Money, candidates, and “a lot of blocking and tackling” Contacts in Florida have said for some time that the Florida Democratic Party was all but dead. And dead broke. Any leadership was coming out of Hillsborough County (Tampa), still active and well-organized under Ione Townsend. The election in February to “the worst job in state politics” of former state agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried as state chair may signal revival. Fried promptly got herself arrested along with Lauren Book, Florida’s senate minority leader, in a protest against Florida’s six-week abortion ban. So, signs of life. And a little fight. Over at The Bulwark today, consultant Steve Shale recounts, in his view, the decade of mistakes that led to Ron DeSantis. (I have not had time to check with Florida insiders for their take, so read on with that caveat.) An outside donor group in 2009 decided it would “supplement to the work of the state party” and construct a “long-term progressive infrastructure” built on the Obama organizing model. They were convinced Obama’s election represented “an ideological shift in the country.” What the “supplement” accomplished over time, Shale argues, was a hollowing out of the state party: In 2018, while most of the country had a good night for Democrats, we saw two statewide losses by less than 0.5 percent. A ton of money was spent by the outside, but once again, the party-centric coordinated effort was underfunded because the donors’ alliance had functionally replaced the state party as the focus. In 2020,…