Where are the Keys to Florida?

Biden campaign says they can win Florida, while Dems leave beatable MAGA incumbents without credibly funded challengers.

Some days it hits you harder. Man, is our politics messed up. And it wouldn’t take too much to fix it.

On Monday, the headline blared “Florida Supreme Court allows 6-week abortion ban to take effect, but voters will have the final say.”

With an abortion referendum on the ballot to motivate voters, the Biden campaign promptly claimed it would make a play to win Florida. But when reviewing the terrain that recent history shows would trend blue for Biden to have any chance in Florida - a center-right, suburban, highly educated district with a dynamic challenge to an extreme MAGA incumbent - what you find is disinvestment amid opportunity.

As WelcomePAC co-founder Lauren Harper Pope told CNN last cycle, “We get so caught up on the super villains that we don’t focus on the villains.”

Florida’s 7th congressional district has a villain, a potential hero, and exemplifies the lack of focus that may doom Democrats.

Meet The Must-Win District

Here’s how NBC framed the recent Florida news:

Donald Trump has won the state twice, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ near 20-point victory in 2022 seemed to solidify the state as a safe haven for Republicans. But Biden’s campaign says it has a pathway to victory there in November — built in large part on the state’s unique place in the abortion debate — and it plans to contrast the administration's policies with what it's calling the GOP's “toxic political agenda" there.

That “toxic political agenda” is personified by freshman Rep. Cory Mills. He represents Florida’s 7th congressional district, which stretches from suburban Orlando to the coast south of Daytona Beach. It looks like many that Democrats flipped from Red to Blue in recent years, with far more college-educated voters than the national average.

Trump won 52.2% of voters in FL-7, a point ahead of the 51.2% he won statewide. For Biden to have any chance, he would have to heavily contest in districts like this one.

Extremist Weirdo in Light Red District

Cory Mills is hardcore MAGA in a district that is not. And, importantly, he is not just MAGA - there is something deeply weird about him.

In late January 2021, Mills was making local news in Virginia as a consultant in Falls Church, VA where he lived in a $4.2m, 11,000 square foot house. The business, as Business Insider later reported, “sells arms to foreign governments. He won't say which ones … Mills has refused to publicly disclose his foreign dealings or even confirm who owns the company.”

A few weeks later, on March 23, 2021, Mills registered to vote in what rival Republicans called “a wee bitty house” owned by a Democratic work connection. Two weeks later, in April, Mills launched a congressional campaign saying he “recently moved to a house in Winter Park from a family home outside the district. He also maintains a residence in the Washington area, where one of his companies is headquartered.”

That company has some issues.

Pacem is also loaded with debt: It owes $48 million to a Canadian lender, nearly five times the company's highest potential valuation. Mills said the loan was funding research and development.

There are additional issues that have dogged the company. In the past two years, the munitions plant has been forced to shut down twice for failing to pay workers' compensation insurance premiums, according to Florida's Department of Workers Compensation.

According to financial disclosures from Mills, two of his companies are worth “anywhere from $10 million down to just $2 million.”

Speaking of $2 million, that is how much Mills owes his campaign committee¹ - a campaign that ended 2023 with less than $70,000 in the bank.

Ok, so besides all the company debt, and campaign debt, and arms dealings with undisclosed foreign companies, and having just moved to the district, Mills also has some basic MAGA baggage. Here is how an analysis of incoming representatives sums up Mills:

Mills does not view Biden as the “legitimate” president because of what he calls a “multitude of fraud that has been found throughout multiple states.” In the days after the 2020 election, he called on Republicans in Congress to support and fight for President Trump and the “America First agenda” and spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Dallas, Texas. He also believes the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection is biased and politically motivated, arguing it should instead focus on auditing the 2020 election … Mills would support returning to a system where US senators are chosen by state legislatures.

He joked about Nancy Pelosi’s husband being violently attacked. He filed a bill to imprison book publishers for five years and wants to cut off aid to Ukraine and “redefine birthright citizenship.”

Here’s a headline and pic just to round it out:

Meet Jennifer Adams

On Tuesday morning, the day after the Florida news on the 6-week abortion ban and Biden campaign strategy Florida, I had a call with the leading Democratic candidate in FL-7.

Jennifer Adams is, well, the opposite of Cory Mills. A hometown candidate with a compelling story and track record of getting things done - things like helping pass a bipartisan law protecting victims of domestic violence.

Here are the basics from her website:

A Florida native, raised in Central Florida, Jennifer is giving back to the community that helped her grow and persevere, first as a small business owner, an advocate for domestic violence survivors and a community leader, and now as a candidate for Florida’s 7th Congressional District where she will fight to ensure everyone can attain the American Dream. 

Having survived domestic abuse and the devastation it wreaks on victims and their families, Jennifer knows what it is to overcome adversity and not only survive, but thrive.

