by Marc Caputo
MIAMI — Democrats have launched a new phase in their Florida ground war. Organizing Together 2020, a battleground-state initiative, announced its leadership team and plans to put more than 100 paid staff on the ground in 30 of the state’s 67 counties.
Chaired by the only statewide elected Democrat — Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried — Organizing Together 2020 is one of four groups independently operating in Florida, including the Democratic Party, the For Our Future super PAC and billionaire Mike Bloomberg’s political committee which is being converted from the remnants of his just-ended presidential campaign.
Florida takes on a singular importance this year because it’s the swing state Trump needs to carry to win reelection and, as of late last year, it’s officially his home state after switching residency and registering to vote here.
“It’s all hands on deck to beat Donald Trump,” said Ashley Walker, Organizing Together’s lead consultant in the state, who helped lead President Barack Obama’s successful elections in Florida.
“Florida is too big to start late — there’s too much at stake for us to wait,” she said. “Trump is here every other week, so it’s time for us to get moving.”
In all, Organizing Together 2020 is operating in six states along with Bloomberg’s political committee: Florida, Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The group is funded by a political nonprofit called the Strategic Victory Fund, whose donors are anonymous.
What makes Organizing Together different from the other groups is that it’s designed to end after the party names a presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in July, at which point its field offices, employees and volunteer corps are to be transferred over to the nominee’s campaign.
The group’s activities — hiring employees, registering voters, phone-banking and training volunteers — overlap those of the Florida Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee, which already has 100 staffers on the ground and has spent about $10 million over the past eight months organizing and registering voters. For the first time, Florida Democrats now have 5 million registered voters in the state.
In addition to the anonymous donors backing Organizing Together, a coalition of 23 labor and progressive groups aligned with both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are behind the group. In Florida, state Sens. Janet Cruz and Oscar Braynon will co-chair the effort.
Walker wouldn’t discuss the group’s plans for spending money, but Democrats familiar with the scope of the planned Florida operation say it could spend as much as $5 million and hire more than 100 staff.
“In the past, we would all be fighting over the same donors and stabbing each other. Fortunately, those days are gone,” said a top Democrat familiar with the plans in the state. “There’s just an incredible focus on beating Trump.”
And there’s deep paranoia about Trump, who pulled off an unexpected win in Florida in 2016 by turning out massive numbers of voters on Election Day to surge ahead of Hillary Clinton and beat her by 1.2 percentage points here.
Since then, Trump’s campaign has fully integrated the GOP turnout machine perfected by the Republican Party of Florida and Republican National Committee in the state. This cycle, according to the RNC-Trump campaign’s join Trump Victory effort, it has engaged 13,500 grassroots supporters throughout Florida and hosted volunteer training in English and Spanish.
At the same time, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has boasted of a sophisticated data operation that even Bloomberg’s former campaign manager and top adviser, Kevin Sheekey, admired when his candidate hopped in the race in November.
“If you have a British system and you’re Brad Parscale, you’re going to the president, ‘Hey, call the election. We’re looking great. We’re leading in the polls in the only places that matter. And my data is vastly better than anyone on the other side. I know how to target our voters. I know who our voters are. I know how to get them to the polls,’” Sheekey told POLITICO. “And no one on the Democratic side has anything equal to that. At all.”
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