jorts and meat raffles
How would I tell you I grew up in Florida without saying I grew up in Florida?
I was legitimately late to work one time because an 8 foot alligator was crossing the road and cops had blocked the street off to allow it to wander across.
When I moved to Chapel Hill for my internship in college, people asked me if I owned jean shorts.
I was so confused by this line of questioning.
Of course I owned jean shorts.
I also owned jean short overalls.
I typically paired them with a midriff top, being too tan and hemp necklace.
What of it?
It took many minutes (months?) before I understood that an affinity for jean shorts were emblematic of my home state - and this was funny to the rest of the country.
Editor’s note, more than a decade later jean shorts are back in fashion, beyond just Florida - a personal point of vindication.
The first time I traveled abroad - and I swear to God this is true - my point of reference for experiencing other countries was likening them to Disney.
A phrase I actually uttered in Italy at the age of 19, “Oh my God, this looks just like Epcot.”
I’m sure everyone carries with them quirks and traits from where they were raised. I mean, I met a person from Wisconsin once that told me on Sundays they had Meat Raffles at bars where you drank beers and different cuts of meat were raffled.
This blew my fucking mind.
Um yeah, I’ll take a Bud Light and three Sirloin tickets - and what the hell - enter me in the drawing for the Flank Steak.
But I do think I’m in a strong position to say that Florida typically takes the cake of one of the weirder places in the country.
While of course it’s easy to point at Florida Man or Matt ‘The Fucking Worst’ Gaetz as the easiest targets for what is wrong with my home state - I want to offer up another uniquely Florida situation, that unlike Matt Gaetz, may actually have something to teach us.
Floridians voted for Trump. Decisively (at least in terms of this election).
From Politico with a hover over my home county - the little blue beacon in the sea of red.
But then they also did this:
NY Times
Like seriously, WTF Florida. You know who supports raising minimum wage? WE DO. You know who does not? REPUBLICANS.
I recognize there are state vs federal arguments here. And that this goes into effect over six years and a thousand other detail points contributing to why this happened - but the argument remains that the state of Florida voted to reelect Republican Senators, House Members and the incumbent president, and then voted for a very liberal policy 60% to 40%.
The same thing happened with legalizing marijuana in South Dakota!
South Dakota was like, okay we love Trump. And we love also Republicans. Let’s elect them all forever.
Buuuuut, here’s the thing. We also like to get high. So we decided that you can not only legally possess pot for fun but also we feel like that just isn’t far enough. You are allowed to grow it, with not one, not two, but THREE plants per household.
Totally fine with us, but don’t you come to us with any of that radical Left, snowflake bullshit.
Fuck the libs, but also let’s smoke.
Look, I am not a marijuana consumer myself (I much prefer beer and cookies) but I am all for legalizing marijuana for a ton of super liberal reasons! I love that so many states said yes to these initiatives.
But it is categorically depressing that these progressive policies did not turn into Democratic seats.
Okay, what am I proposing?
Liberal policies are more popular than liberal politicians or the Democratic party. Especially right now when everyone hates each other.
What if in this off-cycle environment we turned policies into candidates.
All of the energy we spend getting people excited about a person, what if we did that for popular, bipartisan policies like...
Minimum wage.
Legalizing marijuana.
Common sense gun laws and background checks.
Addressing climate change.
Telling Matt Gaetz to use at least 30% less hair product.
What if we thought about these policies as our off-cycle candidates and whipped up as much engagement and support for them as we could, without putting our party or politician in the center of the conversation.
If we could use them as bipartisan, Trojan horses then as the election cycle came closer we could start attaching names to policies that were independently popular, instead of the other way around.
We already have the liberals, we are never going to get the far Right, but I want the 9% of people in Florida who voted for Trump AND Minimum Wage on the same ballot.
Not breaking news, but our current media environment has made everything so divisive. We have given this country a systematic permission structure to say “fuck the other side” before actually thinking about it.
In order to talk to those 9% in Florida we can’t yell “TURN BLUE” because they hate Blue (or hate politics generally).
But we can say...
Hey, you there! Minimum Wage 9%-er.
Yeah you, in the jean shorts.
Do you like weed? Or at least think it is ridiculous to put people in prison for it forever?
Yeah?
Do you also think that fucking murderous psychos should probably not be able to buy semi-automatic rifles?
Oh yeah? Us too!
What about Matt Gaetz? Should he maybe lay off the pomade a little? Maybe not so much time with the blow dryer and a little more time doing his job?
Boy, do we agree.
Look at all of this common ground we have!
Let us slow roll, across a bunch of different channels, all sorts of highly consumable facts and figures and feel-good sentiments about why you should continue to believe these things, and should probably be a priority to you.
Cool! You ready?
In order to make these things we’ve talked to you about for 2 years a reality you probably want to have someone in office who agrees with you.
As with everything I’ve suggested in this blog, I recognize it is not as easy as appealing to someone’s love of weed and jean shorts to turn Florida blue...but I do think this could be another way to diversify our strategy, especially when we don’t have to fight with the other side for air time.
We know the maps are going to be tougher in 2022.
We know that people are tired of politics and that we run the risk of losing momentum that gave us 2020.
We know we have to layer in something different on top of what we already know how to do if we want a different result.
I think this might be a really smart strategy - especially when someone way wonkier than me could pinpoint intersections of these policies polling well and a seat we are worried about in 2022. Seriously, turn me loose there!
Everyone is tired of the yelling. Let’s use our inside voices and product marketing best practices to bring people together on the shit we can agree on - which apparently includes growing pot in closets in South Dakota.
