Why is Florida Democrat fundraising so poor? Its not like Democratic donors strategically spend money on smart races and although DeSantis isn't MTG/Boebert he also has a much bigger profile.
Because DeSantis is popular in Florida, he is likely to win reelection by 5-10 points. Florida Democrats had their chance in 2018 and blew it. Florida Dems need to retool and retool quick.
Fried and Demings are the future. Charlie Crist is the past and he should have stayed in the House as a Blue Dog Leader.
Crist at least is polling better than Fried. That said, neither of these candidates will win or come even close to winning. 2022 may have presented an opening in a Trump midterm, though I wouldn't have been surprised for FL Dems blowing even that one. Since this is a Biden midterm, all of these races are Safe R.
I dunno why Crist even bothers to give the Governor's Mansion another try under these circumstances when he's in a relatively safe district.
His current seat is Biden +4, the FL legislature either made it Biden +2 to Biden +3.5, mostly due to population changes actually forcing it to expand as Pinellas County can not fit anymore suburban development and now can only build vertically. Still pretty possible to win in 2022 but then DeSantis came in and the district now will be Trump +7 as he removed the most blue parts of the district and gave them to Kathy Castor. He did outperform Biden by 2 points in 2020 for what it's worth.
Seems like for some reason half the FL house Democrats chose this year to retire for either higher office or just retire. when it wasn't really necessary until DeSantis came in. Crist still had a shot, Murphy was either still going to be in a Biden +8 district or at worst Trump +1 which would still be hard but not impossible although DeSantis made it Trump +6. I think Murphy just wanted to retire. Deutch retired. Al Lawson seems a likely retirement candidate as well . The legislative map made his district still somewhat close to Safe at Biden +13 but it was all in Jacksonville which doesn't really like him. DeSantis nuked that as well. Even if the court forces FL to redraw they would likely force the Jacksonville configuration .