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Knocking on doors in FL-06: Finding Democrats (and moderates) to vote April 1st [1]

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Date: 2025-03-19

“How are we (Democrats or Josh Weil) doing?” “Can we pull this out?” “It’s a really MAGA area, I’m surprised you knocked on my door.”

These are the comments i heard from voters on Saturday knocking on doors in FL-06.

Hope Springs from Field PAC [dated website] volunteers have been knocking on doors in FL-06 since the first weekend of February. FL-06 has a special congressional election in April due to the resignation of incumbent GOP Rep Michael Waltz. We are canvassing on both Saturdays and Sundays right now. I spent 4 hours 45 minutes knocking on doors on Saturday and another 3:35 on Sunday. But the conversation that really stuck with me was when the voter asked me for my assessment of the race, and then proceeded to tell me that people who call him “with funny accents” ask him the same question.

Really, i reply, assuming people making these GOTV calls had a training or briefing giving them so idea about the state of the race. Now, let’s be honest, i don’t know the win number in this race. Hard to tell how well Democrats are doing here if you don’t know what the goal is. The strategic goal, not the grand strategic goal (which is to win). But i can tell voters what other voters are telling our volunteers. Outside of the question about Fine’s chances in this special election, the other main takeaway from out volunteers is the gratitude that voters have about Democrats showing up at their doors for this race. “We don’t usually see that here,” we keep getting told. This is a low-key race. The assumption is that the MAGA Republican will win, it is just taken for granted. One voter told one of our volunteers, “you should be up in Wisconsin, you’d have a greater impact.” “Isn’t it still snowing up there?” she said she replied. “No thanks!” “Remember,” another voter reminded us, “Florida has 2 Senate seats up for election next year.” Here’s the thing: knocking on doors gives Democratic, moderates and left-leaning voters in red areas cover — they don’t think they are alone. I’ve mentioned before that you will often find Democrats in red neighborhoods who tell you that they are the only ones on their block, city or county. That's almost never the case. This is even more important now that MAGA disciples are actively trying to suppress Democratic and progressive voices, online and IRL. One of things i try to remind the voters i talk to here is that it’s a secret ballot and no one has to know who you voted for. Most of the Hope Springs’ volunteers don’t come from within FL-06, but from FL-04 and Duval County, areas where we’d canvassed last cycle. Volunteers in Duval had flipped the Jacksonville mayor from red to blue and we started with some hope to do the same here. But this is a really red district (in the Florida map, it is the larger red district above the pinkish one above Orlando) that, quite frankly, has had trouble offering credible Democratic candidates in most races. That was the case in this election, as well, with Josh Weil hailing from the Orlando area (Randy Fine, the GOP nominee, also lives outside the district; Fine is a Brevard county State Senator. The local GOP candidates basically dropped out after Trump endorsed Fine).

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