Palm Beach County’s Red Tide, Hurricane Seasons’ End & The Great Debate - Top 3 Takeaways – November 30th, 2023
- Palm Beach County’s red tide. No, thankfully the red tide that wreaks havoc on Florida’s Gulf Coast hasn’t made it to Florida’s east coast. But something common to Florida’s Gulf Coast, conservative politics, is rapidly transforming parts of Florida’s once deep-blue east coast. Palm Beach County is still a “blue county” which is to say that there are still tens of thousands more Democrats registered to vote in the county than Republicans...though Palm Beach County did vote for the entire state Republican ticket in last year’s elections for the first time in the county’s history. An election result which also resulted in the flipping of control of the Palm Beach County commission to Republicans in the process. Many wondered if what happened last year in Florida, or locally in Palm Beach County, for Republicans was sustainable. Many argued, especially from the left, that it must have been the high-water mark. Well, if voter registration trends are at all an indication of what’s to come, the answer is that the GOP’s party was just getting started. Not only has there been a stunning off-election year political transformation with voters within this state – with Republicans gaining an additional voter registration advantage of about 300,000 voters year-to-date entering November, but as it turns out, Palm Beach County is proving to be ground zero for that political transformation. A year ago, Democrats led Republicans in voter registrations in Palm Beach County by 107,000 voters. Today that’s down to about 60,000 voters. To put this in perspective, Palm Beach County accounts for 6.7% of the state’s population, yet the county accounts for 15.7% of the gains Republicans have made in this state this year. In other words, Palm Beach County’s conservative transformation, at least by way of voter registration this year, has happened at a rate that is greater than 2.3 times faster than the rest of the state. At the peak of the Democrat Party in Palm Beach County the advantage stood at greater than 138,000 voters. Today the advantage is well less than half of that and is most recently speeding up the pace with which it's moving towards the right. Should this trend continue at anywhere near the pace it’s been, not only will Palm Beach County likely break for Republicans again in the future, but the county could potentially become something it’s never been by the end of next year. A red county. Red tide has arrived in a big way in Palm Beach County, and it has the potential to shape the political future of the county, and for that matter the state, for the foreseeable future.
- El Nino was our friend. Prior to hurricane season, back in March actually, I had this to say…(Forecasting is showing) The impact of La Nina going bye-bye, but also the now increased likelihood we’ll be saying hello to El Nino. This is the meteorological equivalent of a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other. When it comes to the Atlantic Hurricane season, the La Nina effect is the ultimate hurricane incubator. La Nina patterns bring cooler surface temperatures to the Pacific Ocean while doing just the opposite in the Atlantic. And along with warmer surface temperatures in the Atlantic, comes less windshear as well. For the better part of the past eight years and eight hurricane seasons La Nina stirred the meteorological pot. El Nino – the pattern which brings warmer surface temps to the Pacific, with cooler surface temps to the Atlantic along with a whole lot of windshear is here. So, goodbye La Nina and hello El Nino. And early in hurricane season I had this to say when El Nino had fully arrived... No, El Nino isn’t a sure thing when it comes to reducing impacts during hurricane season, but yes, it is Florida’s best friend during it. We’ve already been experiencing the wettest rainy season in years thanks to the emergence of El Nino. Typically, when we see tropical waves emerge from the coast of Africa and make a beeline across the Atlantic – the question isn’t whether they’ll develop, but how strong the storms will be and where they will go. Well, all throughout hurricane season they either didn’t continue to develop, or they went far away from the east coast of Florida thanks in large part to our friend El Nino. While he wasn’t able to help out our friends on Florida’s Gulf Coast, he was reliably there with lots of rain and lots of windshear for those of us on Florida’s east coast. Let’s hope he shows up again next year. And as we close out hurricane season today...cheers to what proved to be a completely uneventful hurricane season for the east coast of Florida this year.
- The Great Red State – Blue State debate. Since the peak of the pandemic, and certainly since last summer when Newsom was oddly running political commercials in Florida while running for reelection in California, many Americans believed that there would one day be a DeSantis vs. Newsom debate...in 2028. Until recently no one would have envisioned the Democrat governor of California, who at least literally as of now, isn’t running for president debating the Republican governor of Florida who is running for president. But here we are. This political cycle is already full of firsts with many more on the way, so why not. First you had Gavin Newsom challenge DeSantis to the debate, then you had DeSantis, accepting the challenge for the debate and thus tonight at 9 it’s the Great Red State Vs. Blue State debate which will be hosted by Fox News and moderated by Sean Hannity and that you can hear live right here tonight. The irony is that given the state of the GOP debates to date, this one almost certainly should be the best political debate involving a presidential candidate to date. And ironically for a non-party sanctioned debate for two politicians who aren’t running against each other in an election, at least yet, one may argue that the stakes couldn’t be higher. For DeSantis he’s desperately in need of some momentum to turn the perception of his presidential campaign around before votes start to count. A great debate performance against the Democrats’ most charismatic politician just might have the potential for non-Trump GOP voters to give him a second look, and at a minimum set him up in a better position to potentially make another run. Conversely, a poor performance against, in the eyes of many Democrats, “Gavin the Great”, might not just be another nail in his primary coffin but could potentially doom his changes in four years as well. As for Gavin. Well, he’s unofficially been running for president ever since he entered the White House when President Biden was away. A great performance by him could have Democrats already panicking about the prospects of running ‘ole Joe begging him to run...and regardless could set him up as the Democrat’s frontrunner in the future. Conversely, should Florida’s freedom fighter get the best of Gavin and his hair... The Democrat’s most prominent leader not named Biden could be taken out of the national conversation before ever having officially entered the national conversation. Will the debate be great? I don’t know. But Florida is and California used to be. Advantage DeSantis (although I bet Gavin’s a good debater).