Florida, once a swing state, has trended increasingly red in recent years. The Republican Party has a more-than-one-million active voter registration edge over the Democratic Party, and while most of the United States broadly avoided the predicted “red wave” last election cycle, in 2022, Florida was an outlier. Several Republicans picked up seats formerly held by Democrats, including in the Orlando area, after a contentious redistricting process and an influx of new residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But some younger progressives, dismayed by the right-wing takeover of classrooms and access to safe abortion care, haven’t given up hope on the state, where voters have just in the past decade — in the absence of state action — voted to raise Florida’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026, legalize medical marijuana and restore the rights of people with felony convictions to vote.
Some young progressives, like 23-year-old sustainability policy researcher Nate Douglas of Central Florida, are even running for office. Douglas, a Democrat, is currently running for the District 37 seat in the Florida House, a younger district covering East Orange County and parts of Seminole County that includes the University of Central Florida.
As of the August primary election, the district has a pretty even split of voters registered as Democratic (33 percent), Republican (32.7 percent), or Independent (33.8 percent). It’s currently represented by first-term Republican Susan Plasencia, who managed to flip the formerly Democratic seat red in 2022, following redistricting.
Douglas, who attributes Plasencia’s win in 2022 in part to higher Republican turnout, didn’t plan on running for the Florida House, where Republicans currently outnumber Democrats more than 2-to-1. But he’s not exactly a political newcomer either.
At just 19 years old, Douglas won his first campaign for local office, securing an elected position on Orange County’s Soil and Water Conservation District that he was later forced to vacate as a result of state legislation restricting who can serve in that role.
A graduate of the University of Florida, Douglas describes himself as laid-back, adventurous, and something of a policy and data wonk who was first moved to get involved in advocacy through impacts of the climate crisis. At the age of 17, while still in high school, he decided to cope with his “anxiety” around the issue by joining the progressive Sunrise Movement. Today has an undergraduate degree in Food and Resource Economics from UF and a Masters degree in Information System and Operations Management.
At Stardust Video and Coffee, a quirky coffee house in Orlando, Douglas told Orlando Weekly that he’s running for office to advocate for working-class families like his own. Both his parents are immigrants — his mother, a retired teacher from France; his father, a small-business owner and landscaper from Jamaica — who met at Disney World.
As a child, Douglas felt in his bones the impact of the mid-aughts recession on his family, and channels the anxiety, the frustration and stress of that experience into his own politics today. “There are so many families like mine who are working-class families that were impacted by the Great Recession,” Douglas told Orlando Weekly.
“And then, on the other hand, there’s a stark contrast between us and those at the very top who were engaging in stock buybacks, who were leaving companies with golden parachutes after committing crimes, who were committing Medicaid and Medicare frauds — like someone we know very well,” he said, with a wry laugh. “And I’ve always had kind of a fascination with that, and I’ve always had a desire to change that.”
Douglas, like many Gen Z progressives, was particularly drawn to the environmental justice movement, which (unlike Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis) believes climate change is real, with demonstrable consequences of inaction that Douglas’ generation will have to reckon with decades after the older adults in U.S. Congress and the Florida Legislature are gone.
“We know that the people who are going to be impacted first by the climate crisis are not the people like Elon Musk who want to build a spaceship so they can leave planet Earth,” said Douglas. “It’s people like my family — it’s brown and Black folks down in East Orlando. It’s our Latino community at Union Park.”
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, climate change disproportionately affects underserved Black and brown communities that have fewer resources to prepare for and recover from the effects of climate change on air quality, flooding and heat waves.
Douglas sees fossil fuel companies as responsible for not only knowingly contributing to the climate crisis, but also for shifting the blame of its effects on local governments that rely in part on the political will of state and federal government leaders. “I’m running right now because I think that we need folks like me who understand these issues, who aren’t intimidated by these big companies, and are willing to fight back against this — for lack of better terms — bullshit.”
“I’m running right now because I think that we need folks like me who understand these issues, who aren’t intimidated by these big companies, and are willing to fight back against this — for lack of better terms — bullshit.”
