Miami-Dade Democrats attempted to end months of infighting and internal drama at their annual Blue Gala in Miami Beach on Saturday.
The gala, which drew top Miami-Dade, state and national party leaders, was billed as a pep rally for Democrats hoping to avoid a potential election defeat in Florida in November. Democrats need to win big margins in Miami-Dade to have a shot at both the presidency and the statewide incumbency, but that has proven increasingly difficult in recent years, particularly in 2022, when both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio won the county.
With just six weeks to go until Election Day, party leaders gathered Saturday around the hope that the election victory they enjoyed two years ago was an anomaly born of internal dysfunction and low turnout. This year, they vowed, will be different.
“Don’t sleep on Florida,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison told a packed ballroom at the Miami Beach Convention Center. “There’s something extraordinary happening in this state right now … and I think it’s going to shock the world. I think it’s going to shock the nation. And I know it’s going to shock Republicans.”
In a brief interview with the Miami Herald on Saturday night, Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said the Blue Gala represented the “rebuilding of the Democratic Party in Miami-Dade” after a difficult period earlier this year.
Florida Democratic Party leaders forcibly fired Miami-Dade Party Chairman Robert Dempster in March after Fried suspended him for what she alleged were repeated violations of the state party’s rules and bylaws. It set off a heated and divided race to succeed Dempster as Miami-Dade Party leader — a job that ultimately went to Sen. Shevrin Jones.
Fried, who is from Miami, said the party is gaining popularity again in the region.
“You see a sold-out crowd, you have the chairman of the DNC here as our keynote speaker,” Fried said. “You have [elected officials] who are here, leaning on the local party, understanding that we can do all this great work in the rest of the state, but if Miami-Dade doesn’t produce the numbers and show once again that Miami is a stronghold for the Democrats, then it doesn’t matter what happens in the rest of the state.”
Fried noted that things are looking good for Democrats in Miami-Dade, pointing to Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s re-election victory last month as a sign that Democratic voters were ready to turn out this year.
Democrats also hope that a pair of proposed constitutional amendments set to appear on ballots in November — one that would legalize recreational marijuana and another that would enshrine broad abortion rights protections in state law — will help boost turnout among Democratic voters.
Still, significant challenges remain. Statewide, Democrats now outnumber Democrats by nearly a million active registered Republican voters, and Republicans are increasingly optimistic that former President Donald Trump could win Miami-Dade County in November’s presidential election.
When Jones, the chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, took the stage Saturday night, he acknowledged the divisions plaguing the party but insisted that Vice President Kamala Harris’ path to the “White House runs through” Miami-Dade. He said it was the Democrats’ duty to “build bridges” within the party and put aside their differences.
“Even though we didn’t agree on everything, we all had one common goal, and that was to get the damn job done,” Jones said. “The Miami-Dade Democratic Party is back and we’re not going back and we’re going to win in November.”
