Stephanie Murphy blames statewide Democratic losses on misguided air campaign

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Florida Democrats suffered a deadly midterm election even as the party outperformed nationally. But U.S. Representative Stephanie Murphy isn’t ready to call Florida a red state. Rather, she puts Team Blue’s underperformance in 2022 squarely on the shoulders of the statewide candidates.

How do you spend $100 million in this state and have nothing to show for it? she says. I think it’s a political mistake.

The remarks, made in Tiger Bay, central Florida, placed the burden of loss on former U.S. Representative Charlie Crist, who lost to Governor Ron DeSantis in a 19-point landslide, and the US Representative Val Demings, who failed to challenge US Senator Marco Rubio by nearly as much.

Notably, Murphy herself forwarded her candidacy to the Senate, then announced that she would not seek another term in the House. It means that for the first time since her successful campaign for Congress in 2016, she has spent campaigning on the sidelines.

Murphy said she was stunned by the lack of ground game from Democrats statewide.

There’s never been a campaign where you don’t have people in purple shirts and iPads wandering around neighborhoods asking people to vote, she said.

She said Florida Democrats erred in thinking they could win by masking the airwaves, which made money for media consultants and news stations but left few resources for any infrastructure. land leading up to election day.

Part of that falls on a national party that’s too quick to abandon Florida.

National Democrats had decided to burn down Florida, she said. They really haven’t played here like they did significantly.

But in some ways it was predictable. Too many state losses in previous election cycles have eroded the sense that Florida has stayed in the game, even with the Senate race as recently as 2018, when Republican Rick Scott ousted incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson, in a race decided by just over 10,000 votes.

Murphy notes that in that race she outvoted Nelson by more than 8,000 votes in her own district, and the Democrats should have been able to hold races then as well, but lost most.

This is not to deny Republicans all respect, she said.

I will give credit to Ron DeSantis, she said. People voted for people who did pragmatic things that affected their lives. There were a lot of things I would say he did that were questionable about it just from a Democratic standpoint. However, Florida residents felt they had weathered the pandemic relatively well. And they rewarded him.

So what about the future? Murphy told Florida Politics she thinks Democrats could take years to recover from such a slump.

I think it takes a few cycles for such a big state to build the infrastructure to be able to prevail, she said.

Onstage, Murphy asked questions about whether she would consider a statewide run herself, with some noting that Scotts’ Senate seat is back in just two years.

I won’t give any news today, she said.

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