One Florida county says it all:
It was only six years ago that Hillsborough County Republicans scored Jeb Bush to headline their Lincoln Day fundraiser.
Republicans from across the region packed a glitzy ballroom to hear from the presidential hopeful. Tom Pepin, the local beer distributor, paid $10,000 to sit next to Bush, recalled Art Wood, the chairman of the dinner. To the crowd’s delight, Bush announced that his statewide campaign would be based in Tampa, a nod to the county’s longstanding influence.
“It was one of the best Lincoln Day Dinners ever in state history,” Wood said.
Tonight, during the latest Lincoln Day fundraiser in Hillsborough, local Republicans will welcome U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a brash newcomer from Georgia who lost her committee assignments in Congress after suggesting the Parkland high school shooting was staged.
Greene’s very presence in Hillsborough County is the latest demonstration of how much the local party has changed.
A generation ago, Hillsborough County was a Republican success story. Voters here swung the state — and the country — for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. Republicans maintained a vice grip on the county commission and constitutional offices even as Tampa grew into a thriving blue city. Party officials lured the Republican National Convention to Tampa and got Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to headline the 2012 Lincoln Day Dinner.
Democrats now control the county commission and most constitutional offices. Once a bellwether for the nation, Hillsborough has voted blue in four consecutive presidential elections.
Recent setbacks at the ballot box have generated growing dissent among Hillsborough Republican operatives and officials who don’t believe the local party’s leadership is focused enough on registering voters and getting local candidates elected.
“If you were to poll a majority of my colleagues, most would say we really wish the Hillsborough GOP apparatus was more organized and had a more familial feel,” said Rep. Lawrence McClure, a Plant City Republican.
The party lately has been defined by loyalty to former President Donald Trump and bringing in Greene, a staunch defender of the former president, is a continuation of that. Since Trump’s departure from office, the party and its leader, executive committee chairman Jim Waurishuk, have amplified conspiracies that allege the 2020 election was stolen.
Waurishuk regularly has Facebook posts censored for false or misleading content and he maintains, despite evidence to the contrary, that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was carried out by leftist groups. Elected Republicans have called for Waurishuk to step down over his incendiary social media presence.
Local Republican operatives and fundraisers have formed a splinter party, the Hillsborough Leadership Council, to recruit and raise money for local candidates.
“This leadership is the worst I have ever seen in my years being involved with the Republican Party,” said Hung Mai, one of those fundraisers. “It’s an embarrassment.”
Embarrassment is too kind. It’s pathetic. If these people didn’t have th tacit (and explicit) support of the GOP establishment they would lose and the party will regroup. Unfortunately, that’s not happening.