Is Tallahassee a blue or red city?

The morning after the 2020 election, Tallahassee City Commissioner Curtis Richardson woke up with a case of the Tallahassee blues.

Although Richardson won reelection to the commission and the local legislative candidates he backed posted landslide victories Tuesday, the results elsewhere in the state turned his mood gloomy, downhearted — blue, as in depressed.

Joe Biden lost Florida’s 29 electoral votes and Florida Democrats took a shellacking, losing five seats in the House and watching the GOP force what was considered a safe Democratic Senate seat into a recount.

“I feel like I’m on a blue island in the Red Sea,” said Richardson, who was a Democratic member of the Florida House 2000-08.

Tuesday, just like in every statewide election since 2014, Leon County gave 60% of its vote to a Democratic candidate, then watched the rest of the state give the election to the Republican candidate.

It happened in two gubernatorial races, two U.S. Senate races, and twice with President Donald J. Trump.

Evan Power, chair of the Leon Republican Executive Committee, said Tallahassee is a tough sale for GOP policies, what with three college campuses and so many state workers.

The only elected local official who identifies as a Republican, soon to be former Leon County Commissioner Bryan Desloge, lost his reelection bid Tuesday.

Back story:How a political unknown knocked off incumbent Leon County Commissioner Bryan Desloge

Power adds that Democrats' historic control of local government has scared away many conservative voters from living in Tallahassee.

“Sadly, the culture of corruption and crime that has wrecked this area has driven many more conservative people away,” Power said.

Academics, politicians, and labor groups, however, say the makeup of the Tallahassee electorate, not the political control of city and county government, may explain why the city seems to be out of step in red Florida.

“You just have a very different demographic compared to the rest of the state,” said Aubrey Jewett, University of Central Florida political science professor, when discussing the voting patterns of state workers and university students and faculty in Tallahassee.

Jewett said the same dynamics that exist in Tallahassee, are also found in Columbus, Ohio and Madison, Wisconsin – two other cities with major universities and state capitals who also routinely buck their statewide trends in voting. 

Dane County, Wisconsin gave 75% of its vote to Biden. That represented a 181,000-vote margin and enabled Biden to eke out a 20,000-vote win — 49.6% of the vote. 

Fast forward to former Gov. Jeb Bush, who left Tallahassee's state workers aghast when he mused in his second inaugural address about his hope to one day see the “emptying out” of all the state office buildings around the Capitol where they worked.

“State workers have seen 30 years of mismanagement. There has been a lot of governing through ideology and not what is best, what is fact-based, what is the actual problem that needs to be resolved,” Templin said.

Power counters that Democratic leaders are the ones guilty of mismanagement.

“What used to be seen as a great place to raise kids is being replaced with what many see as unchecked crime and a devoid downtown,” Power said.

'A concentrated mass'

Florida has the lowest number of state workers per 1,000 residents among the states, and costs each resident less per employee than they do in other states, according to a Department of Management Services annual workforce report.

And there are 589 fewer workers in the state personnel system then there were five years ago, and 1,517 fewer than 10 years ago, while the state population has increased by 14%.

Jewett said Florida has been notoriously cheap in pay and benefits for state employees, providing workers just two stand-alone raises in the past 10 years.

On the whole, he explained, government workers want better pay and expansion of government programs, perhaps to make room for promotions.

"And they feel that the Democratic Party is more likely to support government programs and to bring in more money into state government, while Republicans do not,” Jewett said.

The combined total of the students and faculties at Tallahassee’s three institutions of higher education, along with the total number of state workers in Leon County, amounts to potentially 102,607 potential voters, or 47% of the number of registered voters in Leon County.

“That’s a very concentrated mass of liberal Democratic supporters,” Jewett said. “The rest of the state is more diverse by ideology and party, but university towns, be it Tallahassee or Gainesville, are not.”

James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at . Follow on him Twitter: @CallTallahassee

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