Former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, a prominent Cuban Miami, made a splashy entry into the race in late November. | Brynn Anderson / AP Photo
Manny Diaz defeated two other candidates for the presidency.
TALLAHASSEE – Democrats in Florida pinned their hopes on Manny Diaz on Saturday, entrusting the former Miami mayor to revive the party’s fate after a disastrous election cycle in which President Donald Trump won the state and Democrats lost congressional and legislative seats has.
Diaz defeated two other presidential candidates at the annual meeting of the Florida Democratic Party, which was virtually held due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our Florida Democratic Party is at a crossroads,” Diaz said just before the vote. “While Democrats across the country are making a profit, we are still losing ground. We continue to lose elections. ‘
Diaz, a prominent Miami Cuban, made a splashy entry into the race in late November, catching up with a handful of well-known staff members, and endorsements ranging from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a $ 100 billionaire million in Florida during the 2020 Election Cycle and billionaire Jorge Pérez in South Florida. He has meanwhile been endorsed by dozens of democratic politicians in the state, including Nikki Fried, commissioner for agriculture, the party’s sole official.
His immediate task is to rebuild the party and raise money as it goes to the important election in 2022, where Gov. Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio, both Republicans, are expected to be on the ballot. Trump’s solid victory in Florida has created speculation that the third country with the largest population of America can no longer be America’s largest battlefield, which may make it difficult to convince dark-skinned people to write checks.
Diaz has already outlined many of the moves he plans to make. In a December memorandum to Democratic Party officials, Diaz called for the expansion of party operations, including the establishment of offices in Central Florida, the promotion of ballot-mail and voter registration efforts, and improving data operations – all of which require cash to increase. Several Democratic candidates and agents complained that internal voices were inaccurate and showed several races closer than they actually were.
“To achieve these things and build a significant amount of infrastructure needed to engage with the above ideas, we will need significant resources,” Diaz said in his memo last month. “I will dedicate my time to leveraging myself nationwide and nationwide in relationships to build trust among donors and get them to buy into what we are trying to achieve here in Florida.”
Another important battle looming over the party is the next round of redevelopment, when Florida may get a congressional set again.
Diaz’s choice follows a deep and hard-fought settlement among Democrats over what went wrong in the 2020 election as moderate and progressive factions of the party pointing fingers at each other. Republican successes were built on record turnout and a Democratic blast in Miami-Dade County, one of the bluest parts of the state. Amrie Rizzo, chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Florida, said in the midst of the dropout that she was not going to seek another term.
Just a day before the presidential vote on Saturday, three other candidates nominated themselves as Cynthia Chestnut. The former state representative and current chair of the Alachua County Democratic Party was the lone black woman in the three-way race and during her brief remarks she said it was time for the party to move into the 21st century and reflect the diversity of Florida. voters.
“I tell you, as a daughter of Florida and as an African-American woman, our time has come to serve on the board of the Florida Democratic Party,” she said before the vote.
But the alliance around Chestnut is also designed to consolidate the opposition to Diaz, which more Liberal Democrats find in part insufficiently loyal to the party because it has donated money to Republicans in the past.
The last maneuver failed: Diaz was able to get a majority of the party’s votes in the first round of voting.
Fried made a plea for party unity during the conference.
“We can not afford to fight among ourselves,” she said.
Diaz, 66, immigrated from Cuba to Florida and immigrated to Florida during the 2000 drama surrounding Elián González, a Cuban boy clinging to a raft off the coast of Florida.
The Clinton administration’s decision to repatriate González angered Cuban Americans. Diaz was there when federal marshals took the child with a gun. Diaz left the party in protest, but he was elected mayor of Miami the following year, and served until 2009. He later returned to the party and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. Diaz is seen as a political asset to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that it appeared in an advertisement.