Challenge for U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson: Winning votes in 'Trump' counties against Rick Scott

The last time a Democrat not named Bill Nelson won a statewide race in Florida was in 2006.

Nelson also was re-elected to the U.S. Senate that year, in his first run as an incumbent.

If he is going to win a fourth term this year – his likely GOP opponent will be current Sunshine State Gov. Rick Scott ­– might depend on voters like Brian Haskins.

"I voted for Trump and I am a Republican," said the former teacher from Titusville. "However I will be voting for Bill Nelson again because Rick Scott did many horrible things to teachers and kids as our governor. Bill is also for the space program."

Voters in 21 of the state's 67 counties, including Haskins' Brevard County, supported Nelson in his last run in 2012, but voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

Those voters could be key in deciding the Senate race.

Consider how some of these counties have voted in recent elections:

• In 2012, 59 percent of the ballots cast in St. Lucie County were for Nelson vs. just 39 percent for his GOP opponent that year, Connie Mack IV. In the same election, St. Lucie voters gave Barack Obama 53 percent of the vote. But in 2016, Trump won the county with 50 percent of the vote to 47 percent for Hillary Clinton.
• Nelson defeated Connie Mack IV by 4.5 percentage points in 2012 in Sarasota County. That same year Mitt Romney defeated Barack Obama by 7.4 percentage points. The county went to Donald Trump by 11.5 percentage points in 2016. Then a Democrat won the special state House District 72 election in February by 7 percentage points.
• Nelson narrowly took Okeechobee County in 2012, 50 percent to 47 percent, even though Republican Mitt Romney took 59 percent of the presidential vote in the county. But in 2016, 68 percent of Okeechobee voters favored Trump over Clinton.
• In tiny Liberty County, Nelson eked out 49-48 percent win in 2012, even though Romney took 70 percent of the presidential vote in the county. In 2016, 77 percent of the county's voters were for Trump.

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All told, Nelson outpolled Mack by 290,000 votes in 2012 in the 21 otherwise red counties he won. Those weren't the deciding factor as Nelson won by more than 1 million votes. But if voters in these counties support Scott at anything approaching the level they turned out for Trump in 2016, Nelson would have a nearly impossible path to a fourth term.

Whether or not that happens remains to be seen.

The biggest difference between 2012 and 2018 will be the candidate Nelson is facing, said Joe Gruters, chairman of the Sarasota County Republican Party.

“Our candidate this year is going to be the toughest competition Nelson has ever faced,” he said of Scott.

Still, he doesn’t think Scott will win the county by the more than 20,000 votes that Trump did, but he predicted Scott will win by 5,000 to 10,000 votes

“The county has changed in the past six years,” he said. “There are more senior voters. Twenty percent of the voters will be new voters.”

More:Cotterell: And now, the main event: Nelson vs. Scott

Scott’s campaign has already run 10 English and Spanish-language broadcast ads around the state trying to define Nelson whom polls show still remains a relative unknown among a fifth or more of Florida’s voters.

Nelson hasn’t run any TV spots yet, but thinks Scott’s negative portrayals of him won’t hold much sway even in counties Trump captured less than two years ago.

“Fortunately, (those voters) judge me for me,” Nelson said. “And although that's getting more difficult in a highly charged political environment, there's still an element of truth to it.”

One fiercely contested battleground will be in Brevard County, where Nelson grew up, and which he also served as a congressman for 12 years. 

Brevard has supported the GOP presidential candidate – generally by overwhelming margins in every race since 1980. Voters there gave Trump 58 percent of the vote to just 38 percent for Clinton in 2016.

But in his three previous runs for Senate, Brevard supported its local son, though by relatively slim margins.

“That ends this November,” said Rick Lacey, head of the county’s GOP committee. “Brevard County is going to vote for Rick Scott.”

Stacey Patel, chair of the county’s Democrats, said she expects to get support of many voters who may have supported Republicans in the past.

Still, there are registered Democrats, especially in the Panhandle, who consistently support Republicans in all but local races.

In tiny Franklin County, there are 4,039 registered Democrats to 2,462 Republicans. Nelson won the county by one vote in 2012. Trump took the county by 2,381 votes two years ago.

Richard Bickel, a 61-year-old Democrat from Apalachicola, said it would be “silly” to say Franklin County is a swing county when it comes to the Senate race.

“I live here, I know my neighbors, and I am convinced they will vote Republican,” Bickel said.­

Nelson has been campaigning this spring in some of the 21 counties he and Trump both won: He canvassed with supporters in neighborhoods in Pinellas, Seminole and Volusia counties, spoke at Democratic dinners in Pasco and St. Lucie counties; and plans to meet with volunteers and supporters in Monroe County, which is the Keys.

St. Lucie County on the east coast has long been considered a Democratic stronghold, but in 2016 several precincts in the county flipped red.

Trump appealed to multiple middle-class neighborhoods in the county that voted for Obama. For Nelson to win, he’ll have to appeal to those Democrats who voted for Trump in 2016 and minority voters in the county who didn’t turn out as heavily in 2016. 

Jake Sanders, a St. Lucie County-based Democratic consultant and the president of the Florida Young Democrats, said he thinks Nelson should have no trouble doing so.

“They like him because he’s about Florida first, and they like him because he’s independent-minded and not a partisan politician,” Sanders said. “I think people here on the Treasure Coast are going to be with Senator Nelson.”

Nelson himself is not prone to panic and believes in the approach he’s taken to win statewide election five times.

Nonetheless, his campaign is contributing “more than ever before to the Florida Democratic Party's coordinated program, which is running a statewide field operation to talk with voters across the state, including voters in these counties where Bill Nelson has a strong electoral history,” according to his campaign.

At the end of the day, though, voter registration numbers and past elections, don't decide elections: Voters check their ballots for the candidate they like most.

Republicans have an overwhelming advantage in Sarasota County and Trump beat Clinton by more than 11 percentage points in 2016.

But in February, political newcomer Margaret Good, a Democrat, defeated Republican James Buchanan, by more than 7 percentage points in a special election for a state House seat from Sarasota. Buchanan is the son of U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, who has served the area in Congress since 2007.

Gruters, the county's GOP chair, said Republicans lost the House seat because Good was the better candidate.

“If you have the right candidate and the right message you can win in Sarasota County because the people here are smart voters,” he said. 

Contributing: Sheldon Zoldan, Fort Myer News-Press; Ana Ceballos, Naples Daily News; Ali Schmitz, TCPalm; James Call, Tallahassee Democrat.