In what has become a biennial ritual over the past decade in Florida politics, Democrats are again questioning their party leadership following the shellacking they took on Tuesday night.

Not only did Donald Trump improve on his 2016 performance in winning the Sunshine State’s 29 electoral votes for a second time, but the party also lost two incumbent congresswomen in South Florida and five incumbents in the Florida House. 

Several Democrats say that the lack of a sufficient ground game exposed them on Election Day.

“Not having a ground game is absolutely the reason why Democrats lost,” Orange County Democratic State Rep. Anna Eskamani said on Wednesday.

As Spectrum Bay News 9 reported last month, the Florida Republican Party and the Trump campaign said that they had knocked on millions of doors in Florida this year, only shutting down for a couple of months after the coronavirus put the state on a lockdown back in March.

Meanwhile, the Joe Biden campaign and the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) emphasized that for safety reasons, there would not be any direct canvassing with voters during the pandemic.

“While the FDP was taking a moral stance, Republicans were out-organizing them in every conceivable way on the ground,” St. Petersburg progressive activist Ashley Green wrote on her Facebook page. “They should have sunk the money wasted on mailers on PPE instead and at least have stayed competitive.”

Kelly Johnson, who ran an uphill battle in House District 65 against incoming GOP House Speaker Chris Sprowls, said it was frustrating to see Republicans door knocking in her Dunedin neighborhood, while she was directed not to.

“The human, face-to-face interaction that I really do feel, even though we were in the middle of a pandemic – we could have done safely with masks and six feet apart – we were told by the FDP as well as other committees that we were not to do that,” she said.

Another criticism that progressive Democrats in particular have railed against in the past which has resurfaced this week is that they are dominated by consultants.

“There are people who benefit for our party financially or by power consolidation, who really want to hold on to that, above winning elections,” says Jessica Vaughn, who won a seat on the Hillsborough County School Board on Tuesday.

“Consultants don’t make money off of field,” says Eskamani. “That’s one reason why you see such an investment on mail and television, because consultants typically take a piece of that investment.”

Many Democratic legislative candidates were also vulnerable to ads that referenced the state party’s ill-fated idea to apply and receive a $780,000 loan from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) as part of the COVID-relief legislation approved by Congress. The FDP ultimately returned the money, but the Republican Party of Florida attacked Democrats in television ads and mailers for months, without much of a response from the state party.

“That was just a really bad look for the Democratic Party,” Johnson said.

Eskamani said the party needed a better response to that and other attacks.

“We saw Democrats get attacked for the PPP loans, get attacked for ‘defunding the police’ and they (the FDP) might have issued one statement in response, but they didn’t do any mass communication calling it out and pivoting to their opposition," she said. "They really didn’t, and a lot of times it was just ‘ignore it. Don’t address it as being real.’” 

Not every Democratic candidate believes that leadership was at fault.

“I lost, but I went to bed knowing I did all I could,” tweeted Jared West, a candidate in House District 41 in Polk County. “What cost me was the boat load of mailers linking me to socialism & defund the police. The FDP provided a monumental amount of support to me as a candidate after I had earned it & put the work in & I am extremely grateful.”

On the other hand, Republicans are reveling in the Democrats problems.

“Just for the record...I think the @FlaDems should give @JuanPenalosa and the rest of the staff a lifetime contract,” Hernando County House Republican (and former state party chair) Blaise Ingoglia tweeted on Thursday, referring to the FDP’s executive director.

It wasn’t all bad news for Democrats on Tuesday. In a press release, the party announced Thursday that 225 Democrats had been elected to local, municipal and county offices across Florida. 

In both Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, Democrats swept the three county commission seats on the ballot and now outrank their GOP counterparts on both boards (Hillsborough now has a 5-2 Democratic over Republican lead; In Pinellas, there are 4 Democrats and 3 Republicans on the BOCC).

“I would like to thank all of our down ballot Democrats, our party leaders, our staff and our volunteers who gave their blood, sweat, and tears to help Democrats win,” Florida Democratic Party Chair Terrie Rizzo said in a written statement on Wednesday. “While we are confident in the ultimate victory of Joe Biden, I know our Florida losses sting deep, for our party, the candidates, and the five million Florida Democrats looking to build on the progress we have made. Together with our state and national partners, we need to do a deep dive to address data and turnout issues that caused these losses, and where our party goes from here.“