(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.)
Well, we’re out of time, so I spend little time
on 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 control 18 of the region’s 22 U.S. senate seats and both chambers
of the state legislatures in 10 of the 11 states, statewide elections in
Florida have remained virtual tossups (except for the last gubernatorial race),
and Democrats have controlled the governorship and both Senate seats in
Virginia since 2013 (except for the four years of one GOP governor). 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 usually close). Two Democrats who
held office for the last three decades of the 20th century help
illustrate why Democrats were so successful in Florida. Both Democrats served
two terms as governor, and three terms as U.S. Senator.
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 per person, and as a Senator he 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 Chiles
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 a quality education
system 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, three 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; he then
became a Democratic congressman. Three of the last four Florida gubernatorial
elections have 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 the state jobs,
as Gillum 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. DeSantis won a 60% landslide reelection in 2022, boosted
by the 14% party identification edge that the GOP had over Democrats among
voters (the state trended Republican in party attachments during his first
term). DeSantis' successes as governor and his national prominence saw him
greatly outraise his Democratic opponent Congressman Crist, producing a 15-1
GOP advantage in television ads. Democrat Crist offered a clearly liberal
message, talking about "LGBTQ and abortion rights" issues, praising
President Biden, and accusing the governor of being "anti-democracy...
anti-women... anti-African American... and against Florida" (Garrett
Phillips, August 25, 2022; cbs12.com, WPEC).
Republicans
currently control both of the state’s U.S. senate seats, largely because they nominated
two heavy hitters. Marco Rubio was elected in 2010 and re-elected twice.
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 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 in 2016, 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 to secure a comfortable
54% victory. Reflecting the GOP advantage among voters, Rubio won an easy 58%
reelection in 2022 over Congresswoman Val Demings, a gutsy 27-year police
veteran and first female police chief (and an African American) of Orlando who
as a House Judiciary Committee member during the Trump impeachment aggressively
reminded everyone that no one was above the law. 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 nominating candidates perceived as
too conservative. Nelson had won initially in 2000 as a pretty moderate former
congressman running against a conservative Republican congressman (Bill
McCollum), a GOP leader in the Clinton impeachment effort. The liberal Democrat
Nelson was re-elected in 2006 as Republicans nominated the controversial
congresswoman Katherine Harris (famous as Florida state secretary of state for 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 five presidential elections
have been won in the state by less than 1% of the vote (Trump won 52% and 57%
in the last two races, 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 opposed 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 impressive
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 in 1981 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 in
1985 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 a 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 southern 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 also able to win back the
governorship on four 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 the event 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 former President Bush, and then won re-election in 2018 and 2024. In all three of his Senate races, Kaine benefitted from the increasingly Democratic orientation of Virginia, as Democrats outnumbered Republicans among exit poll voters by about 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 Democratic governor elected in 2017 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 were competitive in 2021,
winning all three statewide elective offices by very narrow margins, and
regaining control of the state house (but losing it two years later because of
the abortion issue). 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". Democrats regained all three statewide
offices in 2025, with GOP gubernatorial candidate Sears beaten by former
Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who stressed the affordability issue in
housing, energy, and health care. Spanberger who was also endorsed by two
former Republican Congress members as a bipartisan Congresswoman who cared
about what was best for Virginia instead of mere partisanship.