Her tenacity is not only learned, it’s inherited. Both of Jennifer’s grandfathers proudly served in the military; her mom is a former elementary school teacher; and her dad was the first scholarship-receiving football player to graduate with an architectural degree from the University of Florida.

As a neighbor, she wants us all to work together to identify better solutions, regardless of ideology or party affiliation.

Right now we are hurting, and it needs to stop. We feel the impacts of soaring home prices and rent. Groceries and basic goods and services are more expensive than ever. We’re unsure whether we’ll all have access to the same basic freedoms and rights that should be guaranteed to all Americans.

In 2022, the Democratic challenger in FL-7 raised less than $70,000. Without a credibly funded challenger, Cory Mills blew away his Democratic opponent in a district similar to those won by Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and nearly won by Adam Frisch. Both of those campaigns narrowly emerged from the vicious cycle that is predictably bonkers: center-right districts are not rated as competitive by the political ratings agencies, so candidates don’t get resources, and then because candidates don’t have resources the ratings agencies keep them rated as “Safe Republican”.

Breaking The Cycle

As we noted recently, WelcomePAC has put proverbial boots on the ground in four districts over the last two years. In all four, Cook Political Report has moved the race rating towards Democrats. This is a credit to our partners, from longtime center-left leaders to ex-Republicans to renegade operatives who think differently along with us to identify undervalued opportunities to challenge MAGA incumbents.

Most of all, it is a credit to the Democratic candidates - some of whom only recently became Democrats - throwing their careers into the fray to put democracy on offense.

And gotta say, it is a bit damning of the system. An upstart group scattered throughout the country should not be able to spot districts where Democrats are “Conceding Democracy” by not funding challengers (see: Beware The Ratings Agencies). But it is no one’s fault: there is no such thing as “The Democrats,” just an interconnected network of groups responding rationally to political incentives (see: But Don’t “The Democrats” Do That?). 

And now, in our first full cycle, we are part of that system and so bear some responsibility. Once you see it you cannot un-see it. There are winnable races all over the country. Not hundreds of them, but dozens of them - like the 21 districts we highlighted in our Conceding Democracy reports last cycle.

Plenty to have the Speaker’s gavel in the hands of a Democrat.

Conceding Florida

In our most recent “Conceding Democracy” report, we covered the districts that Democrats aren’t contesting and one thing stands out: a whole lot of them are in Florida. Here are a few:

• FL-04 (Aaron Bean, Trump +6.7): Trump’s margin dropped from +10.4 to +6.7 between 2016 and 2020. In 2022, the Democratic nominee raised $10,000 and spent $0. A Democrat filed just two weeks ago and has yet to file a fundraising report. 

• FL-13 (Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Trump +6.8): Luna stands out as one of the more extreme (and weird) House Republicans, and while most Florida Republicans ran far ahead of Trump’s margin in 2022, she just matched it.

• FL-15 (Laurel Lee, Trump +3.1): Lee faces a challenger who has raised less than $100,000, though there is a promising recruit looking at the race. Lee, one of the few Republicans to buck Trump in Florida (she endorsed DeSantis) faces the threat of a primary challenge and has only $438,000 in the bank.

• FL-16 (Vern Buchanan, Trump +8.9) faces a Democratic candidate with no cash on hand.

• FL-21 (Brian Mast, Trump +9.4): Mast is an election denier and voted against certifying the 2020 election, but he only recently garnered a Democratic challenger. 

Recall that, as we wrote recently in Slow Boring, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Trump +4.2), Jared Golden (Trump +6.1) and Mary Peltola (Trump +10.1) all won Trump districts.

Channeling Negativity

How is it possible that few resources are directed towards a Democratic candidate like Jennifer Adams running in a district like FL-7?

Progressive activists have been focused on Gaza, increasing the salience of an issue that divides the Democratic coalition and where voters are more likely to prefer Trump to Biden. This is part of an explicit strategy of leftist hostage-taking that is unlikely to work, and only increases the chances that Trump wins the 2024 election (an outcome unlikely to improve the lives of Palestinians).

As Matt Yglesias wrote this week, a far more productive course of action would be to boost the salience of abortion rights, an issue on which Democrats are united and where voters trust Biden more than Trump. 

Increasing the salience of Gaza reduces the chances that policy outcomes move closer to the preferences of the unthinkingly and increasingly noisy activists, while juicing the salience of abortion improves the chances that policy outcomes shift toward to the activists’ preferences. This is neither difficult to understand nor refutable.

This would be particularly true in Florida, where voters have the chance to overturn a six-week abortion ban. Reminding voters at the ballot box where the two parties stand on abortion could cause them to cast ballots for Democrats, a fairly straightforward strategy that stemmed the red wave in 2022 and left Democrats in control of the Senate. 

But in order for voters to turn out and reject Republicans, there need to be Democrats on the ballot - and not just on the ballot, but with the resources to shape actions of voters.

Democratic donors and activists should focus more on the villains - and heroes - who deserve a competitive election.

1. Mills has loaned his campaign $2,267,642