Florida Democratic Party wraps 2025 with victories across the state after years of organizing

The pendulum is swinging - a note from Executive Director Rachel Berger

“Congratulations, it paid off, thank you, etc. FL Democrats are back” messages have flooded my phone this past week, but here’s the thing: we never left. For years, we’ve been rebuilding, brick by brick, race by race, volunteer by volunteer. We’re starting to see the returns on that work, but it’s only the beginning.

I’ve spent much of the last decade inside this fight. I started volunteering with the Party in college, got swept up in the 2016 of it all, and never really looked back. There aren’t a lot of people who can say they’ve been at the party for the past ten years. That said, there were moments, plenty of them, as I watched others move on to their next battles, when I stopped and asked myself: Is this still my fight?

Every time, the answer was the same: Yes, because kids deserve safe schools. Yes, because women deserve access to reproductive care. Yes, because there are millions of people in the South who vote against the odds every 2 years to be represented by someone who shares their values.

Yes, because 23 million Floridians deserve better than what they’ve been handed.

Over the last 30 years, Republicans didn’t just win Florida, they built a system to hold it. GOP control of the governorship and Legislature has given Republicans power over redistricting, judicial appointments, and the rules of the game, allowing them to lock in long-term advantages. In the past few cycles alone, they’ve used their power to make registering voters more difficult, create obstacles for citizens’ initiatives, and remove voters from Vote by Mail rolls—attempting to escape accountability at every turn. Now, they’re even coordinating to redraw our maps mid-decade.

We didn’t get here overnight, so we can’t expect success overnight, either. Over the past decade, our party has faced divestment and turnover that have resulted in weakened infrastructure and disorganization. We can’t turn things around in just one election, but we can build the scalable framework necessary to capture these moments, and capitalize on the energy we are seeing across our state in overperformances from Miami to Pensacola.

That’s why this year FDP invested in the party infrastructure by creating Pendulum, the year-round organizing program dedicated to sustained voter contact, voter registration, and candidate recruitment. We’re proud to share that from March to December of 2025, the Florida Democratic Party:

• Contacted 2.7 million voters through volunteer door knocks and calls

• 2.8 million phone calls

• 470,000 door knocks

• Cultivated 7,300 volunteers

• Engaged 36 county parties in vote-by-mail re-enrollment

• Trained 50 local organizations to lead Voter Registration

• Launched Voter Registration efforts on 6 campuses that engaged 12,000+ students

• Hosted 30 Town Halls throughout Florida to hear directly from voters

• Visited 8 rural communities from Cedar Key to Keystone Heights as part of our Front Porch Swing rural tour

• Reached over 10,000 voters across digital events this year

• Recruited 800 new Democrats to run for office in 2025, an increase of 184% since the last cycle

• Invested in 15 candidates as part of our Take Back Local program with a 66% elect rate

• Won 10 key elections across the state of Florida, some of those wins include:

• Eileen Higgins flipped Miami’s Mayor’s Office for the first time in 30 years, and she became the first woman to hold the office in 126 years.

• RaShon Young became the first Black Gen-Z member elected to the state legislature.

• Marlene Shaw flipped a seat on the Gulfport City Council, unseating a Republican incumbent of 12 years.

• Rob Long won FL House District 90 by 63% of the vote and overperformed by 18 points from November 2024.

• Tom Keen flipped the last standing Republican seat in the Orlando City Commission.

• Brian Bain flipped a seat on the Clermont City Commission in Lake County, securing a Democratic majority on the commission

• Yumeko Motley was elected to the Town of Oakland Commission Seat 3 unopposed, flipping the seat and becoming the first Black woman to serve on the commission

• Monica Matteo Salinas’ held our Democratic Majority on the Miami Beach Commission

• Florida Democrats overperformed by an average of 9 points in the nine special elections across the state in 2025:

• In CD 1, flipped Escambia County blue for the first time in decades

• In CD 6, shifted St. Johns County by over 20 points

• In SD 11, caused a 22-point swing in our direction for a Republican-held seat that elected Trump by 40 points in 2024

These stats and wins show that the pendulum is swinging our way, and that when focused message and relentless organizing meets voters who reject the Republican chaos from Tallahassee to DC, Democrats have an opportunity to make a critical impact in 2026.

This year’s victories are just the floor. The ceiling is up to us.