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Candidate qualifying for the 2012 Florida legislative elections has concluded and the Republican grip on the State Senate has gotten stronger than it appeared it would be following the Supreme Court’s 5-2 decision in favor of this redistricting plan. The Tampa Bay Times characterized the plan as having 22 strong Republican districts. 15 strong Democratic ones and 3 districts the Democrats could win. But the Democrats do not seem interested in trying to win 17 seats, rather they are simply competing for the easy ones, plus a marginal seat in Volusia County.
The shock of qualifying week was that the Democrats were unable to field a candidate in the St Petersburg based Senate District 22, won by both Barack Obama and Alex Sink. The GOP primary between Reps. Jim Frishe and Jeff Brandes is being contested based on internal Tallahassee Republican leadership politics. For whatever reason the Democrats chose to disengage completely in this district, and once the primary was closed by a write-in candidate approximately half the voters in the district were effectively disenfranchised. At a time when Democrats in Florida are justifiably challenging a voter purge in direct violation of the 1965 Voting Right Act, they seem committed to purging voters in another more subtle way, by not fielding serious Legislative candidates in the majority of Florida districts.
Since the Democrats have chosen to ignore most of the Senate map either by fielding pathetically weak candidates some self recruited or by not contesting seats at all, we will transition to analyzing Republican primaries next Monday, as well as creating House ratings. In the House, the Democrats prospects are better when compared relatively to the Senate, though as we outlined last Friday, several potential pickup opportunities were ignored by the party for this election cycle.
huh???? I’m confused, Kartik. I happen to know that there are both D and R candidates for 21 and 26. Why do you show them as open?
Open means that their is no incumbent.
With the districts being finalized, shouldn’t these read as follows:
SD13: Gardiner
SD15: Open
SD16: Altman
SD24: Burgin
Yep on the first three- will make the change in the future postings. The fourth is open and probably will be won by Tom Lee as it appears now. Burgin not an incumbent Senator.
The Bogdanoff/Sachs seat should be likely Democratic…..Democratic plus 10 performance advantage.
TPH, yall are absolutely correct. great job calling out Christian Ulvert by the way. These Dem staffers are pathetic.
You’re right on Burgin…she’s currently serving in the House, not a Senate incumbent!
I would have to agree with the “tossup” designation at this moment, as you can never count out Elyn Bogdanoff. She has consistently outperformed in both her old house district and her current senate district.
The one advantage I would give Maria Sachs that might give her the edge is that the re-drawn district is now 2:1 in Palm Beach over Broward.
That being said, the new district is 49% from Bogdanoff’s old district 25 and 39% from Sach’s old district 30, so that may negate some of Sach’s home court advantage.
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