Bill Cotterell: Booker provides glimmer of hope for Democrats

There’s a bitter irony in unrelated headlines coming out of the April Fools’ Day special elections.

In Washington, Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey got a well-deserved round of applause and loud cheers from the visitors’ gallery of the U.S. Senate as he set a record for holding the floor for 25 hours and five minutes in a wide-ranging denunciation of all things MAGA. Like umpires stopping the game to give Pete Rose the ball when he became the all-time hits leader, the Senate paused to mark the moment when Booker topped the old speech record.

It was a feel-good moment — a Black senator eclipsing the talkathon mark of South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, who harangued for 24 hours and 18 minutes against a civil-rights bill in 1957.

My first reporting job was in Columbia, South Carolina, in the late 1960s, and Thurmond was a legend in Palmetto State politics — but known more for stunts and rhetoric than real accomplishments. Tales of the senior senator were sure to include his all-night, all-day speaking performance, rather than legislative achievements. 

And in the end, that civil-rights bill passed over Thurmond’s long-winded objections. So, when asked what he accomplished, his admirers would usually stammer something like, “Well, uh…. it showed we were gonna fight … and y’know, we lost but weren’t beat, kinda …”

Sort of like the Civil War itself.

With all due respect to Booker, his marathon performance was mainly a much-needed morale boost for Democrats. Regrettably, talking tough is about all the party can do — what it has to do, for now. President Donald Trump and Republicans who run Congress will continue to put the ball in play each day.

Meanwhile, in Florida, in the same hour Booker yielded the Senate floor, polls were closing in two special elections that filled congressional seats left vacant by Trump allies.

The victories of former state Sen. Randy Fine in Congressional District 6 and former state Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis in Congressional District 1 were not a surprise.

Florida’s GOP-dominated Legislature had drawn the districts to support ex-Congressman Michael Waltz, who is now the president’s national security adviser, and ex-Congressman Matt Gaetz, who resigned in November amid an ill-fated bid to become attorney general.

Speculation leading up to the special elections was that they would be close, especially the contest between Fine and Democrat Josh Weil.

Fine and Patronis won by roughly half the 33-point margins Gaetz and Waltz ran up in their re-elections in November, but special elections always have light turnout and Fine and Patronis won handily.

Both parties read the results predictably.

“Both Florida House seats have been won, big, by the Republican candidate,” Trump said soon after the polls closed. “The Trump endorsement, as always, proved far greater than the Democrats’ forces of evil.”

Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin, who campaigned for Weil during the closing days of the race, issued a statement congratulating Weil and 1st District nominee Gay Valimont for “out-performing” expectations. That’s cold comfort when they lose by double digits.

The special elections gave U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson just a bit of breathing room. The GOP has a 220-213 majority in the House, with two vacancies. Victories by one or both of the Florida Democrats would have not only narrowed Trump’s support in Congress but would have been read as a sure sign of Democratic resurgence, a momentum builder for next year’s midterm elections.

Electing Weil or Valimont also would have signaled a severe weakening of Trump. He carried Florida, and those congressional districts, easily — three times in a row.

The next test for Trump will be in Virginia and New Jersey, which elect governors late this year. The loss in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race — despite some $22 million in spending by Elon Musk — was a sure sign that the MAGA movement is getting a little shop-worn in the Midwest, considering that Trump carried it two times out of three.

But the Badger State is a battleground in presidential politics. Florida is not.

With all the advantages of incumbency, and the Democrats’ demonstrated haplessness, Patronis and Fine should have no problem holding onto their seats next year.

The real winner for the Democrats this month was Booker. His record Senate speech showed that the beleaguered Democrats have some fight left, but it was more than just a spectacle. What he said — an itemized attack on the DOGE brigade’s chainsaw approach to the federal government — matters more than how long he said it.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at wrcott43@aol.com.

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