Candidate for Florida governor David Jolly meets with Mason Podvin, 10, during the Florida Democratic Party annual Leadership Blue Gala at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida on Saturday, June 21, 2025.
PHOTO BY AL DIAZ
adiaz@miamiherald.com
The Florida Democratic Party invited a small group of hand-picked influencers to join their annual leadership conference at the Coronado Springs Convention Center this weekend to build online, grassroots momentum ahead of November’s election — but clips of leading Democratic Senate candidate Alexander Vindman retreating from their cameras filled the internet instead.
Content creators on Saturday posted various angles of the back of Vindman’s head, showing him surrounded by staffers. They included captions like, “Alexander Vindman refuses to be interviewed.”
“It’s disappointing because a majority of my audience are Floridians that are going to be making a decision between Angie [Nixon] and him in a month, but par for the course I guess,” said Gabi Torchia, who shared videos of Vindman rushing through the halls with the 42,000 followers of her artsyactivist Instagram account.
The Florida Democratic Party said that Vindman never RSVP’d to speak in the content creator lounge set up at their Leadership Blue conference, and a spokesperson said the retired Army lieutenant colonel’s campaign team was extra vigilant due to problems with hostile figures on the right following, filming and sending him written threats.
But Vindman’s bumpy entrance at the party’s banner training and mobilizing event exemplified what some party loyalists say has been nagging at them: The Democratic Party is moving full steam ahead with candidates that won’t be able to build the kind of online and grassroots momentum the party needs to make Florida a swing state again.
Vindman, a former National Security Council staffer, has a wide lead in fundraising in his Senate primary against Nixon, a progressive Jacksonville state representative. In the race for governor, former Republican Congressman David Jolly has the highest profile and the most cash on hand of any Democrat by far.
In a national election cycle where the wind appears to be at Democrats’ backs, two white men with conservative bona fides leading Florida’s Democratic ticket aren’t inspiring disaffected voters to drive a groundswell here too, some party members said.
“I think the party is missing the mark in terms of what voters want right now, right? I’ll tell you what I’ve heard: some people think that you need a white man to win,” Miami state Rep. and gubernatorial candidate Dotie Joseph told the Miami Herald. “And I reject that notion.”
She said that she was having conversations after Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings dropped out, with people telling her that she should run because “there are a lot of people who are just not going to show up because of Jolly and they don’t like his record. They don’t like the idea of a former Republican.”
Florida State Rep. Dotie Joseph speaks during a rally at the Little Haiti Cultural Center on Thursday, July 9, 2026, in Miami, Fla. The event called for protections for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders and other immigrants after the Trump administration stripped many of them of legal protections against deportation. Photo by Matias J. Ocner mocner@miamiherald.com
Florida Democrats have a massive voter registration disadvantage requiring them to win crossover Republicans or a large majority of independent voters in November to win a statewide election. That goal was top of Vindman’s mind when asked by reporters why he didn’t talk to the content creators that were following him with cameras.
“I’m not sure what their interests are, but I’m very much interested in talking to you all, answering your questions and figuring out how to make sure we bring the whole Democratic family together,” he said behind closed doors to reporters. “We have to figure out how to be the big tent, how to bring in independents and Republicans. So those are the challenges in front of me.”
Progressive candidates said the goal of winning over Republicans in November should not come at the cost of isolating some of their most energized voters now, including those on the left. And, they pointed to the last time Democrats ran a former Republican for governor — Charlie Crist lost to Gov. Ron DeSantis by almost 20 points — as a cautionary tale.
“We need to activate the base of the party. The base of the party, like Black voters, has been taken for granted for far too long. But we’ve seen when there are candidates that inspire that base, we can really change,” said Oliver Larkin, a candidate in South Florida’s 25th District and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. “Florida’s a very elastic state.”
Other Democratic progressives say they’re frustrated because they’ve seen their membership expand, but don’t feel embraced by the party or the candidates leading fundraising at the top of the ticket.
“I think our members are incredibly just angry in general right now at the Democratic Party, but I would say, we’re just out-organizing them, simply put,” said the Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus chairman, Matthew Grocholske, pointing to the rapid growth of the number of local Florida progressive caucus chapters in recent years.
It’s not only progressives who were unsure about the ability of Jolly and Vindman atop the Democratic ticket to drive out voters Democrats need in November. Rey Sordo, 25, is a first-time candidate running for the Miami state House seat held by Juan Carlos Porras. As a Cuban American, he said most people he talks to in his family and community have no idea who Jolly or Vindman are.
