Women Candidates

• 49% Nearly half of women candidates running for major state or federal office in Florida are women of color.
• 80% vs. 13% Black women candidates running as Democrats vs. as Republicans.
• 60% vs. 37% Hispanic women candidates running as Republicans vs. as Democrat.

Source: Florida Division of Elections; Susan A. MacManus, David Bonanza, Anthony A. Cilluffo.

Ashley Gantt already has two careers under her belt: Teacher and attorney. Now she’s embarking on a third: State legislator.

For years, Gantt served in projects at the local level in Miami-Dade, but she never ran for office. That changed when James Bush, a Black Democrat representing part of Miami-Dade in the Florida House of Representatives, voted in the 2022 legislative session to outlaw abortion beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape, incest or human trafficking.

“We have to undo the harm that’s been done,” Gantt says. She decided to challenge Bush, who had served in the House off and on for 30 years, and beat him. Because there was no Republican opposition, the District 109 seat representing a slice of Miami-Dade is hers.

Gantt says she ran for office to promote better opportunity for disenfranchised people, especially young residents. She taught social studies to fifth-graders in Marks, Miss., for two years with the Teach For America Mississippi Delta Corps and taught high school in Miami-Dade public schools for five years. “People are desperate for help, and it’s not because they haven’t been working and trying,” she says.

Roughly 350 miles up the Florida coast, Kiyan Michael has been campaigning as a Republican in Florida House District 16, encompassing eastern Duval County and Jacksonville’s beaches. A retired Navy wife and political novice who spent many years serving as a Navy ombudsman (a volunteer liaison between commanders and Navy families), Michael is motivated by a personal tragedy: The 2007 death of her 21-year-old son Brandon in a car crash. The at-fault driver was an undocumented immigrant who had been twice deported — prompting Michael and her husband to speak out for more robust enforcement of immigration laws. But by 2021, Michael felt she’d exhausted her impact as an activist.

“I’ve pushed bills — the ban on sanctuary cities. I’ve spoken in the House and Senate again for E-Verify. Now, sometimes you have to get in, in order to change things and to make lasting change,” she says.

With the endorsement of Gov. Ron DeSantis and an influx of big donations, Michael defeated a Jacksonville Beach city councilman and a former state representative (both white men) in the GOP primary with nearly 47% of the vote. If she beats the two NPA write-in candidates in this month’s general election, she’s likely to become the only Black Republican woman in the Florida Legislature.

While Michael and Gantt inhabit opposite ends of the political spectrum, both of their campaigns reflect the burgeoning trend of women of color entering Florida politics. Slightly more than one-third (203 of 593) of candidates running for major office (governor, a Cabinet post, the Legislature and U.S. Congress) in Florida in 2022 are women, and approximately 49% are women of color. That is a larger share than women of color represent in the population.

And they’re not just running: Like Gantt and Michael, many are winning contested primaries and advancing to the general election.

Black women candidates performed especially well in contested primaries in August, a critical first hurdle in the election gauntlet. More than half (53%) of Black women candidates won their primaries this year, compared to 41% of non-Hispanic white women candidates. Black women running as Democrats performed the best, with 56% winning their primaries vs. 33% of Black Republican women. Hispanic women running as Republicans, meanwhile, appear to have an edge over those running as Democrats, with 36% winning their GOP primary battles compared with 20% on the Democratic side. Combined, Hispanic women running for office had a 31% success rate in the primaries.

Setting the tone

Florida’s trendlines are important as the nation’s third-largest state by population and one of its most ethnically diverse, especially among younger generations. Political experts look to Florida as a harbinger of the nation’s more multiethnic, multiracial future.

When The Campaign School at Yale University kicked off its non-partisan, issue-neutral political training program for women in 1994, most participants were in their mid-40s and Caucasian. Executive Director Patricia Russo started noticing a shift around 2007-08. Most applicants were in their early 30s, and they were primarily women of color. “That trend continues to this day,” Russo says. “This year, as in recent years at our school, the majority of women attending our five-day intensive are women of color.”

