(Note: these learning modules encompass the actual class lectures, and are designed for those students who have to miss class through no fault of their own, and also as a refresher for all students. Bold print in the notes are what the professor writes on the board.)

LEARNING MODULE: WEEKS 15-16, Florida and Virginia, Pragmatism

Well, we’re out of time, so even in a regular semester I have to skip the last two states. Some say that today they aren’t really southern states, given the snowbirds who have settled Florida and the D.C. government workers living in Virginia. But we southern politics scholars do include them as southern states, as they did secede from the Union, they had racially segregated systems, and they were historically dominated by the Democratic Party. I also include them as southern states because they have some great lessons for southern Democrats in other southern states. In a region where Republicans prior to the November 2020 elections controlled 19 of the region’s 22 U.S. senate seats and both chambers of the state legislatures in 10 of the 11 states, recent statewide elections in Florida have been virtual tossups, and Democrats have controlled the governorship and both Senate seats in Virginia for the last nine years (except for the GOP gubernatorial win last year). This information will not be on the final, since I have enough material to test you on.

Florida historically has been dominated by the Democratic Party, though today the Republicans have the edge (but elections are cliffhangers). Two Democrats who held office for the last three decades of the 20^th century help illustrate why Democrats were so successful in Florida. Both served two terms as governor, and three terms as U.S. Senator. Comprehensive information about both are in my full class notes, which are on-line.

Democratic state legislator Lawton Chiles was elected Senator in 1970 by being a man of the people, walking 1,000 miles across the state and talking to Floridians about their everyday concerns (Walkin’ Lawton). This man of the people limited his campaign contributions to less than $100, and as a Senator would spend about one-fourth of his time back home meeting his constituents. He showed considerable knowledge of the issues and dominated debates with his GOP opponents, thereby winning the debates. As a Senator, he maintained a strictly moderate roll call voting record. His two re-election margins were with over 60% of the vote. Chiles won the governorship in 1990, unseating the GOP incumbent. He won a narrow re-election (51%) against presidential son Jeb Bush, as he appealed to the rural population by claiming to be an old racoon who could speak Cracker, and when accused by Bush of being soft on crime pointed out that as governor he had executed eight men. Miami businessman and lawyer Democrat Bob Graham was elected governor in 1978 by also being a man of the people, working 100 different jobs over 100 days, including bellhop, waiter, hospital orderly, and steelworker. His running mate was a North Florida legislator with a good ole boy image. (Florida is the one southern state where like the federal government the governor and lieutenant governor run as a team on the same ticket.) Graham was the Education Governor, arguing that it promoted economic development. He also was tough on crime, enforcing the death penalty law and waging a war against illegal drug trafficking. He won a landslide 65% re-election. Graham in 1986 unseated a GOP senator, rebutting the liberal label with an ad showing him in a state police helicopter seeking to locate drug smugglers. He won re-election to the Senate twice with over 60% landslides with one of his GOP losers admitting that Graham was the best politician in the state and that he was “sincere.” His roll call voting record was initially moderate liberal, but it then moved to a liberal posture, reflecting the liberal nature of the national Democratic Party.

