What's next after the 2026 Midterm Blue Tsunami?

We are also watching what happened last night, the election day routing of Republicans across the country as Democrats look poised today to pick up the control of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. There you have it. As the races have been called by Fox News so far today, 237 Democratic seats have been won. That is 29 seats flipped. And in And in the Senate, seven seats flipped. That would give the Democrats. A very commanding control of the upper chamber as well in what has been a much discussed midterm election. And today we all await the postmortems from various politicians. It was not just in Florida where Republicans prevailed. They did have a handful of states where they performed well last night in various races, but largely it was the Democrats' night. Whether that was in Texas and James Talrico winning a Senate seat over Ken Paxton, a Republican candidate who was very troubled, especially in the late days of the campaign, and a blue governor for the first time since the 1990s. Ann Richards, the last person in Texas to be a Democrat elected. And then in Michigan, of course, Abdul El-Sayed winning the Senate seat there over Trump-endorsed Mike Rogers. So Democrats have flipped several. crucial Senate seats. And in terms of Florida, Governor DeSantis having a news conference earlier today. Here's what he had to say about the Democrats' performance here in the Sunshine State. Let's listen. They've spent a lot of money in Florida over the years. They've spent a lot, I mean, in 2018 they spent a lot, in 2020 they spent a lot. They did spend in 22 against me, and they abandoned in 24, because I think they realized they weren't getting a lot of bang for the buck. We do have a pretty strong voter base. Our voter registration has continued to improve and all that. And so I think the question is, if you couldn't win in this year, You know, what circumstances are going to create the opportunity for you to win statewide in Florida? I mean, Ashley Moody won by, what, 150,000 votes. Byron won by 100,000. Uthmeyer won by 130,000, whatever. Whatever. That's kind of the high watermark for them, right? Now, maybe if they would have spent money, maybe that would have had an effect. I don't think it gets them over the finish line, even if they had put money in. But look. Republicans ultimately will decide that in the sense that if these guys get in and do a good job, Florida will be out of reach. If they get in and fumble the ball, then all of a sudden you're giving an opportunity for the Dems to come back in Florida. What a night it was. The Democrats in Florida did not do as well as they had hoped, although it was a close race. I'm joined now by my dear friends, Lars Hafter, a former state representative here in Florida, and Tara Newsom, a St. Pete College professor, both of them political analysts, both of them two of the smartest people that I have met in my time. in the Sunshine State. It's good to see you both. Thank you. Tara, let's start with you. Just your reaction. We've spent a lot of time talking about politics in Florida. Last night was much closer than even some polls predicted in the governor's race. I'll ask you to start and then both of you, your takeaways from what we saw last night. historic, not only for the country, but for Florida. We elected our first black governor in the state of Florida. And another reason it's historic because Democrats, despite the architecture of Republican voter registration being 1.5 million more in favor of Republicans having a mid-decade redistricting, even though it was a good night for Republicans, it showed the vulnerabilities of the state of Florida. Democrats got awfully close. to the finish line. And although Governor DeSantis is telling the story about how it's going to take a whole lot more to get it over the hump, a lot of that has to do, I think, with candidate recruitment. And, you know, you have to remember, there was a number of people that moved into the state of Florida, a couple hundred thousand during COVID to keep their freedoms. Keep Florida free. Those people showed up to vote this election cycle. And we're also seeing a lot of those people actually not necessarily staying in Florida. There's a million less voters in the state of Florida this midterm election than the last. And so this may not necessarily hold for Republicans by 2028. Lars, same question to you. I agree with everything Tara said. I do think, though, that Florida put itself back in position to be in the national spotlight. In 2028, they could have written off Florida if it had stayed ruby red last night, but because the pendulum swung and we were close in the elections, you know, basically 50-49, 51-48, however it played out, the bottom line is that Florida itself put itself in position to be a purple state once again, as opposed to a ruby red state. And that's going to mean money, Jack. That's going to be money in the 2028 presidential election. The money in the U.S. Senate race, because remember, Ashley Moody only. serves out two more years before she has to be up for reelection. She's only serving out the remainder of Marco Rubio's term. And we've already seen Angie Nixon say, hey, I'm coming back for more. And there's really competitive candidates across the state here in our area. There was Leila Gray. She was a brigadier general who came very close to unseating Congresswoman Luna. And, you know, this is now developing a Democratic bench in the state of Florida. Republicans have a lot to be proud of in this election. But I think Democrats are saying this This is the litmus test for 2028. And they may be looking at Texas as a Texas blueprint to bring into Florida. And the top level offices went Republican, and that was good for the Republicans. But when you go down the ballot and you see that the reapportioned seats that the Republicans made here in Florida, all four went Democratic last night. So Democrats are starting to build a better bench that makes Florida more competitive. We saw throughout the country, Jack, that... The bottom line is candidate recruitment, getting the right kind of candidates to come forward