Chair of the Florida Democratic Party Nikki Fried speaks to the media on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Photo: Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix)
The State Executive Committee of the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) will meet in Orlando on Saturday to elect statewide officers, as well as members of the Democratic National Committee and congressional district chairs.
Nikki Fried, who replaced Manny Diaz as party chair in 2023, is running to remain in the post for the next two years. She is being challenged by former Jacksonville area state Sen. Audrey Gibson.
Fried presided over one of the worst election cycles for Florida Democrats ever in the 2024 election cycle:
- Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in November by 13 points, the biggest margin in a presidential race in Florida in more than three decades.
- U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, who won his previous three races by an average of 1 percentage point, breezed to a re-election victory over former South Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell by 13 points as well.
- Some traditional blue counties went red, and the party failed to break the Republican Party of Florida’s supermajority lead in the state Legislature.
- Republicans, who overtook Democrats in terms of the voter registration lead in Florida for the first time in 2021, continue to grow their ranks in the state, and now have a more than 1.1 million lead in the state.
Alan Clendenin, a DNC member from Tampa since 2008, says he staying is neutral in the race.
“I think Nikki has done as good of a job as you could possibly do considering the circumstances that we have. I think that she has a lot of strengths,” he said. “Audrey’s a wonderful human being. I consider her a very good personal friend.”
Vice chair
In the race for vice chair, Jayden D’Onofrio has dropped out of the race. He is the 20-year-old chair of the Florida Future Leaders PAC, a political committee he helped create to fund the Florida High School Democrats and the Florida College Democrats, who entered the race at the beginning of this month. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Duval County Democratic Executive Committee Daniel Henry, 33, is vying for the position. The Phoenix has learned that former Central Florida Democratic state Sen. Victor Torres is poised to challenge Henry. He must be nominated on the floor on Saturday. There may be other challengers from the floor as well, a member of the party told the Phoenix.
“One thing that the Democrats are consistently bad at is talking about the things that we do and how it effects people’s daily lives,” Henry said while speaking to this reporter on WMNF Radio in Tampa on Friday.
“And despite many of the derogatory and racist and many negative things that President Trump has said in the past and during the campaign, what people were really hearing from him, unfortunately, is that someone who was going to fight for them and was going to make an effort to make their lives better, and I think that in order for us to counter that in the future, we’re going to have to make sure that we meet people where they are.
“Not just using legacy media as a way for us to be able to connect with them, not just using generic messaging that we think will apply with all racial demographics across the entire state, and not recognizing the unique challenges that people face every single day during their daily lives. That is something that I think is important for us to be able to work on in future elections.”
Rules
This is the first FDP election under new party rules, with the much-criticized weighted vote system now a thing of the past. The new rules now allow for 400 individual voting members on the FDP’s executive committee spread out among the 67 counties, with each county having at least two members.
The meeting will begin at 10 a.m. at the Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Palace Disney Springs Area in Lake Buena Vista, and it could be a lengthy one. According to a press release issued to members of the media, “due to the nature of the election process, an exact ending time cannot be predicted.”