Susan MacManus, a Florida political analyst and professor emerita of political science from the University of South Florida, attributes the uptick in Black and Hispanic women running for office to rising education levels, which make them more likely to attain professional success, build networks and be able to participate in the political process. “It closely tracks with the increase in their educational attainment,” she notes. “There is a sizable gender gap among persons of color graduating from college. Women of color are more likely than their male counterparts to go to and complete college.” And it’s a trend that she and her fellow researchers are seeing across the South.

State Rep. Fentrice Driskell of Tampa, the first African- American woman to be elected Democratic Party leader in the state House, personifies those findings. Born and raised in Polk County, she earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard (where she was the first Black woman to be elected president of the student government) and her law degree at Georgetown University. She practices business litigation at Carlton Fields. Representing Hillsborough County’s District 63, she first ran for office in 2018 and is helping build the Democrats’ bench.

“You have the first Black woman vice president. You have Stacey Abrams, who secured a major party’s nomination for governor. Those two ladies, in particular, are showing Black women that it can be done,” Driskell says.

“Women of color running will be helpful in terms of energizing their local electorate to turn out, which I’m hopeful will help with top-of-the-ticket races. If we can drive the turnout in our own races and do our part, it’s a rising tide that lifts all boats,” Driskell says. “The goal is to build something over time.”

Fielding a more diverse slate of candidates also has become a strategic imperative for Republicans.

Solving problems

For roughly 25 years, Susan Plasencia has worked for her family’s special events business in Central Florida, planning and staging large concerts and festivals, including Festival Calle Orange, which she describes as the “biggest Hispanic Party you’ve ever seen” along 10 blocks of downtown Orlando. Her brother, Rene Plasencia, a former high school teacher and track coach, served four terms in the state House.

Plasencia, who is of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent, says her work made her a de facto leader in the local Hispanic community: “People come to you and ask for help: ‘Can you help translate this for me? Can you help maneuver the application for a permit in the City of Orlando? Can you help me find out which representative that I should speak to on an immigration issue?’ ” she explains.

At age 51, she decided to run for the state House, aiming to flip from blue to red the seat held by Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith. Education issues are at the forefront of Plasencia’s agenda. She describes herself as a strong supporter of the state’s new Parental Rights in Education law, which restricts classroom discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade, and she’s been a longtime proponent of school choice.

Her Hispanic roots figured into her campaign narrative. A video on her website opens with her father, who, she says, “fought against Castro and communism” and immigrated to the United States with nothing but the clothing on his back. He started his own business, married her mother (who was from Puerto Rico) and raised a family in Orlando.

“I see America through the lens of my father’s eyes — a country of freedom, equality, opportunity and security,” Plasencia tells viewers, sharing concerns about record-high inflation, gas prices and shortages of products such as baby formula.

In the end, though, Plasencia says she wants her campaign to be about solving problems. “When I see that something is wrong in our community or I don’t like the way that it’s working because it’s not benefiting the people here locally, I tend to just go ahead and jump in to see what I can do to fix it.”

Campaign challenges

According to news site Politico, every U.S. congressional seat that Republicans flipped from blue to red in the last election cycle was won by a woman or a person of color — and the party is spearheading initiatives to build a more diverse bench of candidates. In 2021, the Republican State Leadership Committee — which recruits, trains and supports Republicans running for state office — launched the Right Leaders Network, aimed at recruiting and electing more women and minority candidates nationwide.

Former U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen — a Republican from Miami who was the first Hispanic woman to hold a seat in the Florida Legislature and the first Hispanic woman and Cuban American to serve in the U.S. Congress — lauded the presence of more diverse Republican candidates.

“The GOP has finally got the message, especially here in Congress, that we can’t be the party of angry white guys anymore. That was the model 20 years go, but America is changing, and everybody wants to be part of the solution,” she says. “They’re recruiting candidates. They’re holding campaign schools in minority pockets of communities. They’ll teach you how to go door to door, how to ask people for money, how to have a campaign plan, because often women of color have been shut out of these forums and campaign schools.”