really can make a difference. And it kind of offset some of the money problems throughout the nation last night because the candidates were so good, even if they had less money. Not so true in Florida, but a lot around the country. And I wanted to ask you as well, in terms of the post-mortem done by folks running races here in Florida, I can't imagine That a victory is a bad thing, except when it's a close one like it was. The governor's race came within a few points. The Senate race, not so much. But I wonder what lessons you think Republicans are taking away from this. In the districts that we maybe still haven't had called yet, the House District 27, Salazar versus Rodriguez down in Miami, some of these other very competitive. Districts where folks voted way to the left of where they did even two years ago. If you're a Republican strategist today, what did you learn last night? Well, I think you learned that mid-decade redistricting didn't quite work out. The four districts in Florida that had been mid-decade redistricted to advance Republicans all went for Democrats. And across the country, there were 15 seats that were It's sort of reconfigured to advance Republicans and 13 of those 15 went for Democrats. So the mid-decade redistricting is not necessarily a formula that will work. And I think the other piece that you got to pay attention to is that affordability is that goes crossover votes. It goes to no party affiliates. It's an issue that is not Republican or Democrat. It's a voter issue. So, you know, the economy's stupid. That's still true in 2026. It's going to be true in 2028. And it's been a sort of political maxim for decades now. And I think voters, too, want checks and balances. And I think you saw that in the fact that here in Florida, the legislature lost, the Republicans lost their supermajority in the legislature, and so they want more balance. And the fact that Florida may have gone and stayed Republican statewide, they're still going to have to work with the Congress in Washington, D.C., which went heavily Democratic. So there's balances every which way you look. And I think the voters are pleased with that idea because they see that one-party rule can kind of go off the rails, and now they've tried to bring us back to the middle to look at moderate policies. Lars, I'm curious, as a former Democratic lawmaker in this state, how you would assess David Jolly's campaign on the whole as someone who was a Republican congressman then running now, as I would describe him as a moderate Democrat. You certainly have experience building coalitions and really bridging the divide between parties in this state. How do you think he did it that? And do you think it sets groundwork? You touched on a moment ago the groundwork you think this set for Democrats in Florida. But I'd ask you specifically about the Jolly campaign as well. Well, I think he did a good job of building coalitions and actually not getting pushback by the party faithful. A lot of times when Democrats try to tack towards the middle or be inclusive of independents and Republicans, there's the party faithful that say, oh, no, no, come back to the party. You got to be totally Democrat. But he was able to weather those storms that didn't really pop up for him because he had a very sound message. And we saw him down in Miami-Dade on Sunday at one of his last rallies. And in that was a lot of Democrats, but there were a lot of independents and Republicans also in the auditorium. And when he went forward with the idea of talking about being inclusive, The Democrats were on their feet applauding, and in Miami-Dade in particular, you saw a red county that DeSantis had turned red, Trump had turned red over the last two elections go back to its roots of blue, and that was because of David Jolly and the kind of message he was promoting. We also saw history last night, Byron Donald's becoming the first black governor of Florida in the history of the Sunshine State. There was some concern, or I might even say a great deal of concern among some Republican strategists about the turnout numbers that they were seeing in places like Polk. Deep red places that went to Trump two years ago by 30 points. The turnout was reflecting of, in some moments, a Democratic advantage of one point or two. In the end, Byron Donalds prevailed. Why do you think this was a particularly tough race for him in the end, despite the victory? Do you think it really is voters holding local politicians accountable for the actions of the Trump administration? I think it has something to do with that, of course. National politics plays out in your local vote. But I think Byron Donalds also got really beat up in the primary. Listen, he had a big primary. It was a messy primary. And there was a lot of people who weren't really thrilled about Byron Donalds ascending to be the Republican nominee. For governor and I think some of those young male voters, especially young male Republican voters didn't necessarily come out to vote. We certainly saw that in our area, Tampa Bay and Hillsborough County. So I really think that he had took his licks in the primary and it was difficult to overcome some of that. He certainly wasn't the governor wasn't really warm to him during his early days campaigning. And so I think that cost him some some votes. And we saw the energy that was behind the Democrats in all the special elections over the past two years, where the Democrats turned out in high numbers and you had a lot of crossover Republican voters in that. And the NPAs play a really big role in Florida and we saw that in this election as well. So the closeness of the race. Had to do with the crossovers. There was going to be more R's to D's than D's to R's. And then the NPAs, which is about a third of the registered voters in Florida, they had a say, and that's what kept the election so close. Your analysis is so fascinating, both of you, that I've asked you to stick around for another segment after this break to get into more of the national picture tonight. We've been showing the balance of power all day and all night as these races continue to get called. Paul, there is the breakdown right now.