A local man walks along the beach and surveys the damage after a storm surge from Hurricane Nicole collapsed the sea wall on Wilbur Beach, in Wilbur-By-The-Sea, Fla., on Nov. 10.Zack Wittman/The New York Times News Service
Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail
Two hurricanes hit Florida this week – one natural, the other man-made – both with the potential to reshape and perhaps reverse a demographic trend that has spurred rapid growth in the Sunshine State.
The natural storm was Nicole, which made landfall on Florida’s east coast early Thursday. As hurricanes go it was not a ripsnorter – barely a Category 1 storm, the weakest level – but it had Florida newbies running for cover. Supermarkets were crowded with shoppers stocking up, there were lines at gas stations and ATMs, and traffic was heavy along evacuation routes.
“We don’t usually get out of our lawn chairs unless it’s a Category 3,” long-time Floridian Rick Myers, a West Palm Beach boat captain, said of what he saw as an overreaction.
The other storm hit about 36 hours earlier, when a Republican surge swept the state in the midterm elections. Incumbent Governor Ron DeSantis, expected to be a GOP presidential candidate in 2024, won re-election by 20 points, with wide support in Miami-Dade County, a traditional Democrat stronghold. Marco Rubio cruised back to his Senate seat, as a red wave crashed over the state.
Together, these storms will test the resilience of a significant demographic shift that over the past three years has seen a steady migration of people and companies from high-tax, low-temperature, business-unfriendly blue states such as New York, Massachusetts and Illinois. Will the one-two punch of scary weather common to Florida and a bright red electoral map slow the migration – perhaps even prompt some to head back north? Will the popular bumper sticker “Make America Florida” resonate with the transplants? This past week put a sharp point on the issue.
For many who went to Florida during the pandemic and stayed because remote work enabled them to do so, 2022 was the first active hurricane season in a while. A few weeks before Nicole, Hurricane Ian devastated Florida’s west coast. And while Florida voters nudged the state to the right in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, Tuesday marked a sharp right turn, especially the Miami-Dade results, which showed a wholesale rejection of President Joe Biden’s progressive agenda by Hispanic voters, especially Cuban-Americans.
Mr. DeSantis wasted no time in warning would-be Floridians not to bring left-wing politics with them if they moved in. In his acceptance speech Tuesday night, he reminded people that “Florida is where woke goes to die,” a reference to his hardline stand against Mr. Biden’s policies. Mr. DeSantis refused to implement federal mask and vaccine mandates and kept public schools open during the pandemic, outlawed the teaching of gender identity to young schoolchildren and repeatedly warned businesses such as the Walt Disney Company to stay out of Florida politics.
Disney is not alone in feeling Mr. DeSantis’s lash. In the middle of the pandemic, he went after cruise lines using Florida ports over their compliance with federal guidelines on mask-wearing for passengers and crew.
What was remarkable – and somewhat counterintuitive for a leader seen as pro-business – is that both fights were with big drivers of Florida’s economy. Disney is the state’s largest employer, with more than 77,000 workers. The cruise industry is a major engine of the state’s huge tourism and hospitality sector, as the world’s top cruise lines are based in Miami.
On the morning after election day, the New York Post published a front-page photo of Mr. DeSantis and his family at his victory party with the headline “DeFuture.” Whether the new crop of blue transplants to Florida sees him – and Florida’s hurricane-prone climate – as their future, too, remains to be seen.