 But first, the Florida Democratic Party's Take Back Florida tour stops in Clay and Duval counties today. Here now with more on that are Daniel Henry, chair of the Duval Dems in studio, and Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, is on the line. Thank you both so much for being here this morning. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Of course. And you, my friends, you can also join the conversation, call us at 549-2937, tweet us at FCC on air, email us at First Coast Connect at wjct.org. You can also message us on the First Coast Connect Facebook page. Now, Nikki, I really appreciate you being here. You're obviously in the car doing a whole lot today. You're currently zigzagging across Florida for a month on this Take Back Florida tour. So on this massive road trip, what message are you trying to share with the constituents? You know, we're sharing a lot of messages, but the main one is that there are so many things that are happening in our state. Economic collapse. We have an education system that is under attack, but the only way that we're going to take back our state is to do the work. So we're crisscrossing the state, going to areas that have been democratic strongholds, but also areas that haven't seen Democratic Party in a while, giving new life and inspiration and momentum to our grassroots communities all across our state, working on voter registration. Part of this tour is also announcing our $1 million commitment to voter registration and getting everybody back on their vote by mail rolls. And so this is an opportunity to not only lift up our grassroots organization, reconnect with so many people across our state, and really give Democrats that hope and faith that we need in order to start competing again in our state. And what is so important about the timing to do this tour now? Well, and that's really important, that we're doing the work year-round. You know, for too long, you know, one of the biggest criticisms of the Florida Democratic Party is that we don't show up until election time. Meanwhile, Democrats all across the state, whether it's our school board, to our city and county commissions, to our state house and state senators and our members of Congress, do work all year-round. And we have to be communicating with our electorate, we need to be listening. And so we kicked off this tour a year and a half before the November 24 election. To start putting in the work, to be listening to the voters on the ground, and to make sure that the message that Democrats deliver is resonating throughout the state. And I love that you bring up that so many voters, you know, they don't really think about elections until they're here and it's time to talk about them. While representatives, obviously, are working year-round. So what strategies are in place to encourage citizens, encourage potential voters to participate in local and state elections? You know, this is something that, you know, has played, you know, elected officials and people involved in politics for generations. You know, that most of the electorate doesn't pay attention until it is literally time to vote and sit in their face. But we're in a situation that is very different than in previous election cycles. And that's the extremism that came out of Tallahassee that has fundamentally shifted the way, you know, the state interacts with one another. And so right now you're seeing, for the first time in a very long time, that the policies coming out of Tallahassee are impacting people every single day. You know, right now, Florida is the highest inflation in the nation. So people are feeling it at food stores or feeling it at convenience stores and the gas pumps and they're seeing it every single day that is in Florida. They're also seeing the property insurance crisis. Whether or not you can even find property insurance, you've seen a 208% increase since Ron DeSantis became governor. You're seeing, you know, the lack of access to healthcare, the stories that are already coming out of the 15-week abortion ban as soon as the Supreme Court decides on the 15-week, the six-week pops into place. So the everyday Floridians are facing serious issues, whether to pay their bills, whether to pay their mortgage or their rent, or potentially leave the state. And of course, we're seeing the highest teacher shortage in the nation here in our state, teachers unwilling to stay in the classrooms because it's become a war zone. They don't know what to teach, how to teach it, you know, AP history, AP psychology in or out, Shakespeare is being under attack, not even being taught everywhere. You're seeing ridiculous policies coming out of school boards because they don't know how to move forward and not be removed from office. You're seeing things like having to get permission to use nicknames, like I'd have to have gotten permission to use nicky when if I was still in school. These are real consequences that are happening every single day in Florida and that's why people are paying attention now because of the impact these policies and how half you're having on your lives. Yeah, and Daniel, I'd love to bring you in on some specifics here because Republican registration has been catching up and eclipsing Democratic registration for the past couple of years and it kind of goes against historical trends and what we thought was going to happen as demographics skewed more racially diverse. So how are voter registration efforts going locally? Because voter turnout hasn't always been great and we always worry about people not realizing they might have lapsed on updating the registration. Yeah, and I think when you have these local elections that we just had in Jacksonville, despite the roadblocks that the state legislature and the governor have put in front of people to be able to get people to register to vote, right now with the law that just passed during the last legislative session, if you just do one mistake when you're registering someone, you may risk being charged with a third degree felony and having a $50,000 fine assessed towards you for each infraction. So this state is making it prohibitively difficult for you to be able to register people but despite the apathy that you're just talking about and everything that we're seeing on a day-to-day basis on television, people still have a remarkable ability to stay engaged, at least in the local level to try to make a difference. We saw that with the election of Mayor Donna Deegan. I was just at one of her community conversations