Once upon a time, Pasco County was considered such a bellwether county in statewide elections that it prompted Jeb Bush to declare that “as Pasco goes, so goes Florida.”

But we’re a long ways from the days when Bill Clinton and Al Gore both took the northern Tampa suburb in their presidential runs.  In 2016, Donald Trump won the district by more than 21 points. 

Can Joe Biden keep the margin closer in 2020?

Republican political consultant Anthony Pedicini doesn’t think so, citing two factors on why he believes Pasco will remain strong for Trump in 2020.

One is the continuing migration of working-class Republicans moving from the urban core of Tampa into places like Pasco County. The other being Democrats who moved to west Pasco from the northeast in the 80s and 90s who now are increasingly voting GOP.  

“When Trump got on the ballot in 2016, you saw this anomaly happening in New Port Richey where normally Democratic voting, retired union members from Brooklyn, who had come down to Florida in the 1980s and 90s, went from voting Democrat to voting Republican,” he says.

There’s no greater example of the Trump effect in Pasco than what happened to then New Port Richey Democratic state Rep. Amanda Murphy in 2016. She originally won a special election to succeed Republican Mike Fasano in 2013, then romped easily over a Republican in 2014 by nearly eight percentage points.

But with Trump on the ballot in 2016, Murphy lost by less than seven hundred votes to then 21-year-old Republican Amber Mariano, despite spending four times as much money as her opponent. 

Murphy said that while she had great responses when going door-to-door in campaigning for the HD 36 seat in 2013 and 2014, it was much different in 2016. 

“Women over the age of 60, lifelong Democrats (are) now telling me they’re voting for Donald Trump,” she recalls. “Door after door after door.”

Murphy says on Election Day 2016 she went to the polls with her mother and met up with an elderly couple. The woman told her, ‘I haven’t voted in 40 years, and I’m dragging my husband out and we’re voting for Donald Trump today.’”

“I looked at my mom and go - I’m probably losing today,” Murphy says, laughing. 

Trump’s pull in Pasco County in 2016 was dramatic.

Whereas Barack Obama had lost to John McCain by just 3 points in 2008 and to Mitt Romney by 6.7 points in 2012, Trump thumped Hillary Clinton by more than 21 points.

Fasano went on to becoming the Tax Collector in Pasco after he left his House seat, a job he continues at today. A native of Long Island who moved with his parents to west Pasco County in 1970, Fasano says that it was all Democratic then, to the point where his father was discouraged from registering as a Republican.

“They told him, ‘why bother registering as a Republican because it’s the Democratic primary that decides who’s going to be your next sheriff. Your next property appraiser. School board member.’ And the list goes on,” he says.

A recent St. Pete Polls survey had Trump up by more than 17 points over Biden in this year’s presidential race (56.7% - 39.4%).

Pasco County Democratic Party Chair John Ford says that he’s heard from enough local Republicans to convince him that Biden will definitely outperform Hillary Clinton in the county this year.

“I’m talking to more Republicans that tell me that ‘the party has left me, and I want to do something to help Biden get elected,’” he says. 

But Pedicini dismisses the poll, saying it’s “way too early to start calling margins.”

Both Fasano and Murphy say that it’s likely Pasco will go strongly for Trump again in November.

“You’re going to see the same individuals that came out for Trump four years ago, the vast majority of them are going to come out again and vote for Donald Trump,” Fasano says.

Murphy says she looks at the numbers in Pasco and believes “they’re getting redder right now.”

“It’s probably going to be a rough election,” she adds.

Meanwhile, one Pasco Republican who won’t be voting this year for Trump is Fasano.

Fasano says that he won’t be voting for Joe Biden either, taking the same stance he did in 2016 in opting to leave his ballot blank when it comes to making a choice for president.

Trump’s “taken the character out of the White House,” says Fasano. “He’s taken decency out of the White House. There’s no moral compass in the White House.”