters. And that wasn’t just turning out voters overnight; that was long-term investment.

In Florida, I watched Democrats ignore the long game in 2020 and neglect Latino and Puerto Rican voters at their peril. The lack of investment was the nail in the coffin. In 2024, nothing changed. I begged national donors and congressional and US Senate committees not to make the same mistake. Now it’s 2026, and the election is a month away. Florida has more than 900,000 eligible Puerto Rican voters who could vote Democrat. But we haven’t seen a single real ad aimed at them or a comprehensive Latino engagement plan that gives Angie Nixon what she needs to get over the edge.

Nixon has built her campaign on a simple message: Change can’t wait. And it’s time Democrats in DC and nationwide start acting like they believe that message, too.

The political environment is there. The latest New York Times/Siena poll has Democrats leading 64 to 29 among Hispanic likely voters, with the cost of living as their top worry. Another recent poll shows Trump’s disapproval rating among Hispanics is 77 percent. One other recent NBC poll shows Democrats have a 24-point lead on whom Latino voters want to see in control of Congress.That marks a significant shift from 2024, when Trump won roughly half of Latino voters; since then, his approval among them has fallen sharply.

And we’re already seeing that shift play out on the ground. In Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, the Trump flags are........

© The Nation