that she had in District 11 on the south side last night, packed room, standing room only. She only spoke for about two minutes and then allowed two and a half hours of just straight questions from the audience. And like Linky was talking about, if you give people the opportunity to just to have a voice in the process and to have elected officials and candidates that are truly interested in hearing from them, then you can try to stem the tide and actually bring back some true democracy to a little local and statewide level. And for anyone who was listening to our show yesterday, that access to local leaders is something that sometimes does feel kind of unique to Jacksonville and this opportunity for a two-hour, essentially, question-and-answer panel with the Mayor is definitely something that I think a lot of us should take more advantage of. We have a question from Twitter from Jags Van Bryan. Why hasn't the Florida Democratic Party stood up against the unconstitutional attack on public education in Florida? And what are the plans to make sure Governor DeSantis doesn't spend the rest of his term ruining our children's education? I open that to Daniel or Nicky, if you'd like to go on that. Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for asking the question, and we have. We have ethics complaints that have been filed against the governor and his staff. There are lawsuits happening all across the state on education. We are out there every single day. In fact, last week we had a press conference in Palm Beach County on the first day of their school bringing heightened awareness to our education system. You know, as a proud product of our public education system down in Miami-Dade County, my mother was also a teacher. This is personal to me. I have a niece and nephew that is in the Palm Beach County public education system, and what they are doing is indoctrination. And if anybody's second guess is that just watch any of the Prager U, which is not an accredited university, that curriculum is now going to be in our schools. Watch me those videos, and if anybody doubts that the Republicans are trying to indoctrinate our children, then they aren't paying attention. So we are constantly bringing awareness and attention to the situation. Manny Diaz, who is the commissioner of education, was supposed to have a town hall down in Miami-Dade with Senator Chevron Jones talking about Black history. Manny Diaz failed to show up, and so we are going to continue to highlight the deficiencies in the Governor DeSantis Administration. There's federal investigations right now in the Department of Education on a bid process in the Panhandle. We are bringing light to all of these corruption and unconstitutionality, and there's also communication with the federal Department of Education as well asking for help and asking for assistance. So we are definitely not letting off our guard because we know that knowledge is power, and the biggest way to take power away from people is to take away the books, take away knowledge, and indoctrinate them with a right-wing approach to American history. So we are going to continue to fight back, and which is why the take-back towards war is so important because parents need to be speaking out against these policies that are going into their classrooms for their kids. I would add on top of that, if you were watching the legislative session back in January and February and March, you would see proud good-servant Democrats that were serving in the House and Senate, just like Senator Shevron Jones and Senator Tracy Davis and Representative Angie Nixon just really foreshadowing everything that we're seeing right now as school starts this week and essentially be gaslit by their colleagues in the legislature and say they're overreacting, it's never going to happen. And for us to get to a point, like Nikki said, where you almost feel like they're indoctrinating people, I mean, the idea that you'd ever get to a place where we have to have school-born members wear shirts here locally saying slavery was not a benefit to Black people, that even as a conversation worth having at all is emblematic of the point that we have gotten to. And sometimes it does feel like we're still... Just even bringing that up the PragerU videos, I mean PragerU, now that they're being used in the education system in Florida, I remember the first time it popped up on whatever internet search I was doing at the day and I saw a PragerU article and was like, oh, interesting, I've never heard of PragerU and it almost got me. They're very sneaky about the way that... They're very intentional about the way they present certain information. Minds you of veggie tails. In a way, in a way, but not nearly as charming. But public education and all the many issues that Floridians are facing at the moment, these are the kinds of things that you want, that you hope really energizes people to register to vote and then turn out to vote. So, Nikki, with you on this tour, how are you reaching out to voters who maybe feel like they are disenfranchised, their vote doesn't count as we always hear, or even no-party affiliation to get them to come out? Well, that's also why this tour is called Take Back Florida. That means all of us have a part in this. And that the Democratic message isn't a Democratic-only message. The things that we just discussed, property insurance, affordability of our state, which is a main issue that we're going to be talking about when we're in Jacksonville and Clay today, is about the affordability of our state. When you're talking about affordability, you're talking about an educational environment that teaches history, making sure people have access to health care and women have access to reproductive health care. Those are not Democratic issues only. Those are Democratic issues, those are independent issues. Those are even issues from moderate Republicans who understand that government overreach is never a good idea. And the same thing of removing of newly elected state attorneys and school board members is not democracy. And so those are not Democratic issues. And when we're going to communities, whether, again, we're Democratic strongholds and they need to see more Democratic involvement or they happen to be areas like Clay, we're having these conversations so that we can listen. We can say, look, we are a big tent. We have a very large opportunity to right some wrongs. Democrats haven't been in control of our state in almost 30 years. And it's time to let democracy