Neither are from Miami-Dade, a county that has had wide partisan swings and favored Trump in 2024, but has shown indications of a swing back to the left — including in the December Miami mayoral race.
“Considering the fact that they have the last name Jolly and Vindman and not something like Fernando, Sordo, or Vasquez, what have you, is already a setback for them as peculiar as that may sound,” he said. “Latinos tend to resonate with Latinos being reflected to them.”
Downballot candidates strategize
The Leadership Blue weekend’s schedule was packed with panels on voter outreach for local county party members. Orlando Congressman Maxwell Frost, former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and other Democratic electeds gave rousing speeches at a closing gala over a dinner that included pats of butter etched with Mickey Mouse imprints.
Candidates attended training sessions where they were told things like, “You hate data centers. Data centers are the worst. We do not like them,” according to a Tampa state House candidate Ben Braver.
Miami state senate candidate Richard Lamondin attended a similar session with Rick Wilson, former Republican and founder of the anti-Donald Trump Lincoln Project, where he said candidates were encouraged to be as outspoken as possible to connect with voters angry with the current presidential administration.
“People want to see fighters for a good reason because right now what’s going on in this country is bonkers,” Lamondin said, adding that while his campaign approach is more controversial, some candidates “trying to be fire and brimstone would come off as pretty cringe.”
But candidates were also grappling with their place with Florida’s 2026 Democratic Party — and what their campaigns might look like if Jolly and Vindman land at the top of the ticket after the August primary.
Army Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council, arrives at a closed session before the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees on October 29, 2019, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Alex Wong TNS
During a panel on outreach to Latino Voters, Juan Marcos Vilar, the president and executive director of Alianza Center in Orlando, pointed to a different statewide candidate, Cuban-American attorney general nominee José Javier Rodriguez, as a potentially mobilizing presence to reach Latino voters in Florida — including some that opted for Donald Trump in 2024.
“We have an incredible opportunity this year having JJR on the ballot,” Vilar told the room. “You’re the kind of candidate that can inspire and put this whole state on fire for this party.”
One of the two Democratic candidates in a primary ahead of a November election against Rep. María Elvira Salazar in Florida’s 27th District is former homicide prosecutor Robin Peguero. He said that he hopes his potential presence on the ballot in November will help a wider set of South Florida’s very diverse range of voters see themselves on the party’s ticket — even if two white men sit atop it.
“I should be the nominee to bring some balance to our slate here in Florida,” he said. “A younger voice, working class, son of immigrants, diverse, I’m pretty much everything, given I’m Dominican, Ecuadorian, Black. I have a little bit of all of it all, I speak Spanish. I want to help the party here in Florida show that we’re diverse and that we care about the issues that matter to our communities”
He and some of the other candidates running down ballot said they didn’t share concerns about Jolly or Vindman being uninspiring to Democratic voters.
“David Jolly was a bad representative for a long time. He truly was. And a lot of Gen Z people that I talk to do not like that he is a former Republican,” Braver, the Tampa state House candidate said. “But then they look at his policy. They hear him speak, and he has very good policy. He speaks on it well. He speaks like he cares about the people.”
Almost all Democrats the Herald spoke to were prepared to consolidate and vote blue no matter who the top of the ticket candidates are, and said they will continue to organize voters into November if Jolly and Vindman are at the top of the ticket. They said they don’t see Democrats finding any common ground with the leading Republican gubernatorial candidate, Byron Donalds, who is angling to become Florida’s first Black governor.
But in a state like Florida, Democrats need their base to show out in force for any hope of a statewide win. In his closing speech, Frost encouraged everyone to avoid the trap of demonizing those within their own party as Republicans try to frame Democrats as “radical” and “socialists” after a wave of wins by Democratic Socialists of America candidates in New York earlier this year.
“I don’t care if you’re progressive I don’t care if you’re a moderate. I don’t really care. They’re gonna call you every name in the book,” Frost said. “Please, Florida Democrats, don’t take the bait. Every second you spend, saying, ‘No, I’m not,’ is a second you’re not talking about the issues that most Floridians care about.”
This story was originally published July 20, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
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Miami Herald
Claire Heddles is the Miami Herald’s senior political correspondent. She previously covered national politics and Congress from Washington, D.C at NOTUS. She’s also worked as a public radio reporter covering local government and education in East Tennessee and Jacksonville, Florida.