We pause today to congratulate the Florida Democratic Party for having elected Nikki Fried as its chair in February. Whatever else she is or might have been, Nikki Fried is the ideal choice for Florida Democrats in their hour of flailing despair.
Coming off an election shellacking without modern-day precedent and, even now, bleeding registered voters while trailing Republicans by a historic 568,000 enrollees, Florida Democrats needed someone who was willing to say, well, anything.
Democrats have chosen, well, appropriately. In the Miami-reared lawyer and flamed-out politician, they have anything but a listless vessel.
Fried, bless her heart, has a reputation for eruptions of an unserious nature. But for a party that swoons to the insipid siren calls of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her far-left mates of The Squad, Fried’s gift for the preposterous is a feature, not a bug.
For example, about this time last year, Fried — then Florida’s elected Commissioner of Agriculture and a Democratic candidate for governor — alleged without evidence that Palm Beach Post reporters who wrote a 6,000-word piece criticizing her department’s efforts to make “historic changes” to sugar cane harvesting were paid by the Sierra Club.
Around Christmastime 2020, Fried issued wildly inaccurate claims about the DeSantis administration’s effectiveness against COVID.
She decried the Florida Legislature’s bill prohibiting transgender females from competing against natural-born girls and women in high school and college sports, calling it “heartless.”
“Florida should stand for inclusivity, equality, and liberty — not peddling hate for political points,” she tweeted.
PolitiFact awarded her a “mostly false” grade on her claim, in June 2021, that DeSantis “signed a $1 billion tax increase on the people of our state … yet gave a $500 million tax break to our corporations.” Mostly false. From PolitiFact. That’s not an easy achievement for a Democrat.
And, if fantasy speaking weren’t a sufficient qualifier, she was sloppy in her income reporting on financial disclosure forms required by the state to stand for election, having missed the tidy sum of $351,480 paid to her consulting firm, Igniting Florida, LLC, in 2018, by a medical marijuana dispensary.
So here comes Fried, fabulist and strategically slipshod, to rescue Florida’s Democrats — the same cohort who rejected her in the gubernatorial primary in favor of the empty-suit party-hopper subsequently trounced by Ron DeSantis.
On the bright side, unlike you-know-who, Fried didn’t have to be taken into the election-victim-protection program. Which means she is at large in the Sunshine State promoting all sorts of fascinating theories.
For instance, about the same time the Florida Chamber of Commerce was publishing its summertime state-of-the-state poll, Fried — in the midst of Democrats’ Take Back Florida Tour — was, to the shock of no one, spouting opinions unsupported by current facts.
In a late-Wednesday night post to X/Twitter (probably written that afternoon), Fried proclaimed there definitely was a winner to emerge from the first debate among GOP presidential candidates, and it was … Joe Biden.
Floundering on the stage, she later said, was — aw, you guessed it.
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried doesn’t think Gov. Ron DeSantis will be President. On the heels of DeSantis’ performance in the first Republican presidential debate, she guesses that most of Florida has grown skeptical of his leadership.
“The people of our state see through his policies,” Fried said. “That’s why if his election was today again, he would be losing here in the state of Florida.”
Let’s see if the Florida Chamber of Commerce poll has anything instructive to say about that. Ah, here it is.
More than half of voters (51%) approve of the job Ron DeSantis is doing as Governor, with 85% of Republicans and 59% of NPAs approving of his job as Governor. The Governor also has strong approval amongst Hispanic voters with 55% approving of his performance and 45% disapproving.
Part of that approval is linked to how well Florida’s economy is performing. The statistics speak for themselves (job growth is 50% higher than the national average), but voters sense their wellbeing: More than half (53%) believe the Florida economy is better off than other states; only 24% believe it is worse off than other states.
And so, when Fried tells local news viewers in Southwest Florida Fort Myers she believes President Biden can claim Florida’s third-in-the-nation 30 electoral votes based on his record, we have to revisit the Chamber’s poll.
President Joe Biden’s numbers are quite the opposite [of DeSantis’], with 56% of voters disapproving of the job he is doing as President. Almost all Republicans (89%) and nearly 2/3 of NPAs (65%) disapprove of President Biden’s performance as President. The President has an approval rating of only 37% among Hispanic voters, with 62% disapproving of his performance.
As for that voter registration drive? Here’s how it’s working out so far.
BREAKING: Jefferson County, Fla. voter registration has flipped from Democratic to Republican, new data shows@FloridaGOP Chairman @ChrisMZiegler: "Democrats now have just 12 counties as Republicans hold 55 counties. Big win for freedom."
— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) August 18, 2023
Listen, cheerleaders gonna cheerlead. Even when the team is lousy. At least Nikki Fried seems happy in her work.
