- Sanders believed he didn't need Florida to win the presidency if he were Democratic nominee, per a forthcoming book.
- Ari Rabin-Havt, a campaign aide, wrote that Florida "was an amalgamation of our worst-performing demographic groups."
- Despite narrow GOP wins in past years, Democrats remain divided on how much to invest in the state.
Over the past few years, Democrats have been wrangling over whether or not to invest in Florida at the presidential level.
The party has been frustrated by upsets in the last two elections in what some still see as a winnable swing state — albeit one that has had a slight Republican lean in recent cycles.
In 2012, then-President Barack Obama narrowly edged then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in Florida by a little under 1%, while former President Donald Trump won the state by 1% in 2016 and 3% in 2020.
While many party officials have argued that Florida — with its 30 electoral votes — is worth the investment, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont would have sidelined the state during the 2020 general election had he been the Democratic presidential nominee, according to a forthcoming book by former deputy campaign manager Ari Rabin-Havt.
In the book, "The Fighting Soul: On the Road with Bernie Sanders," Rabin-Havt detailed how the Sanders campaign felt strongly that the Independent senator could rebuild electoral strength in core Democratic states while also acknowledging that Florida was not a part of their calculus in defeating Trump in 2020.
"In our minds, this election hinged on two main factors: geography and trust," Rabin-Havt wrote. "Hillary Clinton's 2016 map showed the base of blue states that we believed every Democratic candidate should be able to win."
He continued: "To start, we pretty much wrote off Florida. Bernie didn't mind that strategy. He is, in his words, 'not a great fan' of the state. Based on the numbers and our research, we believed that winning the state was a near impossibility for us — and, for that matter, for any Democratic candidate. For Bernie, the state was an amalgamation of our worst-performing demographic groups: elderly voters, Cubans, and upper-class, middle-aged voters."
During a February 2020 interview on CBS' "60 Minutes," Sanders also declined to walk back his past comments on the Cuban revolution — expressing his belief that the regime of the longtime communist leader Fidel Castro should not be painted with a broad brush.
"We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it's unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know?" Sanders said at the time.
He added: "When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?"
Many Democratic politicians in the state were incensed by the comments, complaining that Sanders was blowing any real shot that the party had in winning the state, which is home to high-profile GOP politicians including Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.
In a state where the "communist" and "socialist" labels are used as a political cudgel against candidates, Sanders' opinions on Cuba ran counter to the moderate-to-conservative sensibilities of many of its voters.
Sanders' leading primary rival in 2020 was former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden at that time headed into the Florida contest with momentum buoyed by his victory in the South Carolina primary, which came after the former Delaware senator faltered in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary earlier that year.
In the March 2020 Florida Democratic primary, Biden easily defeated Sanders 62%-23%. The nearly 40-point victory afforded Biden 162 delegates in the state, compared to 57 for Sanders.
Rabin-Havt said that the Sanders campaign looked to the swing state of Arizona as a key component in their electoral puzzle, but kept a strong focus on the Midwest and Pennsylvania.
"Working-class, white voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania who voted for Trump, or more likely at home, in 2016 were a winnable demographic for us," he wrote.
He added: "Our research bore this out. In internal Sanders campaign polling conducted in April 2019, Bernie beat Trump by 11 points in Michigan, 10 points in Wisconsin, and 8 points in Pennsylvania." (Biden went on to win all three states in the general election.)
On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that Sanders would consider a 2024 presidential campaign if Biden decides not to run for reelection, per a memo written by his former 2020 campaign manager.
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