Platform | Annette Taddeo For Florida Democratic Party Chair

OPERATION R.E.S.E.T.

A Plan to Rebuild The Florida Democratic Party From The Ground Up

Dear Fellow Democrats,

I’m running for FDP Chair for one reason, and one reason only: to build a party that will win more races up and down the ballot.

Everything we care about as Democrats in Florida – every cause, every issue, and every core value is dependent on one thing: winning more elections. We will not, and can not, change the direction of our communities and our state without it.

When I served as Chair of the Miami-Dade Democrats, we elected Democrats up and down the ballot. There wasn’t any magic to this work: we raised money, hired organizers, and empowered them to do the critical work of organizing their communities. We also had a strong multilingual communications plan, with rapid response. I had the vision to build a bench in city councils and gain control of the County Commission and eventually win the Mayor’s seat. We recruited strong candidates and ran a coordinated campaign to turn out Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. We won the races we targeted, got to a majority of Democrats on the county Commission, and have remained in control since. We even recruited a longtime community leader to take on an entrenched Tea Party incumbent county commissioner, and we won. That leader is now the Mayor of Miami-Dade County.

I know what we are up against. I served in Tallahassee for five years under Ron DeSantis, fighting every day against his demagoguery and all-out assault on Black communities, immigrants, working families, LGBTQ youth, public education, reproductive rights, and so much more. I’m also clear-eyed about the Republican opposition: I’ve been the target of their coordinated misinformation efforts, and even the victim of Russian hacking. I know they will stop at nothing to stay in power, regardless of the harm they cause to our democracy and the communities that need our help the most.

The mountain in front of us is steep. We need to be smart and strategic, and we need to buckle-up for the hard and unglamorous work ahead.

Our state party is at a critical juncture, and we must pave a new way forward — together. We must completely rebuild and reimagine our party from the bottom up. We must reestablish a fully functional Florida Democratic Party grounded in our shared values.

As the next Chair, my plan won’t be complicated. We will make the FDP laser-focused on the work that matters and will help us win elections, just as we did in 2008 and 2012 under President Obama.

This is about engaging communities, building trust, investing in programs we know work, and deploying new strategies in areas that desperately need new thinking such as candidate recruitment and training, media engagement, fundraising, data analytics, and much more. I am committed to doing it right— to build our party not just for the next cycle, but for four years, for six years, and with a clear vision towards the next redistricting eight years from now.

Yours in the fight,

Annette

A Plan to Rebuild The Florida Democratic Party From The Ground Up

Register new voters year-round, especially in high school and college campuses and in Black and Hispanic communities where we have lost our registration advantage.

The registration efforts by the party and Democratic-aligned groups have been an absolute failure. One only needs to look at the statistics: in four years, we’ve gone from a statewide Democratic voter registration advantage to a growing GOP edge. For too long, most voter registration efforts have been outsourced to outside groups. When I am FDP Chair, not anymore.

We will build our organizational capacity to register voters statewide and build a voter engagement analytics apparatus that will help us engage voters year-round, not just come election time, on the issues they care most about. This will be a top priority, not just to get a voter registration advantage, but also to have accurate data in order to use data analytics in our decision-making process.

Engage communities and voters where they are through authentic year-round organizing.

As Barack Obama showed us, the best, most effective organizing is done by deeply engaging communities not just during election season but year-round. We will engage with grassroots activists, communities of color, and young voters to have a real seat at the decision-making table and empower them at all levels of our organization across all 67 counties.

We will also work closely with local political, faith, and community leaders and leverage those relationships to have meaningful conversations – and, when the time comes, create a real statewide effort to turn out our voters and motivate a grassroots army of volunteers that is grounded in the core principles of community organizing as well as one that is strategic and data-driven.

On a national scale, without the influence and historic turnout of Gen-Z and voters of color in the recent elections, the red wave across the nation would truly have become a reality. In Florida, not only did these voters not turn out in the same numbers as other states, they showed much more support for the Republican Party than typically witnessed. This is a direct result of the complete lack of outreach, involvement, and constant presence by the FDP. Voters of color and young voters are the most important factor to whether Florida will continue to stay as a solidly Republican state for decades to come. The continued neglect of these pivotal voters will haunt Florida Democrats, and they will inevitably continue to lean toward the Republican Party.