Fundraising remains the “biggest stumbling block” for women of color candidates, Ros-Lehtinen says. “We are so used to, as women, to trying to raise funds for the Red Cross, for our kid’s school or the school band, but we’re not used to asking for money for ourselves, and so that’s been a problem,” Ros-Lehtinen says. The party’s aversion to taking sides in primaries also hurts women who are usually up against better-funded male opponents, she adds.

Candidates who spoke with Florida Trend say mentors also are important. Michael, the GOP state House candidate in Jacksonville, credits former Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Florida, with helping her through the process. “She was the one that took me by the hand and was like you can do this,” Michael says. “We need one another as women; we need that encouragement.”

Looking ahead, Michael hopes to serve as an example to other conservative Black women that they also can run for office. “There are still some barriers to be broken because there are mindsets that have to change, but I believe that hopefully I will be a catalyst of changing that by allowing people to know that they can do it and to inspire other women of color — you can run as a conservative and you’ll be OK,” she says.

Motivating Factors

Patricia Russo, executive director of The Campaign School at Yale, says the initial increase in minority candidates came during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. “All of a sudden, all these women of color were excited about the prospect of the first African-American president of the United States and were taking time off from work and school to work on the campaign. They kind of caught the bug. That’s really when we started seeing this phenomenal influx of women of color applying to our school, being accepted to our school, our five-day intensive program, and it has just grown since then,” Russo says.

Another surge came after Donald Trump’s election in 2016. “We were getting all these calls from women who could not believe that Donald Trump just got elected,” says Russo.

Alex Sink, the former Florida CFO who ran for governor in 2010, is the founder of Ruth’s List Florida, which helps to recruit, train and support pro-choice women who are Democrats to run at the state and local level. She says the group also has witnessed a surge of women (and women of color) running for office since 2016. “We went from endorsing 41 women in the 2016 cycle to doubling (to 87) in the 2018 cycle, and what was driving that? I’d have to say it was Donald Trump. After that 2016 election, it was a huge wakeup call for voters all over the country,” Sink says.

In the 2020 cycle, Ruth’s List endorsed 107 women. Sixty-five of those candidates — including 31 women of color — went on to win their races. This year, Sink says she’s seeing the debate over abortion motivating a new generation of Democratic women. “Roe is going to be on the ballot this fall,” Sink predicts.

In response to the demand, Yale launched a one-day basic training program in 2019. “We wanted to create a whole new pipeline for these women who were new to politics. They weren’t ready for the five-day program, but everybody’s ready for the one-day seminar,” Russo says.

Candidate Profile VENNIA FRANCOIS

Reflections

When it comes to politics, Vennia Francois describes herself as a bit of a late bloomer. The Orlando attorney says her family wasn’t involved in politics when she was growing up — but her parents, who emigrated from the Bahamas to Central Florida, put a strong emphasis on church and school, and Francois, the seventh of nine siblings, developed a passion for both.

Francois attended the University of Florida on an academic scholarship and followed a pre-med track — but she caught the political bug when she joined the College Republicans and started volunteering on campaigns across the state. “That’s when I really sunk my teeth into politics,” she says.

Her big break, she says, came during her first year at Florida A&M University College of Law when she met then-U.S. Rep. John Mica at an event in downtown Orlando, and he encouraged her to apply for an internship in his office. Francois got the job and spent the summer of 2005 interning on Capitol Hill. The following summer, she interned on the other side of the Capitol for then-U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, also a Republican. “I knew right then and there, I wanted to return to D.C. to start my legal career — it solidified it for me,” says Francois, who ended up joining Martinez’s staff as a policy adviser after finishing law school.

During her years in Washington, D.C., Francois was approached several times about running for office — “they saw something in me,” she says — and she immersed herself in learning the ropes, taking classes from the Leadership Institute, which trains conservatives, and participating in The Campaign School at Yale, which teaches women candidates the ins and outs of running for office. “That was an eye opener,” Francois says. “They taught us from A to Z what it’s like to start your own campaign and be a campaign manager.”

But it wasn’t until 2016, when her former boss and mentor, Mica, lost his seat in Florida’s 7th congressional district to Democrat Stephanie Murphy that Francois decided to take the plunge. By then, she was working in the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission but missed the “hustle and bustle” of the political arena. “I decided to move home to the Orlando area and prepare myself to see if I could do this and make a run for office,” she says.

