Of the four counties in South Florida, only one has mirrored the state's results in the last four presidential elections — Monroe County. Florida was once a Democratic stronghold. And in Monroe County, Republicans rarely bothered to even run for office.
Now, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats in the Keys and, as of this election, all five county commissioners will be Republicans.
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WLRN's Nancy Klingener spoke with former state Rep. Ron Saunders about the shifting tides of politics on the island chain.
Saunders is a veteran of Keys politics and represented the area in Tallahassee for a total of 14 years.
RON SAUNDERS: I graduated from Key West High School in '72 and when I registered to vote, they don't tell you how to register, I went and registered Democrat. The person said, "Good thing you did." I said "Why?" They said, "Well if you'd registered Republican you wouldn't be able to vote in local races." I said, "Why?" They said, "Because no Republican has ever run in local races." Which was that way probably till the late '80s.
In the '80s what happened was people who were outsiders, for example environmentalists, started registering as Republicans because that was the way they could get straight to the general election ballot and not have to worry about a primary. They couldn't win a primary so they had to run against the establishment as a Republican.
Then when Ronald Reagan came into office — obviously in 1980 but he served through 1988 — the Reaganism kind of took control and people liked what he stood for, lower taxes. Reagan was just a very popular politician. It kind of made it cooler, for younger kids for example, to be a Republican. Before they never even thought of being a Republican but then it became acceptable to be a Republican. And then, as more and more people moved down here, they were national Republicans from wherever they were retiring from and it started shifting and a lot of people who were conservatives felt more comfortable in the Republican party.
WLRN: You served in the state Legislature from 1986 to '94 and then again from 2006 to 2012. How were those two periods different?
The '86 to '94, most of that was before term limits. So it was a Democratically-dominated Legislature and a lot of people had been there for years and years. And then right around '94, the Republican wave hit the country, it caught the state of Florida and we haven't had a Democratic governor since Lawton Chiles.
Democrats used to fight with each other. Our battles were not with Republicans. It was the conservatives versus the liberals, South Florida versus North Florida. Our legislative battles were more regional and philosophical. When the Republicans took over they were basically straight party line people and it became very partisan.
I've been majority party. I've been minority party. I always tell people it's a lot easier and more beneficial if you're in the majority party.
Since you got along well with Republicans and the dynamics were shifting, did you think about switching parties?
Yeah, that started actually in the late '80s. They approached me and tried to get me to switch. And they got Mike Puto. Mike Puto was the county mayor at the time and he called me about switching. They promised him $100,000 in his next election. I said, "Mike, don't do it." He said, "Why?" I said, "When you switch parties, the people you switch from hate your guts. People you switched to don't trust you."
Next time he was up, a Republican, unknown guy, ran against him and Mike lost the Republican primary. He's never been in office since then.
Four years ago, and this year again, I've heard from people from outside the Keys who were very surprised that Monroe County went for Trump. We seem to have this reputation as a bastion of liberalism but that's not really true, right?
When they think of the Keys, they think of Key West. And for Key West that still is true. But once you get outside of Key West, from Stock Island all the way to Key Largo, it becomes progressively more and more Republican.
At this point, Monroe has become a more Republican county than it's ever been before. As an example, we have five county commissioners — all five commissioners will be Republican.
In Monroe County, Democrats vote for the person, Republicans vote for the party. And I use the two examples of the county commission race. Where Craig Cates, Republican, outperformed other Republicans because a lot of Key West Democrats voted for Craig, the person who they grew up with, went to high school with.
Whereas the Republicans voted for Eddie Martinez, who most of them didn't even know who he was, against a very qualified Democrat but they voted straight party. So, Democrats voted for the person — Craig Cates. Republicans voted for the party — Eddie Martinez. And you see the result.
