Florida’s former agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried was elected to lead the state’s battered Democratic Party on Saturday. Fried, who lost to former Gov. Charlie Christ in the gubernatorial primary, promised to rebuild the party “from the ground up” in her bid to outstrip Annette Tadeo, a former state senator who also lost her seat last year. The 2022 midterms saw Democrats take a beating across the Sunshine State, with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis cruising to re-election by nearly 19 points and his party gaining a supermajority in the statehouse. In response, Fried—an outspoken critic of DeSantis’ policies—promised to redouble Democratic efforts to focus on voter registration, seeking to regain a numerical advantage Democrats held in the Obama era but lost under Trump.
