The President and CEO of the Democrat super PAC Latino Victory Fund, Nathalie Rayes, admitted Tuesday that Florida’s midterm elections have been mostly abandoned by Democrats.

While Republicans in 2021 registered more voters than Democrats for the first time in state history, the Democrats have apparently realized Florida is MAGA country. Donald Trump won Florida by three percentage points in 2020, which started a trend of Latino voters moving away from the Democrat Party, Rayes conveyed to Politico.

There are many “folks who are kind of abandoning the state and we said, ‘We’ve invested too much time, energy and resources and we are going to continue investing because Florida is too critical of a state,’” Rayes explained. “We cannot build national Latino political power without investing in Florida. The state must always, always, always be part of the equation.”

Latino voters have historically been an important demographic to Florida Democrats. A large number of Latino voters of Cuban and Venezuelan descent live in South Florida, while Puerto Ricans have populated Central Florida. In 2020, Florida’s electorate was comprised of 17 percent Latinos, or nearly 2.5 million individuals. From 2016 to 2020, 30 percent of Florida’s overall growth in voter registrations were Latino.

Latinos, impacted by Democrats defunding the police, restrictive pandemic mandates, and the labor market flooded with illegal immigrants, have reportedly turned towards American First politics.

Democrats have noticed donors’ take on the political shift in Florida and are sounding the alarm. “I hadn’t really seen that happen before and that helps solidify this national narrative that investments and resources are better leveraged in other states we narrowly won,” an anonymous Latino Democrat operative complained to Politico.

“If Florida donors themselves are not pushing back against the national narrative, it doesn’t give a lot of encouragement or urgency for people to come and invest,” the person added.

To change the course of the 2022 midterms, the Latino Victory Fund has endorsed two candidates: State Sen. Annette Taddeo (D) for governor and radical Maxwell Alejandro Frost for Rep. Val Demings’s (D-FL) congressional seat.

According to Frost’s campaign website, he brags, “I pushed Joe Biden to agree to abolish the Hyde Amendment, an act that has limited abortion access for millions of people. I organized in the movement that restored voting rights to 1.6 million Floridians with previous felonies.”

Democrats are looking to replace Demings, who has mounted a bid against Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) for U.S. Senate. Congressional maps have not yet been finalized in Florida, but a proposed map shows Frost may be running in a smaller district comprised of mostly black voters.

Amid the redistricting shuffle, Rep. Stephany Murphy (D-FL) — of Asian descent — decided not to run for Demings’s old district and instead retired. Demings’s old seat may be the only Democrat-controlled district in Central Florida after the maps are completed.

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