Strong fundraising strategies by rebuilding trust with donors and creating a small-dollar digital fundraising program, as well as ongoing small and large donor engagement and regional community-focused fundraising events.

Every single thing that we need to do at the party requires money, from hiring staff, supporting candidates, and pushing back on Republican extremism. We know that major donor confidence is quite low, and we know the party has never built a meaningful small-donor program to unleash the potential of our Democratic base. To win, we need both sources of funding. I have the relationships and, more importantly, the trust of the donor community due to my record as a party leader and grassroots organizer. I am known for my strong work ethic, and I will tirelessly ensure the party has the resources it needs to win.

Earn the trust of elected leaders and candidates with trusted infrastructure and strong operations around the state, and build continued regional engagement with elected leaders at every level of government.

We will never outspend our Republican friends, so we need everyone in this fight to help us win. When I became the first Latina Democrat elected to the State Senate, I defeated Donald Trump’s hand-picked candidate by flipping a Republican seat from Red to Blue. And although the party’s “expert” consultants (who claim to know best) said I should not be the nominee, once the community resoundingly voted for me in the primary, we got everyone working together: my campaign, the local party, local elected officials, and the outside groups and we won.

We need to replicate this all across the state and truly invest in our Municipal Victory Project to win elections at every level. We will recruit strong, diverse candidates that reflect the best our state has to offer to rebuild our bench. We must also execute a candidate recruitment program that provides candidates with the real infrastructure they need to win elections, including fundraising and organizing support, media training, targeted voter engagement analytics, and more.

Further, we must reform how our party governs itself by centering diversity, equity, and inclusion and ensuring equal voting power for every single member of the State Executive Committee. Our outdated weighted vote structure has been in place since the 1970s when Florida had about 8.5 million residents. Today, our state population is nearly 22 million, and our Party should have a true representation of the strong diversity of voters in our party while securing large Democratic counties are duly represented. All this while ensuring the heart and soul of our party—black voters—have increased representation to match their Democratic registration and strong performance election after election. We know that every chair candidate for the last decade has promised to change the weighted vote, but no one has. I, on the other hand, have been a leader pushing for this change for years and have the voting record to back up my commitment to finally bring democracy to the FDP.

Targeted and aggressive multilingual communications that deploys the strength of the party’s messages with voters and highlights our elected leaders and their successes through proactive media engagement.

We must do a better job of telling our own story, and pushing back on Republican lies. We need to be in campaign mode year-round and develop a rapid response team. We can’t win the game if our team is forfeiting it by not even showing up and fighting. Our communications will be strong and constant, so we can stop playing defense and start playing offense with the GOP. We will work closely with our elected officials at every level to support their efforts and carry the Democratic message to their communities, especially our state legislators in Tallahassee.

We also will engage our local parties to help us with this goal, making sure they know what Florida’s elected Democrats are doing and training our local parties on how to engage with their media by creating a targeted, multilingual communications and surrogate program across all ten of Florida’s media markets and every platform (including TV, radio, print, and across all social media platforms from Facebook to Twitter and Instagram to TikTok). We will create a Social Media Ambassador Program with a toolbox, so local county leaders can have the ability to proudly defend the transformational successes that President Biden has led, and stand up to the autocratic tendencies of Ron DeSantis.

And when we have money to spend, we will be smart — making sure that when and where we are spending, we are doing it in places where Democrats across the ballot can benefit.

Operation R.E.S.E.T. will get the party back focused on what matters: giving our candidates the best chance to win so that we can start regaining ground at all levels of government from city councils and commissions to the state legislature.

This work must happen by coordinating closely with and investing in our county DECs and building up our Clubs and Caucuses. My immediate goal, should you elect me as the next FDP Chair, is to get all of the party’s energy focused on the building blocks of success: registering voters, recruiting candidates, and engaging communities. Because the more we win, the louder our voices will be when fighting for our values and the future of Florida.