Renters make good Democrats, and other demographic observations suggests that FL-27, the congressional district I live in (it used to be numbered FL-25), is one of the ripest districts demographically for an R-to-D switch.
I agree about the demographics: this is a district whose economic needs and other interests are very badly served by the Republican party. Sooner or later demographics will tell. There are, however, three reasons why despite voting regularly against her district’s economic interests incumbent Ilena Ros-Lehtinen has one of the safest seats in the country: (1) Castro; (2) Personal popularity; (3) Huge campaign warchest.
Take away any two of those, and there’s a good chance the district will flip. In particular, if and when IRL retires, it will be a very winnable Democratic seat — especially if the current Cuban government has collapsed by then. (Sooner or later the current Cuban government will run out of foreign benefactors.) On the other hand, Ros-Lehtinen is only in her early sixties, so she is still in only in the middle age band of our surprisingly elderly Congress. Meanwhile, however, IRL will continue to vote against her constituents’ interests on just about every issue except gay rights, an issue on which she has a progressive record.
