Florida’s Democratic Party Appoints Nikki Fried to Lead Reform


Nikki Fried, the former agriculture commissioner of Florida, was elected Saturday to lead the state’s shattered Democratic Party. Fried, who lost the gubernatorial primary to former Gov. Charlie Crist, pledged to rebuild the party “from the ground up” in an effort to defeat Annette Tadeo, a former state senator who also lost her seat last year. In the midterm elections of 2022 in the Sunshine State, Democrats were crushed, with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis winning re-election by nearly 19 points and his party earning a supermajority in the state legislature. In response, Fried, an outspoken critic of DeSantis’ policies, pledged to redouble Democratic efforts to focus on voter registration in an attempt to recover the numerical advantage Democrats possessed during the Obama administration but have lost under Trump.