Republicans though have made important gains since these two Democratic giants have left the scene. Four years after his defeat by Governor Chiles, Jeb Bush was able to win the governorship, and he began a string of 4 Republican governors, two of whom served two terms. Jeb Bush won the governorship easily in 1998 with a conservative platform, partly by chipping into normally Democratic groups. African American state legislators were enraged over white Democratic lawmakers unseating the African American minority party leader. Jeb had met his wife Columba while doing service work in Mexico as a high schooler, so the promise of Florida having a Mexican-American First Lady helped him win 60% of the Latino vote (Plus, the anti-Castro Cuban population in Florida is pretty Republican.). As governor, Bush ended affirmative action in state government with his One Florida executive order, signed a private school voucher program, and enacted a three strikes and you’re out (life term) law. He easily won re-election in 2002, partly because of a bitter Democratic primary battle which included President Clinton’s attorney general liberal Janet Reno. Florida then elected GOP attorney general Charlie Crist, who served one term. Crist won as an independent thinker who put the interests of Florida over those of his national party, even snubbing a visit by President Bush. Crist was so independent that he supported choice, civil unions, and re-enfranchisement of felons; today he is a Democratic congressman. The last three Florida gubernatorial elections have all been cliffhangers with Republicans winning 51% or less of the vote. The GOP won in 2010 with health care business executive Rick Scott, as voters were worried about the economy and their families’ financial situations, and so they backed an “outsider” who knew about business. Scott won a cliffhanger re-election over Republican-turned-Democrat Crist because Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 4% among actual voters, and because of a great ground game, late television spending, and the wealthy governor pumping $13 million of his own money into the race. Florida’s current governor elected in 2018 is Republican Ron DeSantis, a Tea Party backed former congressman and Iraqi war veteran. DeSantis barely beat (by four-tenths of one percent of the vote) Tallahassee mayor and African American Andrew Gillum. One DeSantis ad urged state voters to not “monkey this up” (the state’s good economy), as the liberal Gillum would allegedly raise taxes and cost jobs, as he advocated Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan and supported $1 billion more in education spending. When one considers that Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 4% among exit poll voters, Gillum’s strong showing is impressive; the Democrat even won 61% of moderates and 55% of Independents. DeSantis won 45% of Latinos, perhaps benefitted by his running mate, Jeanette Nunez (the Speaker Pro Tempore of the state House), who became Florida’s first Latina lieutenant governor. In 2022, the DeSantis-Nunez team have been renominated without opposition, and the August 23 Democratic primary is being contested by Congressman Charlie Crist and Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried. This race could be close if Crist is the nominee, but is still rated as Likely Republican.

Republicans currently control both of the state’s U.S. senate seats, largely because they have two heavy hitters. Marco Rubio was elected in 2010 and re-elected six years later. Rubio is a Cuban America, who was born in Miami to Cuban parents. The former state House Speaker, Rubio was backed by the Tea Party and has maintained a conservative roll call voting record (most conservative one-fifth of the ideology scale). In a three-way contest in 2010, Rubio won 49% to Independent (former Republican) governor Charlie Crist’s 30% and liberal African American congressman Kendrick Meek’s 20%. Crist’s “independent” reputation was so popular among Democrats that they actually split their vote evenly between him and their own party nominee. After Rubio dropped out of the GOP presidential nomination battle, state Republicans begged him to run for another senate term. Rubio wisely distanced himself from the controversial Trump, concluding that the election was “a disturbing choice” between someone that he disagree with on “many things” (Trump) and someone whom he disagreed with on “virtually everything.” In an electorate where Republicans outnumbered Democrats by only 1% (exit poll), Clinton’s negatives hurt the Democratic nominee, and Rubio’s 48% of the Latino vote helped him secure a comfortable 54% victory. Rubio has won renomination this year without opposition. Congresswoman Val Demings is expected to win the August 23 primary; while this race is rated likely Republican, a July poll had her behind Rubio by only 7%. The other senate seat was won in 2018 by GOP governor Rick Scott by a mere one-tenth of 1% of the vote, as he knocked off the three-term Democratic senator Bill Nelson. Nelson had boldly maintained a Liberal voting record for his entire time in office, voting in the most liberal one-fifth of our ideology scale. What kept Nelson in office so long was that the Republicans kept serving him up candidates perceived to be too conservative. He won initially in 2000 as a pretty moderate former congressman running against a conservative Republican congressman (Bill McCollum) who had been a leader in the Clinton impeachment effort. The liberal Democrat Nelson was re-elected in 2006 as Republicans nominated the controversial congresswoman Katherine Harris (famous for as state secretary of state backing Bush during the disputed 2000 presidential election), who proceeded to proclaim that God wanted her to be a Senator and that if people didn’t vote for a Christian, they were legislating sin. In 2012 Nelson beat conservative GOP congressman Connie Mack, as Nelson was able to stress his bipartisan work in the Senate. Nelson finally bit the dust in 2018, as Republicans ran a strong candidate against him, the two-term governor Rick Scott. Scott used his personal fortune to blast Nelson as an “ineffective” and “tired” “career politician” who had been in Washington too long. Yet as with the gubernatorial contest, the Republican’s razor thin win was smaller than his party’s 4% advantage in party identification among exit poll voters. Therefore, even these Republican victories show how competitive the two parties are in Florida. And once again, I remind you that three of the last four presidential elections have been won in the state by less than 1% of the vote (Trump won 52% in 2020, though.). So, when all is said and done, Democrats in Florida have done a better job in offering strong candidates with strong campaigns, compared to Democrats in the other southern states we have studied.