In 2018, Francois finished third in a Republican primary in the race for Mica’s old seat. She ran again in 2020, that time in Florida’s 10th congressional district and won the GOP primary with 65% of the vote but lost to incumbent Rep. Val Demings, a Democrat, in the general election. She says it was an “uphill battle” given Demings’ high profile that year. “Val Demings had the name ID, and all of sudden she was on Biden’s short list to become vice president,” Francois says.

This year, Francois made her third bid for office in Central Florida in state House District 45, where she ran an ad describing herself as a “conservative Republican, woman of color” and “the woke left’s worst nightmare” as she campaigned on issues such as reforming the property insurance market, temporarily suspending the gas tax, relieving traffic congestion and tackling human trafficking. But she lost in a contentious, five-way primary to another woman of color — Carolina Amesty, who, if she wins this month, will become the first Venezuelan-American to serve in the Florida Legislature.

Despite the losses, Francois says she has no regrets and is eager to convey the lessons she’s learned on the campaign trail to other women, particularly Black women, who want to run for office but don’t necessarily have the same resources and opportunities she’s had. Among her advice for them: Get out and network with local leaders in the community, come up with a business plan that includes a brand and a message, and figure out how to raise campaign funds. “Money will allow you to brand and market yourself,” she explains.

Francois says she is troubled by the fact that there are so few conservative Black women serving in the Legislature and believes the GOP has some work to do. “I think it’s a great start to see for the past two election cycles that a lot of women of color have decided to run for office, but at the same time, they are still struggling in being able to fundraise, still struggling in being able to get endorsements and still struggling to be able to get voters to hear their message,” she says. “We need to help them get across the finish line.”

Candidate Profile JANELLE PEREZ

Paving the Way

When it comes to charting her own course, Janelle Perez, a Democrat running for a Florida Senate seat, learned from a woman who blazed the trail, former Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican. And in this era of scorched-earth partisanship, the ties that bind them come down to an important shared value: Addressing constituents’ real-world problems.

Ros-Lehtinen served in the U.S. House from 1989 to 2019 and was the first Latina elected to Congress. Perez is a moderate Democrat who worked for the congresswoman in Washington on the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

“Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen was my mentor and still is my mentor,” Perez says. “Ileana taught me what we deserve in a public servant. You see her out and around Miami-Dade all the time. Her constituent services were incredible.”

Although Perez and Ros-Lehtinen don’t always see eye to eye on issues, Perez says she learned from Ros-Lehtinen to find common ground on issues such as public safety, property insurance, housing affordability, teacher shortages and preparing Floridians for climate change.

Ros-Lehtinen says she is encouraged that more minorities are stepping up to run for office. “It’s very good because it gets little girls and little boys all around our state thinking, ‘I could do this. This is a career choice.’ Before, it was something that was removed from you. It really didn’t have anything to do with you and you thought, ‘Well, this is just something that white guys do.’ That’s certainly not true any longer,” Ros-Lehtinen says. “I think the sky’s the limit. It’s only going to get better and better as more women of color see that whether they’re Democrat or Republican, there’s going to be a very hospitable environment for them.”

Other Notable Candidates

Val Demings

The three-term member of Congress would be the first Black woman to represent Florida in the U.S. Senate if she unseats Sen. Marco Rubio.

Jeanette Nuñez

She is Florida’s first Hispanic female lieutenant governor, elected in 2018 as Gov. Ron DeSantis’ running mate.

Karla Hernández-Mats

Democrat nominee Charlie Crist chose the Miami-Dade County teachers union president as his running mate for the 2022 gubernatorial race.

Aramis Ayala

In 2016, Ayala became the first African-American to be elected a state attorney in Florida’s Orange-Osceola judicial circuit. She is the Democratic nominee for Florida Attorney General, facing Republican Ashley Moody.

María Elvira Salazar and Annette Taddeo

Salazar, the first-term Republican member of Congress from Miami, is running for re-election against Democratic nominee and Florida Sen. Taddeo. Salazar was a broadcast journalist before entering politics. Born in Colombia, Taddeo was the first Latina Democrat elected to the Florida Senate and was Crist’s running mate for governor in 2014.

Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick

A health care executive with a law degree, Cherfilus-McCormick became the first Haitian-American Democrat to be elected to Congress when she won a special election in January to succeed the late U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings. She is running for re-election against a GOP challenger in a district spanning western and central Broward County and a portion of Palm Beach County.

About the research

Data and statistics used in this report were collected and calculated by a research team led by Susan A. MacManus, professor emerita of political science from the University of South Florida; David Bonanza, a USF graduate in business economics and author of numerous publications on Florida politics; and Anthony A. Cilluffo, an economist whose research includes demographics and politics. The team calculated data from the Florida Voter Registration System, which contains information from the 67 county Supervisors of Elections throughout Florida.

To read more about the upcoming elections and catch up on results after Election Day, visit FloridaTrend.com/Decision2022.

Set in Motion

Trends show a continued increase in women’s political clout.

• The following is an excerpt from a paper presented by University of South Florida professor emerita Susan A. MacManus, Rutgers University Ph.D. student Amy N. Benner and Florida International University teaching professor Kathryn DePalo-Gould at the Citadel Symposium on Southern Politics in March.

Looking Ahead: There’s No Turning Back Now

• Over the past decade, women have gained political clout — as voters, candidates and officeholders — in every southern state, although faster in some than others.
• In 2022, the number of women filing to run is expected to be on the upswing in nearly every southern state, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.
• Demographers are projecting that the nation’s (and South’s) non-white residents will increasingly make up a larger share of the population — through in-migration, generational replacement and more multi-racial births. That pace is expected to be faster in the South, with its projected growth rate continuing to exceed that of the United States overall. Growth in the Hispanic population will continue to outpace that of other racial/ethnic groups.
• Other significant projections are that women’s college graduation rates will continue to be higher than men’s.
• Women of all races/ethnicities are more likely to register, vote and run for and win elective office.

Each of these projections almost guarantees a continued increase in women’s political clout in the South. Specifically, they mean:

For Candidates/Officeholders …

• An increase in the number of women running for office, notably Latinas.
• An increase in the number of women running for executive office. For governor in 2022, 14 women have filed (eight Democrats, six Republicans), including four in Alabama, three in both Arkansas and Georgia, and two in Florida and South Carolina.
• An increase in the number of Republican women running, especially in low-growth states that are still predominantly one-party states.
• A more diverse candidate pool (Gen Z and Millennials; bi-racial; broader gender identities).
• More younger women with children running; more efforts to allow childcare expenses as campaign expenses.
• More women contributing to campaigns (including their own).
• More women v. women races — in primaries and general elections.
• More women in leadership posts in state legislatures and state congressional delegations.
• More women in statewide executive posts, most noticeably governorships.

For Major Political Parties …

• Major party adjustments about how to reach younger voters (messaging and means of communication) and recruit more diverse candidates.
• Significantly less reliance/dependence on the “demographics is destiny” thesis, particularly when it comes to broad racial/ethnic classifications; greater need to micro-target by country-of-origin/heritage.
• An urgency to develop ways to appeal to the rapidly rising number of voters registering as independents/No Party Affiliation. NPAs have little faith in the two major parties; campaign specialists recognize they are generally younger and more candidate/issue specific than older more party-centric voters. In competitive states, they are a powerful bloc that can swing an election — if they vote. Women NPAs vote at a higher rate than men NPAs.

The Proof Is in the Headlines

• Southern women’s gains in political clout over the past decade are captured in bold headlines detailing record-level candidacies of women from different parties, races/ethnicities, and generations in the South. These two headlines say it best:
• “Black Women Look to Make Historic Gains in 2022 Midterm Elections; A number of Black women candidates have become front-runners in seeking their party’s nominations for statewide office, particularly in the South.” — NBC News, Jan. 15, 2022
• “The Bench is Loaded:” A Record Number of Latinas are Running for Governor. Only one incumbent, many are running in crowded primaries, without party support. But their presence makes a difference. — 19th News, Feb. 11, 2022

There’s no turning back now … only full speed ahead!