THE START of Donald Trump’s second term has been dizzying. But to Republicans in Tallahassee, a southern capital city draped in Spanish moss, it all looks familiar. The administration is full of Florida politicos. Most prominent are Mr Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles (he calls her “the most powerful woman in the world”), the secretary of state (Marco Rubio), the attorney-general (Pam Bondi) and the national security adviser (Mike Waltz). Floridians will lead the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Office of the Surgeon General. With them come deputies and staffers. Back in 2017 Ballard Partners, Florida’s biggest lobbying firm, set up shop in Washington. This time the Southern Group, the second-largest, is too.
There is a long tradition of presidents poaching people from their home state to run the government. Jimmy Carter brought Georgians, Ronald Reagan brought Californians and Bill Clinton brought Arkansans. But that trio began their political careers in the states whose talent they brought to Washington. Mr Trump, by contrast, is a New Yorker who only settled in the Sunshine State in 2019. What, then, draws the president to Floridians?
Ask Republicans and Democrats alike and they will tell you that Florida is the “reboot” state. Exiles from Latin American autocracies move to Miami in search of more freedoms and northerners drive down I-95 to reinvent themselves by the beach. It’s a place where the American dream flourishes and where disgraced doctors become chiropractors. Since the turn of the century only one of the state’s four governors—Jeb Bush, Charlie Crist, Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis—has been native. And although Mr DeSantis was “geographically raised in Tampa Bay”, he writes in his biography that “culturally” he was influenced more by his grandparents’ Midwestern steel town. Being an outsider who chose Florida is precisely what makes Mr Trump at home there.
Most of the president’s picks got their start around Mr Bush, who was once kingmaker in Florida politics. But it was the Tea Party movement of the late 2000s that shaped the state’s political culture. It brought Ms Bondi and Mr Rubio into politics. Many lawyers and real-estate agents who then got involved did so not for ideological reasons, but to further their careers outside of politics, says Peter Schorsch, a political commentator. That gave Tallahassee a transactional flavour, where money and politics go hand in hand. “The mentality is make the deal and get on to the next project,” Mr Schorsch explains. The Florida political brand is all about “being aspirational, bucking conventions and hustling for outcomes”, says Paul Bradshaw, the boss of the Southern Group.
Ms Wiles, also a northern transplant, is as much a creature of Florida politics as anyone else. “She is no ideologue,” says John Delaney, a former mayor of Jacksonville for whom she was chief of staff in the late 1990s. He describes her as a “traditional Episcopalian country-club Republican” who is left of centre on gay rights, race issues and the environment. But more than anything she is pragmatic and “loyal to what the boss wants to get done”.
When Mr Trump left office in 2021 Florida kept his legacy alive, says Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation, a think-tank. During the pandemic Mr DeSantis opened businesses, did battle with wokeness and rebranded Florida as “the free state”. A partisan shift followed, as northerners migrated south for better weather and countercultural politics. In 2020 Democrats had 97,000 more registered voters in Florida. A year later Republicans had flipped the advantage and today they have nearly 1.2m more. In November they won a majority of non-Cuban Hispanics for the first time. The speed of the realignment gave Democrats “no time to build a resistance”, says Evan Power of Florida’s Republican Party. The legislature has now passed nearly every policy on its wish list: universal school choice, an abortion ban, tax cuts and permitless carry of guns.
With only four years to govern, Mr Trump has tapped Floridians to strike while the iron is hot. Fast and aggressive action demoralised Democrats down south and Republicans hope to do the same in Washington. Mr Power thinks that the nominees will return to their Tea Party roots and debloat government: Ms Bondi will curtail prosecutions and Mr Rubio will do less to “project American power everywhere”. With eye-popping cuts to the federal government, the administration is already trying to make America more like Florida, which has the smallest state workforce per resident. But Washington is not Tallahassee. There is more scrutiny and more checks and balances. Nor are their tactics making them new friends, Mr Power acknowledges: “The Florida fighter ethos is not always popular.” ■
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