Someone asked me earlier today how I was doing after Tuesday's unfortunate result. It dawned on me, I've been so busy I literally haven't even come up for air yet!

You see, on Monday I closed on a new company. I now own THREE GradePower Learning locations, Valrico, Riverview, AND now Windermere in Orlando. I started some new consulting work and have settled into the good life of hockey dad and Amanda's husband. :)

But here's the thing, while I may be the only one who defends democracy and the ligitimacy of elections whether they go our way or not, we didn't lose. No, we did AMAZING!

952

I told you we'd lose 20 seats more Democratic than this one before we fell, and we lost all of them. 

It's true, in every poll we did, we were tied even with DeSantis winning the district by 11 points... there was simply no data that pointed to him winning it by 20. 

Here's the thing, in any normal election there's a thing called down-ballot falloff. The number of people who vote for the top of the ticket, but don't complete the ballot all the way down. It is unheard of for a State Legislative candidate to outperform the top of the ticket in performance, let alone in the TOTAL vote count. But that's exactly what we did!

There's not a lot of positives for Florida's Democrats to take away from Tuesday, but I have 952 of them.

You see, in an era where our politics has never been more divisive and 95% of people are voting straight party-line, we OUT PREFORMED the top of the ticket by 952 votes. 

952 voters chose Ron DeSantis at the top, and Andrew Learned down below. 952 voters didn't vote partisanship, but instead voted for who they thought was the RIGHT person to champion their voice. 952 people gave me, and should give you too, hope and a path forward.

Any sailor can tell you, you can optimize your ship to get every ounce of energy out of the wind, but you cannot change the wind itself. We ran a GREAT race, our performance relative to the winds was the best anywhere in the state. We raised the resources, stayed disciplined, and ran a campaign on promises made and promises kept. And frankly, the results speak for themselves. DeSantis may have swept up and Democrats stayed home, but we did better relative to the wind than any other Florida Democrat anywhere.

Yet still, we cannot change the wind.

I called Danny on election night to concede the race, but he hasn't yet returned the call. I'll keep my head up and offer to help in any way I can. To keep our good work going and fight to make sure that this County, our State and our elected leaders do right by us, the people they represent.

This job was never about partisanship to me, it was about helping people, no matter who whey were or who they voted for. I'll continue to do that. So, if you need a tutor for your kids, call me. If you need a financial advisor for your savings, call my wife. I'm not going anywhere, you'll still find me at the Publix cookie counter, at the Brandon Ice Plex, and still cursing up a storm stuck in Riverview traffic. 

Tuesday's results only set us back, but they do not change the simple truth, that the arc of history is long, and it always bends towards justice. 

Onward,