Chop Wood, Carry Florida, 4/2

Everything just changed

Hi, Team Florida!

Welp. Needless to say, everything we thought we knew about Florida’s electoral landscape just changed—literally overnight. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about the state Supreme Court’s awful ruling on abortion rights—we’ve been waiting for and expecting it for months, but it doesn’t make it any less painful to see. Starting in thirty days abortion will be banned at six weeks—when few even know they’re pregnant.

The silver lining in this obscenity of a ruling, of course, is that on the same day the court also ruled—if barely—to allow a separate abortion rights referendum to proceed; it will now be on the ballot in November.

In a sense, this is a huge gift to our prospects for November in the state. I’d much prefer it not come at such a massive cost in human suffering, but the plain truth is that these twin rulings—as well as a third allowing a recreational pot legalization referendum onto the November ballot—are going to energize voters wildly. We now have a chance to not only win the abortion rights ballot measure, but to possibly elect Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and oust Rick Scott, thereby flipping a Senate seat, and even, in a long-shot-dream-world scenario, win the state for Biden. And yes, I think it’s possible.

For an excellent summary of the various rulings and how they may affect the outcome in November I highly recommend this Jay Kuo piece.

After you’ve read it here are a couple of things I’d recommend doing now, if you can.

First, if you haven’t alredy, sign up to volunteer with and/or donate to Floridians Protecting Freedom, the coalition working to pass Amendment 4. Even with the enormous voter enthusiasm we’re going to see this ballot measure will be hard to pass, as it requires a 60% majority to succeed (rather than 50% +1 as we had in Ohio).

Also sign up to volunteer for and/or donate to Debbie Mucarsel-Powell’s campaign.

Also sign up to volunteer for and/or donate to the Florida Democratic Party—they have excellent leadership now; I think they’re well worth supporting.

I’ll keep you posted on other ways to help as they come in. But if we all do the above it’ll go a long way towards showing that we’re not going to take this BS lying down.

Thanks, all. Hang in there! This is tough, but we’re tougher.

Jess