back into our state. So even my dad is a diehard Republican, diehard Republican. And so when I had to tell him that I became chair of the Democratic Party, it was like walking down that hallway when you're a kid, knowing that you're about to get grounded. But even to him, I said, dad, you know, the only way that democracy works is when you have two strong parties. Right now we have neither. We have an extremism from the right and unfortunately a Democratic Party that hasn't been able to compete in the last few election cycles. We're in that we're talking about issues that really transcend artists and politics, talk about decency and humanity, and really protecting democracy and freedom and liberties. Those aren't Democratic, Republican, independent issues. Those are American issues. And that's the conversations that we're having with the people everywhere in our state. You're listening to First Coast Connect on WJCT News 89.9. We're talking to Nikki Freed and Daniel Henry about the taking back Florida tour and the voter registration efforts going on at the moment. We'd love for you to join the conversation. Call us up at 549-2937. Tweet us at FCC on air. You can also leave a comment on our First Coast Connect Facebook page. And it looks like Javon from Tampa is calling in and want to talk about Democratic campaigns. Javon, please keep it on topic and keep it short. Yes, I worked in politics in Jacksonville, Alvin Brown campaign, other state and local campaigns. And I just want to say that this is work. And until the Democratic Party gets serious about paying people to do that work, it's never going to make any advancement. I have been in those offices, the campaign offices, win or lose, blood, sweat and tears goes in and the volunteers are amazing. And whatever happens, the office is shut down and nothing happens after that until it's almost time for an election again. We have got to hire staff and pay professionals who can be there and continue this work because that is the only way we will get changed is to be consistent and to stop wasting money on TV where just all the dollars just go up in the smoke. Great. Thank you so much, Javon. Thank you for your call. Daniel, I agree. Oh, go ahead, Nikki. No, I say I agree, which is why we're starting this tour a year and a half ahead of time because we agree that we need to be doing year-round organizing, year-round campaigning. I'm even having conversations with all of the statewide elected, you know, whether it's School Board, House, Senate, City County Commission's deeds and everything in between, asking them to make sure that they don't shut down their campaigns that they get back into the field now. And you're absolutely right, you know, as far as TV is concerned, that money will go so much further if it was put on the ground into field to organizing and talking to the communities that sometimes don't watch traditional TV. You've got to make sure that you're going to where the people are. That's the only way that you're going to win elections is to build that faith, build that trust, and it's about a year-round through from the ground. And, Daniel, I'd love to talk about this through the local lens because we kind of saw this with Mayor Deegan's campaign. She didn't spend a ton of money on TV as her and her campaign, everyone working for her, they were in the communities. And it seems like it really made a huge difference compared to how campaigns were traditionally run. No, huge difference. And anyone that knows me that's had a long-form conversation about how to run a campaign will tell you that I love field. It's my bread and butter. It's why I think that true races are decided. And I think between Donna's campaign, all of our amazing candidates that won for property appraisal and for city council as well as the local party, we spent a tremendous amount of time knocking on people's doors for the last two years to really get them engaged about this local election. And I think the margin that she was able to win by, the hard work that her campaign kind of put into really talk to people on a consistent basis is emblematic of that process. I will say, though, that process is done through paid people, but also through volunteers when you can get people to buy into your campaign and really want to engage, not just write a check or donate on Act Blue. That's great. And we appreciate the donations, but also having people that are stakeholders like all of us that really want to make a change in our community. I think Donna said last night that if you really want to have true change, you have to really get involved. And that involvement makes a tremendous difference when you're at someone's door and you're trying to convince them why a local election is important for you to go for. And working on a campaign is a 24-7 job. I've had a couple of friends who have worked on various campaigns and the on-call nature of that is pretty intense. But being out in the community and specifically talking to people, especially those who might not always have a representative come and even ask what issues they're having in their neighborhoods, while you're going through and trying to encourage people to register to vote, update the registration, whatever it is, how are the Duval Dems going out and talking to the Black community, the Hispanic community, also the Black Hispanics, because Afro-Latinos exist also. They very much do. I think it's kind of two prongs. When you're doing voter registration, it's really important for you to kind of meet people where they are. I think a lot of times it's really easy if you just like set up a table somewhere. But being able to go into communities where you know there's a highly transient community where you know that there's a large percentage of people that are unregistered, but not only kind of just going to their door and just saying, hey, is someone registered in the home, but actually talking about issues that may be important to them. It's a conversation. There's a reason why they're unregistered in the first place. So you have to go to their door with a purpose. You have to provide an opportunity for them to understand why elections and why being involved in local process is important. And then trying to transition to that conversation about registering to vote, voting by mail, and really getting engaged. You have to have the commitment and the investment to be able to do that with this new program that the Florida Democratic Party is doing. It gives us an opportunity for us to be able to