Virginia historically has been the heart of the Old Confederacy, with a dominant Democratic machine that was so conservative that it even came to oppose popular New Deal economic programs. The Democratic machine was led by governor and then U.S. Senator Harry Byrd, which finally began to break up in the 1960s when Byrd Sr. left the Senate. As liberals seized control of the state party, Republicans made such gains that for a time none of the gubernatorial or Senate seats were held by Democrats. Conservative Senator Harry Byrd Jr. won re-election in 1970 and 1976 as an Independent, as he feared that he could not win the Democratic Party nomination. Republicans held the governorship from 1969 through 1981 with three strong candidates. Linwood Holton was a racial liberal who not only appointed African Americans to state offices but also personally escorted his daughter to a majority black public school. Democrats did not even field a gubernatorial candidate in 1973, as Republicans nominated the Democrat-turned-Republican former governor Mills Godwin and liberal Henry Howell (called Howling Henry for his arm-waving ads attacking special interests) ran as an Independent. The third GOP governor was John Dalton, who beat liberal Democrat Howell who had finally won his party’s nomination with the backing of the AFL-CIO, the teachers’ union, and the most powerful African American state organization. Conservative Republican congressman William Scott in 1972 knocked off Democratic Senator William Spong in the Nixon landslide re-election year, as Scott blasted the incumbent for supporting busing, gun control, and George McGovern. As Virginia was the only southern state voting against regional favorite son Jimmy Carter in 1976, it appeared that the leftward drift of the state Democratic Party had produced the first Republican dominated southern state.

Democrats staged a comeback in the 1980s with three consecutive governors. Chuck Robb, a former Marine, son-in-law of President Johnson, and lieutenant governor was elected as a racial and social liberal but a fiscal conservative. He co-founded the centrist Democratic Leadership Council that sought to move the national Democratic Party back to the center, and moved on to serve as the state’s two-term Senator. Attorney General Gerald Baliles was the next Democratic governor having a similar policy profile. Virginia made history with its first African American, Doug Wilder (a 16-year state senator), elected lieutenant governor and its first woman, Mary Sue Terry, as attorney general (Virginia has only three statewide elected offices). In both of these elections, it had been the Republican party that was bitterly divided (between its moderate conservative and very conservative factions). Doug Wilder then moved up to the governorship in 1989, projecting a non-racial image of experience and competence. Wilder had an ideologically inclusive message, being a fiscal conservative, tough on crime, but pro-choice candidate. He ended up winning 41% of the white vote after campaigning in rural areas and small towns, and even running an ad with a white sheriff with a thick accent endorsing him. With Democrats now holding the governorship and Robb’s Senate seat, Republicans were left with the state’s other senate seat. Former Navy Secretary John Warner, whose wife was the famous actress Elizabeth Taylor was elected in 1978, and this Republican Senator held his senate seat for 30 years. Warner had a conservative roll call voting record, but he also showed some independence, such as when he opposed Reagan’s nomination of conservative Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, and when he led senate hearings on Bush administration failures in Iraq. Republicans were able to win back the governorship on three occasions, once with Congressman George Allen, whose father coached the Washington Redskins. Allen went on to the Senate, where he cast a conservative voting record, but lost his first-re-election after becoming overconfident given the talk about him maybe becoming President someday. At a campaign rally, he ribbed a staffer (of India the nation descent) of his opponent who was filming him by telling his audience to welcome “macaca here” to the real world of Virginia (instead of D.C.). The embattled Republican quickly denied any knowledge that the term was a racial slur used by whites in some European-colonized African nations to refer to a type of monkey, a macaque.