But, while climate issues remain something he’s personally passionate about, Douglas has broader plans as a candidate for state House. His platform includes addressing issues such as skyrocketing property insurance rates that are pricing Florida homeowners out of the insurance market, unaffordable rents for the younger residents of his district, GOP-led efforts to shift education funds away from the public education system, and restrictions on abortion access.
Douglas, who is pro-choice, attributes his motivation to run for Florida House in part to the first phone call he received after spending some time studying abroad in 2022 He was still at the airport. “When I landed in the United States, when I came back home, the very first call I got from my sister was that Roe v. Wade got overturned,” Douglas recalled, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned the federal constitutional right to abortion.
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Today, two years later, Floridians are now preparing to vote on whether to amend the state Constitution to allow for abortion up to viability without government interference. Currently, abortion is banned in Florida after six weeks of pregnancy, with few (and confusing) exceptions, according to doctors, who themselves can face criminal charges for violation of the law.
Douglas has garnered the support of elected Democrats like U.S. Congressman Maxwell Frost and progressive firebrand Anna Eskamani in the Florida House, as well as social advocacy groups and labor unions that frequently find themselves at odds with the developer- and business-friendly GOP. Support for his campaign is reflected in the sizable fundraising advantage Douglas maintains over incumbent Susan Plasencia. He’s packed over $262,000 into his campaign fund, made up of mostly small-dollar donations, compared to the roughly $150,000 raised by his opponent, as of publication.
He told Orlando Weekly he’s feeling good about his chances. After all, he’s running in a district where the median age is about 29 and where, despite electing a Republican to represent them in the Florida House last election cycle, 55 percent of voters also supported President Joe Biden over former president Donald Trump.
While others in his position might try to run as a moderate to appeal to more conservative voters, Douglas said that’s not the approach he’s decided to take. “I don’t play that kind of politics,” he shared. “I’m not going to compromise my values.” He’s running on a progressive platform. “And I’m going to stick with that,” he affirmed.
Realistically, Douglas doesn’t deny that Democrats are the minority in the Florida Legislature and that there’s little to no chance of achieving gains without being able to garner some Republican support. “I’m absolutely prepared,” he said.
At the very least, he feels confident that he could help advance meaningful solutions to address the homeowners’ insurance crisis — “because, quite frankly, people are fed up with it” — and draw in more appropriation funding from the state to increase public transit. “We are the least walkable city in the country, and I think that’s a shame,” he shared.
He also feels that he would be a more accessible leader than his opponent. “We never see our legislator,” Douglas claimed. On the other hand, “I’m present,” he said. “Folks in the community see me out there.” His campaign has tabled on a weekly basis at the University of Central Florida campus, he said, but he’s also bolstered his digital presence and has of course participated in traditional strategies like door-knocking.
And while he would be one of, if not the youngest member of the Florida House if elected, Douglas said he doesn’t believe voters see his age as a liability. “I don’t see my age as a concern, and when I’m at the doors, people don’t see it as a concern either,” he told Orlando Weekly. “They get more excited about it because they’re happy that there are finally young people who are involved in the local process.”
He also believes he offers more transparency on where he stands on issues. Plasencia, who squeaked out a victory in a competitive race against progressive incumbent Democrat Carlos Guillermo Smith in 2022, doesn’t openly advertise, for instance, her vote in favor of Florida’s six-week abortion ban last year — which is unpopular among many Republicans as well as Democrats — or her vote in favor of gutting diversity and inclusion initiatives from state colleges and universities.
She has, on the other hand, proudly touted her support for expanding Florida’s school voucher program, which siphons resources away from the public education system and allows parents to spend taxpayer money on TVs, paddleboards, and admission to Disney World and other theme parks.
She’s also listed priorities on her website such as protecting “parental rights in education” (a red-flag phrase similarly touted by DeSantis and right-wing groups like Moms for Liberty) and passing vocational licensing reforms.
“Who is more qualified?” Douglas asked, when questioned about how he believes his age will or will not factor in the race. “Is it the person who feels like they could actually be open about the things that they believe in, and transparent with voters? Or is it the person who’s very hidden about what they believe in because they know it’s unpopular with voters?”
Early voting locations for the 2024 General Election officially opened Monday, Oct. 21, and will remain open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily through Nov. 3. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.
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This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2024.