do that year-round. And it's a real chance for us to kind of continue that momentum going into the 24 election. What's the most common reason you hear from people to say why they're not registered to vote? Why doesn't feel important to them? What's the difference? I mean, it feels like there's always a... That's what they say. What's the difference? What's the difference? That's what they say? Yeah, like what's the point? Every politician is the same. They never deliver on everything that they're going to do. And I get that. I think a lot of times we've kind of gotten to a place of politics where you have candidates that kind of go out there, promise the world, and then under deliver. And people see that. But getting to a point where you talk about the little things that really matter, saying that if you elect this council person, they'll be able to fix that drainage ditch that you have of the flooding that you consistently see on a rainy day. Like Riverside sees that literally every single day when it rains. So does Springfield. Exactly. So relating to people on a local level of how their lives will be directly affected, just by the mundane things that they just never pay attention to, where they see as a consistent issue, but no one tries to fix, that's where you can make the real difference. It's easy to think about presidential politics and what's going on on a national level because that's what we see every single day, but bringing it local, showing what your city government can do for you and how you can make that change just on a minute level that will make your life a little bit better. That's where the difference is made and that's how you can make that change. We have a call from Charles from the west side. Charles, please keep it short and keep it on topic. Charles, are you there? Hi. Hi. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for calling. I was very concerned in the last cycle how many defections we had from the Latin community to the Republican side. What specific efforts is the party doing to get into the community and engage with the community because it's not a monolith. We've got to recapture that share of people that we lost in the last election. How are we targeted? Did we learn basically from our mistakes is what I'm asking. Great. Thank you so much, Charles. I appreciate your call. Yeah, of course we've learned from our mistakes. As our past commissioner of agriculture and engaged in not only 2020 and 2022 elections, things that I raised my hand and was waving hands and flagged that we've got a problem down here. Unfortunately, both the national and the party apparatus didn't properly address the issue. Since I became chair, we've been doing a tremendous amount. First of all, I've got a new appointed vice chair who's solely responsible for Hispanic outreach and engagement. Coming up with a plan, we're putting together a Latin American advisory council, an Hispanic advisory council, pulling leaders in from all across the state. We are also spending a considerable more time and attention deliberately on Hispanic-owned, different media markets, whether it's print, TV, radio. We have also dedicated additional funds solely to the Hispanic community, outreach, engagement. We are going back into a lot of Hispanic communities that we haven't been, including last week. I was in West Kendall in Miami-Dade talking to that segment of which is also where I was born in that community. And so we're also, last week, we started, or two weeks ago, excuse me, we started our Spanish-only media channel on all of our media networks. And we are also a lot of our press releases, most of them, press releases, social media content is in both English and Spanish, and when the opportunity rises, also in Creole. And making sure that our messaging is on point. So we are spending time training candidates on how to message because it is not monolithic. Growing up in Miami, I know that firsthand, you know, whether, you know, those who came and fled Communist Cuba in the 60s versus those that came later in the 80s versus those that have come more recently after Hurricane Maria from the Puerto Rican community are very different. So there's not monolithic. And making sure that we are on point on messaging and getting into those communities now. And the other big thing is that they are also, we're opening their eyes to the fascism and authoritarianism that are coming from non-defendants in the Republican Party, the government overreach, whether it is a healthcare decision or the anti-immigration law, or removing elected officials of opposition parties from the office. Those are all things that are helping us to message better on what Democrats stand for and who the Republicans are today. Yeah, that's, I fully, fully resonate with the fact that Latinos are absolutely not a monolith. And I appreciate you saying that, you know, different, different Latinos from different countries absolutely communicate differently because that is incredibly true. And it really makes a difference in how, how it is going into those communities and knowing how to talk to them differently across the board. That's with anything. We have a question from Brenda from the North side. She, Daniel, she wants to know how she can get connected locally. Great question. I love that, Brenda. So if you go to dovoldams.org and click on the take action button, that is the first way you'll be able to find out how you can get involved. So highly encourage you to go onto our website and get our information. And people are registering by mail and voting by mail so much more these days. For people who are already registered to vote and especially by mail, what do they need to know before going into next year's round of elections? Sure. There's going to be three elections next year. Sorry, I heard you making it here. There's going to be three elections this year, the March presidential preference, the August primary and the November election. That's the big daddy of all elections because that's when the president's on the ballot. Of course. We're going to have some important school board races that are going to be in ballot in August here locally. Depending on how redistricting lawsuit case goes, there's going to be seven candidates running for school board that have to pay attention to. So a lot's going on. Great, thank you so much. Daniel Henry, head of the dovoldams. Nikki Fried, head of the Florida Democratic Party. We appreciate you taking your time this morning to talk with us. We'll be right back.