Today, Virginia has become the most Democratic state in the South. Two of their officeholders started with the governorship, and then went on to the Senate, offices that they still hold. Democrat Mark Warner was elected governor in 2001 as a pragmatic businessman who campaigned in rural areas and promised to protect the right to bear arms. Facing an economic crisis as governor, he worked with the Republican-controlled state legislature to both cut spending and raise taxes, maintaining the state’s top credit rating and getting praised by prestigious Governing magazine. Mark Warner was elected to the Senate in 2008 (even law enforcement backed him, as his GOP opponent as governor had cut taxes and reduced their budgets), and narrowly re-elected in 2014 after Republicans nominated a more partisan former RNC chair as their candidate. Warner won reelection easily in 2020, beating a disabled war veteran by backing veterans benefits, new generation technologies, renewable energy, and support for education at all levels. Democrats kept the governorship in 2005 with Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine, who fended off the liberal label by saying he would enforce the death penalty because it was state law. As governor, Kaine dramatically increased funding for K-12 public education. He then went on to the U.S. Senate with an inclusive message of raising taxes only on the rich and running a positive ad about President Bush, and then won re-election in 2018. In both of his Senate races, Kaine benefitted from the increasingly Democratic orientation of Virginia, as Democrats outnumbered Republicans among exit poll voters by 7%. The two governors before 2021 were both Democrats, and both benefitted from a noticeable Democratic party identification advantage among voters and having GOP opponents viewed as too conservative and too partisan. The last Democratic governor was Ralph S. Northam, who was born in Virginia and attended the Virginia Military Institute and Eastern Virginia Medical School. He had served 8 years in the Medical Corps of the Army, 6 years in the state senate, and was the lieutenant governor. Northam was so inclusive that he admitted to having voted twice for President Bush. Despite claims in 2019 that all three statewide elected Democrats had either worn blackface in college or been accused of rape, Democrats gained control of both chambers of the state legislature, as they stressed health care and gun control issues (to prevent mass shootings) and outspent their opponents thanks to liberal interest groups.

Republicans staged a comeback in 2021, winning all three statewide elective offices by very narrow margins, and regaining control of the state house. Democratic former governor Terry McAuliffe lost to Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin, who portrayed himself as "a likeable moderate who wears a red fleece vest," accepted Trump's endorsement but then refused to campaign with him and basically kept Trump out of the state. When Democrat McAuliffe defended the right of educators to teach controversial subjects like critical race theory, Youngkin blasted him as a tool of the teachers' union who wanted to keep parents out of the classroom. Though 36% of exit poll voters were Democrats and 34% Republicans, nationalizing the election by having former President Obama, Vice President Harris, and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams campaign for him probably didn't help McAuliffe, since President Biden had only a 46% approval rating (53% disapprove). Youngkin's 50% favorable approval rating exceeded McAuliffe's 47%, and the Republican was benefitted by the two top issues of the economy and education (named by 33% and 24% of voters, respectively), where he won 55% and 53% vote totals. Indeed, 52% of voters said that parents should have a lot of say in what schools teach, and 51% rejected the political correctness of removing Confederate monuments (https://www.cnn.com/election/2021/november/exit-polls/virginia/governor/). Republicans also elected Winsome Sears as lieutenant governor, and Jason Miyares as attorney general, the first black woman and first Latino elected to statewide office. Sears rejected victimhood as divisive, and related how her father had brought her to America from Jamaica for jobs and opportunity, and she proudly recounted how she had lived the American dream. Sears was a former Marine, who was the only black Republican state legislator and the only Republican who had represented a majority black district. An anti-abortion and pro-gun rights candidate, she ridiculed the Democratic governor's mask mandate, but her independent nature was also evident in her campaign website where she said she was proudest of her community work leading a men's prison ministry and directing a women's Salvation Army homeless shelter. Miyares' family had left Cuba and he was born in North Carolina, and he was elected three times to the Virginia house. The first Cuban American in that body, his voting record was a conservative but not an extreme one. Indeed, one of his first acts as attorney general was to accept the resignation of a deputy attorney general who on facebook had referred to the January 6, 2021 Capitol rioters as "patriots," with his spokesperson reiterating that: "The attorney general has been very clear. Joe Biden won the election and he has condemned the January 6 attack".