Florida Democrats mark 100-day countdown to election with events throughout the state

Tampa Democratic House Rep. Dianne Hart (far right) kicked off the Black Men's roundtable talk in Tampa as part of efforts by the Kamala Harris campaign on July 27, 2024. (photo credit: Mitch Perry)

Although Florida Democrats have expressed hope their down-ballot candidates might benefit from increased voter turnout due to issues like abortion rights and adult cannabis being up for a vote this fall, they now sound more confident about their chances with the ascension of Kamala Harris as their presidential candidate.

Sean Shaw, a former state representative from Tampa and the Democratic Party’s nominee for attorney general in 2018, is now running to serve on the Hillsborough County Commission this November. He believes his own chances of getting elected have been boosted with the change at the top of the ticket.

“I’m excited not only for the country but certainly for my race, to be candid about it,” he said on Saturday — adding that the energy and excitement within the Florida Democratic Party “shows that people wanted something different.”

Shaw says that while he remains a big fan of President Biden and will never “forget as long as I live what he did” in ceding his reelection to Harris, “the polling was what it was and here we are.”

Shaw spoke on Saturday at the New Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in East Tampa, moderating a Tampa Black Men’s Roundtable discussion, part of more than 36 “100 Days of Action” events that the Florida Democratic Party held up and down the state throughout the weekend.

Jasmine Burney-Clark, Florida state director of the Harris for president campaign, said last week that more than 7,000 Floridians had asked to volunteer for the campaign since Harris became the presumed nominee (the Harris campaign said in a statement on Sunday that it had raised more than $200 million and signed up more than 17,000 new volunteers).

“This is not normal,” Shaw said about the intense energy that has been ignited over Harris replacing Biden on the ticket. “This is a thing, and it’s moving faster and stronger than even I anticipated.”

Key issues

During the discussion on Saturday, a panel of Black men talked about what they said were some of the key issues that they hope the Harris campaign will address in the run-up to the Nov. 5 election. They mentioned the “assault on public education,” expanding Medicaid (which is a state issue, not a federal one), homeowners’ insurance, law enforcement and police accountability, and the economic disparities between Black and white households.

“If we can get access to higher paying wages, the training for those types of jobs, and the removal of the obstacles and hurdles that have prevented us from being able to take care of our families in a viable way, you will see a strengthening of our communities,” said the Rev. Larry Roundtree of New Mt. Zion.

“You will see a reduction of crime, you will see greater education access, but we’ve got to be able to earn wages that are fair and just for the work that we are doing.”

Keto Nord Hodges, a longtime educator, said he hopes for incentives for Black men to get into teaching.

“The majority of Black men today do not gravitate to the educational arena because in Florida the salaries are so low,” he said, noting that starting salaries are now $47,000, ranking 26th in the nation. Average teacher pay ranks at No. 50, according to the National Education Association .

“There has been research that shows that when young Black boys and girls have Black male teachers in front of them, their achievement is significantly higher than when they don’t,” Hodges said.

(A 2018 paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that black students who are exposed to one black teacher by third grade were 13 percent more likely to enroll in college. Those who had two black teachers were 32 percent more likely to enroll in college).

‘We do not want to go back’

Marlowe Jones, a Pasco County organizer with the group Faith in Florida, said the energy he had been tapping into with millennial and Generation Z voters had “changed over the last couple of days.”

“Hope has been inspiring people to get out in the streets and mobilize and organize, and that is exactly what we need to do because we do not want to go back,” he told the audience, which consisted of about two dozen young Black men.

“And that is exactly what we need, because we do not want to go back. We don’t want to go back to the 1960s or what I call today Jim Crow 2.0. We are tired of giving them supermajorities in the state Legislature. It’s time that we get up. It’s time that we organize and tell our children who your state legislators are, and how they’re able to pass these bills because they have unchecked power.”

“You are the future,” Jones declared. “If every single one of you gets out and votes and calls 10 of your homeboys and your homegirls and tell them how important it is to vote, I promise you we’re going to change this election.”