(PresidentialHill.com)- Manny Diaz, the chair of the Florida Democrat Party, abruptly resigned this week after liberals in the Sunshine State suffered historic losses in last November’s midterm elections.
Diaz, who once served as the mayor of Miami, sent a letter this week to both Florida Democrats and the Democratic Executive Committee, saying he would be retiring as chair “effective immediately,” and that the decision was made after “much reflection.”
He wrote:
“It has been a pleasure and honor to work with you, and, rest assured, I will continue to fight with you to get Democrats elected.”
The Republican Party has been on quite the impressive run in Florida recently. In the last election cycle, the GOP was able to flip seats in what used to be heavily blue regions of the state, including in Miami-Dade County. In addition, some of the key GOP members of the state scored resounding victories, including Senator Marco Rubio and Governor Ron DeSantis.
While DeSantis won the gubernatorial race back in 2018 by a little more than 32,000 votes, he won by about 1.5 million votes in 2022. On election night, he said the cycle was “the greatest Republican victory in the history of the state of Florida.”
That night, DeSantis said:
“It wasn’t just the best governor victory, of course. It was that, but we swept in. We swept in super majorities in the Florida Legislature. We have 85 Republicans out of 120 in our state House. We’ve never had that many before.”
On a national scale, Florida Republicans increased their presence in the House of Representatives from 16 members before the midterm elections to 20 after.
Across the board, this past election cycle was a disaster for Democrats in Florida, and Diaz is falling on the sword as a result.
In his letter of resignation, Diaz said liberals wouldn’t be able to win elections against Republicans anymore if they “continue to rely on voter registration to drive turnout, build field operations only around elections, and expect to get our vote out without engaging voters where they live; listening to them and earning their trust — helping everyday people with their everyday problems.”
According to state voter registration data, registered Republicans now outnumber registered Democrats in Florida. The GOP first overtook the liberals back in late 2021, and they expanded that lead to more than 350,000 registered voters as of the end of November 2022.
Diaz wrote in his letter that he wasn’t able to get enough volunteers for liberals, saying he ran into “obstacles to securing the resources and a long standing, systemic and deeply entrenched culture resistant to change; one where individual agendas are more important than team; where self-interest dominates and bureaucracies focus on self-preservation.
“Volunteer recruitment was not a priority. There was no energy or sense of community or urgency. Recruiting, training and building volunteers seemed to be an afterthought.”
It will no longer be Diaz’s thoughts to have, now that he has stepped down from the position.
