News/Commentary

‘Fried drew the short straw’: Desperate Florida Dems tap Nikki Fried to lead state party

February 26, 2023 | | Print Article

Florida Democrats who have been left wandering in the political wilderness have turned to a familiar name to chart a course back to relevance, former agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried who is so unpopular that she couldn’t even beat the hapless Charlie Crist in the party’s gubernatorial primary last year.

The selection of the former weed lobbyist, prolific social media troll and antagonist of Governor Ron DeSantis may or may not be enough to bring Sunshine State Dems back from the near death experience of last year’s midterm elections but it likely won’t be boring for as long as Fried is running the show.

The 52-year-old Fried beat out several rivals for the spot including former Florida state Senator Annette Taddeo – another failed gubernatorial hopeful – in the Saturday vote that took place at a party meeting in the Orlando suburb of Maitland.

Fried, who won the job of party chair with 52 percent of the vote will be tasked with picking up the pieces after the disastrous results in November that led to the state party’s former boss, Manny Diaz falling on his sword and stepping away after DeSantis steamrolled Crist by 20 points and the GOP consolidated its hold on political power in Florida.

Gov. DeSantis’ former top spox Christina Pushaw was among the first to offer congratulations served up with a side of reality to the sorrowful state party’s chosen one.

Pushaw was almost certainly joined by many Republicans in celebrating the turn of events.

Guffaws at the Florida Democrats’ latest self-inflicted wound rang out on Twitter.

The curious decision may have been at least somewhat based in the idea that Fried will be a high-profile foil for the enormously popular DeSantis, a rising GOP rock star who could be eyeing a 2024 White House bid.

What she lacked in solid policy credentials, Fried more than made up for with her lack of any shame when it came to attacking DeSantis, a man who she ridiculously likened to murderous Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in a radio interview last year.

“He is doing everything possible to take power away from local governments, taking away people’s abilities to protest, making it harder to vote, talking about, you know, banning books,” she said, “that’s what dictators do. Instead of listening and trying to govern with the people, he is trying to govern over the people, and, you know, that, I’m sorry, I’m a student of history, too, I saw the rise of Hitler.”

That prompted a response from the incredulous interviewer who asked, “Are you comparing DeSantis to Hitler?”

Fried made it clear that was exactly what she was inferring, “In a lot of ways, yes,” she replied.

She has also continued in her efforts to smear DeSantis as being tolerant of neo-Nazis by tweeting out videos of random yahoos who are given the attention that they crave from clueless leftists like herself who are only drawing more attention to their anti-Semitic ideology by seeking to score cheap political points against the governor.

Florida Republican Party Chairman Christian Ziegler said that before Fried can begin to rebuild the state Democrat machine from scratch “she is going to have to start by convincing the 65 percent of Democrats who rejected her just months ago.”

“Fried drew the short straw,” Ziegler said via text, according to Politico. “The losing by Democrats will continue and Florida will better because of it.”

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Chris Donaldson
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