‘The grassroots have left DeSantis’: Trump crushes Florida governor in Miami-Dade GOP straw poll

“[Trump] is charismatic and he knows how this game works in terms of loyalty and networking,” said Miami-Dade Commissioner Kevin Cabrera, who attended the meeting and voted for the former president.

Cabrera was a Florida state director for Trump and the Republican National Committee during the 2020 election. The straw poll, Cabrera said, “proves Miami-Dade County is Trump country.”

A video obtained by POLITICO of the meeting shows the crowd in the room erupting in applause then chanting, “Trump, Trump, Trump,” after state Rep. Alex Rizo, a DeSantis supporter and chair of Miami-Dade Republicans, announced the election results. The members recorded their votes on paper ballots.

The results show a stunning defeat for DeSantis, who was the first Republican in 20 years to flip Miami-Dade County from Democrat to Republican during his 2022 gubernatorial reelection victory. Ever since DeSantis entered the presidential race,
polling shows the broad support he’d seen among certain key constituencies in Florida — Hispanics, women and independents — has fallen.

“I do think he has lost support,” said one member who attended the meeting, who asked to remain anonymous so as not to inflame DeSantis given that he’ll still have three years left as governor if he drops out of the presidential race. “He and many of them have tried to move to the right of Trump. That’s not possible. Trump reflects the right. He is the standard.”

Another member who attended the GOP meeting, granted anonymity to freely discuss the vote, said of the straw poll: “It’s confirmation of what everyone’s been reporting for a while: that the grassroots have left DeSantis.”

Trump has worked to prove dominance over DeSantis in Florida through endorsements from the Republican congressional delegation and flipping some state lawmakers from DeSantis to his side, though most members of the GOP-controlled Legislature endorsed DeSantis.

Under pressure from Trump backers, top officials in the Republican Party of Florida voted in September to remove a provision in its state bylaws that required any candidate seeking to be on the March 19 presidential primary ballot to pledge loyalty to the eventual GOP nominee.

The former president, who has been wooing Florida GOP members,
hosted state Republicans at Mar-a-Lago in November, days after he held a counterprogramming rally in the Cuban-majority city of Hialeah, while his rivals for the GOP presidential nomination debated in Miami. As part of the rally, Trump set aside VIP seating for grassroots supporters.

More broadly, Trump has for months dominated the GOP field, with national and early state polling showing him ahead by wide margins and DeSantis’ numbers mostly declining.

The Miami straw poll was impromptu and had not been on the party’s agenda, said Florida Rep. Alina Garcia, who has endorsed Trump and attended Wednesday’s meeting. Former state lawmaker and U.S. Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) called the motion to hold the vote, Cabrera said.

The vote isn’t binding in that the group isn’t formally endorsing a candidate for president ahead of Florida’s primary, but Broward County Republicans are meeting Thursday night to survey their members about an endorsement, state committeeman Richard DeNapoli confirmed to POLITICO.

Other votes cast on Wednesday night included three for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and one for entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Two people wrote down names of politicians not running for president: U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Miami-Dade County Commissioner Rene Garcia. One piece of paper was left blank.

Asked about the straw poll results, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung replied, “Ron DeSanctus is still in the race?” The DeSantis campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Garcia, the state representative, insisted DeSantis remained popular — but as governor. She said people in attendance at the Miami meeting thought Trump had the right experience to be president and that DeSantis could still run in 2028.

“Gov. DeSantis has been a very good governor,” she said. “But we want him for governor. Right now, we want President Trump for president, and it is what it is.”