At a glance, you could argue that Florida has been a money pit for billionaire Tom Steyer’s political network.
The Democratic hedge-fund manager and climate activist’s NextGen America has spent up to $30 million in Florida over the past five years, with limited results. The left-leaning organization helped Democrats take the U.S. House of Representatives last fall by flipping two crucial congressional seats in Miami, but Florida’s formerly climate-denying governor still became a U.S. senator and voters still elected as his successor a prominent surrogate of President Donald Trump, whom Steyer wants badly to impeach.
Steyer acknowledges that the results in those two high-profile races were a letdown, calling losses by former Sen. Bill Nelson and gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum “the two most disappointing races in the United States.” But he doesn’t view 2018 as a wash, and still sees Florida as the key to 2020.
In fact, after breaking down the results of the Florida midterms, Steyer says he’s as confident as ever that his get-out-the-vote operation is working in the nation’s largest swing state. A newly released postmortem by NextGen’s state youth director found that participation spiked last year by voters under the age of 40. And the 52,000 voters registered by NextGen in a statewide mail and digital campaign and college campus initiative cast ballots at an even greater clip.
With the Florida Democratic Party and Gillum already planning to spend millions on a massive voter registration effort, Steyer says he’s also prepared to keep working. He’s not entirely sure what that will look like so far out from Election Day, but expects to fight efforts by Florida lawmakers to curb voting rights, to advocate for expanded on-campus voting sites and to organize youth town halls for some of the Democratic Party’s most important politicians in the state.
“I don’t think you can look at a presidential map that the Republicans win without Florida,” Steyer, who was in Miami Tuesday on business, said during an interview at the JW Marriott Miami on Brickell Avenue.
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