SAD! ‘sToP thE BRaInWaSHiNg’ Lady Does Not Win Special Election, Will Florida Ever Be The Same?

Good news from the state of Florida, where Democrat Charles Thomas “Tom” Keen III won a special election for the state House of Representatives yesterday, flipping the seat from Republican to Democratic. Now, don’t worry about Florida going all socialist or anything, because the state House still has a heavily gerrymandered supermajority of 84 Rs to just 36 Ds. But Keen’s District 35 win is still worth bragging about, because he was outspent by almost two to one by his Republican opponent, Erika Booth.

Keen won narrowly, with 51.3 percent of the vote to Booth’s 48.7 percent, a margin of just 590 votes in one of the state’s few competitive districts, where registration is about equal for both parties. The seat had previously been held by Republican Fred Hawkins, who stepped down to become president of South Florida State College.

Keen, 67, is a retired Navy officer and works in the aerospace business; this was his second run for office after losing the Democratic nomination for the district in 2022.

Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, was happy to explain in a statement that no, “moribund” is not actually part of the state party’s official name:

“We saw unprecedented enthusiasm and investment in this special election from all corners of the state, as well as many of our national partners. […] We proved that Florida is still worth fighting for, and that a well-organized, well-funded Democratic campaign can still win a swing seat in this state.”

The Republican, Erika Booth, is a former teacher who won a seat on the Osceola County School Board in 2022, but resigned to run for the Lege in the special election. During her career as a teacher, she won her school’s Teacher of the Year award twice; she’s also married to current Osceola County Commissioner Ricky Booth.

Keen was endorsed by the Orlando Sentinel, as well as by Orange County Classroom Teachers, Florida Planned Parenthood PAC and others; Florida Today reports he campaigned on “issues of high property insurance premiums, unaffordable rent and abortion rights, and criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis’ culture wars agenda.”

Booth, the paper notes, “avoided media interviews,” but her campaign slogans included “stop the woke mob,” “cancel the woke agenda,” “stop the brainwashing” and “free and fair elections,” and she was a big fan of Donald Trump.

Kind of hard to see how she could have gone wrong, what with a website that promised to “Fight Joe Biden’s Woke Agenda,” “Protect Our Children from Indoctrination,” and to “Uphold the Rule of Law and End Illegal Immigration,” the latter of which is actually the federal government’s job, although Republicans at the state level do seem terribly confused about that these days.

And then there’s Booth’s website, which appears to have been slapped together rather hastily.

Whatever teaching awards Erika Booth may have won, we’ll just note that if you have a great big heading like “Protect Our Children from Indoctrination,” with a photo of you teaching little kids, that would probably be where you’d want to talk about your rightwing plans for schools, like banning books or making the history of slavery happier, instead of a paragraph about how evil and dangerous undocumented immigrants are, and how you’ll “crack down on illegal aliens, especially those caught committing crimes.” Perhaps it’s unfair of me, as a Doktor of Rhetoric, to have such elite expectations.

In its editorial endorsing Mr. Keen, the Orlando Sentinel noted Ms. Booth’s hands-nowhere approach to press inquiries, writing

We’ve had no response to requests to talk about what she believes on state issues, and she still appears confused about what office she’s seeking. Most of her communications have talked more about immigration, border security and other issues that Florida legislators can’t do much about.

Many thought she was staying away from Florida-based concerns​,​ using the GOP primary to sputter about national issues and then taking an opportunity to pivot center for the general election in this blue-leaning district. Turns out we gave her campaign and the party way too much credit.

Booth continues to use her own social media to sputter about Joe Biden and chant “woke, woke, woke” as often as she can. What relevance does that have to District 35 voters looking for a state lawmaker who puts their needs first?

The editorial also noted that Booth was touted by a bunch of “ugly, deceptive mailers sent out on her behalf by special-interest groups and scurrilous, anonymous websites,” which flat out lied about Keen — and often didn’t even spell his name correctly.

You have to imagine Booth is fairly astonished at the outcome of the special election. She ran the most traditional Florida Republican campaign — snubbing the media, repeating empty rightwing slogans, yelling WOKE a lot, and relying on dark money and anonymous smears — but didn’t win.

We wanted to see if she’d said anything about the outcome, but her Facebook page has gone dark, and so has her Xwitter.

We can only assume that two-thirds of Iowa Republicans now believe the Florida-35 election was stolen by Tom Keen or Keane or Keene, whoever, the end.

OPEN THREAD!

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[Florida Today / Orlando Sentinel]

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