Hundreds of happy Republicans packed themselves into the
ballroom of the Marriott Hotel in Boca Raton for the Election Night
party, where they planned to celebrate Allen West’s anticipated
victory in Florida’s 22nd congressional district. Polling places
had closed an hour earlier and many of the attendees still wore
stickers on their shirts designating them as official poll
watchers. Two giant television screens were showing Fox News
election coverage and, shortly after 8 p.m., a cheer went up from
the crowd when the TVs flashed the first returns from the 22nd
district: West with 54 percent of the vote to 45 percent for the
Democratic incumbent, Ron Klein.
It had been a long, hard two years for West’s supporters. The
retired Army lieutenant colonel had challenged Klein in 2008. With
little support from national GOP leadership, however, West had been
outspent nearly five to one by the Democrat and lost by 29,000
votes. Undaunted, West resolved to try again in 2010 and quickly
emerged as one of the Republican Party’s most popular candidates,
garnering strong backing from the Tea Party movement and raising
more than $5 million for his rematch with Klein. Now, in the
Marriott ballroom on Election Night, the air was electric with the
sense of impending victory and the deejay played a song by the pop
group Black Eyed Peas.
“Tonight’s gonna be a good night,” they sang and indeed, it was
a good night for Republicans. At that moment, however, my thoughts
turned to someone who was far away from the ballroom in Boca Raton,
and I slipped outside onto a quiet terrace to make a call to
upstate New York.
Doug Hoffman answered the phone. Hoffman’s underdog campaign in
the 2009 special election in New York’s 23rd district (see “Battle
Cry in the North Country,” TAS, December 2009/January
2010) struck a spark among conservatives that became a grassroots
wildfire. Backed by Tea Party activists, Hoffman’s third-party
challenge drove GOP establishment choice Dede Scozzafava to quit
and endorse the Democrat, Bill Owens, who won by a narrow
plurality. Despite that disappointing outcome, Erick Erickson of
the influential RedState.com wrote, the uprising in upstate New
York was a “trial run for Florida,” where conservative Marco Rubio
was fighting the establishment’s pick, Gov. Charlie Crist, in the
Senate primary.
When the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Florida
GOP chairman Jim Greer prematurely endorsed Crist in May 2009,
polls showed Rubio trailing the moderate governor by more than 30
points. By November 2009, Crist’s lead had been cut to 10 points,
but it was not until late January 2010 — after Scott Brown shocked
the world by winning the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly held by
Ted Kennedy — that Rubio finally pulled ahead in the Florida
primary. By April, Crist quit the GOP to run as an independent, but
proved no match for Rubio, whose victory was one of the first races
called by networks on Election Night, eliciting more cheers from
Republicans gathered in the Boca Raton ballroom. And outside under
the palm trees, I was on the phone with Doug Hoffman, the unlikely
hero whose New York campaign helped inspire the conservative
insurgency in Florida.
Hoffman would not be among those elected to the 112th Congress.
After his 2009 near-miss, Hoffman sought the Republican nomination
in 2010, but was outspent by Wall Street investment banker Matt
Doheny, who ran TV attack ads that unfairly portrayed Hoffman — a
mild-mannered accountant — as a shady character who was
“personally pocketing thousands in campaign dollars.” Hoffman lost
the GOP primary by a mere 700 votes. Despite the personal attacks,
however, he decided to endorse his Republican rival for the general
election because he wanted to do “what was good for America,”
namely, to defeat Democrats and “fight the Pelosi agenda.” In a
final irony, Doheny came up 3,600 votes short and the Democrat
Owens was reelected in what was otherwise a historic tsunami of
victories for House Republicans.
THAT IRONIC OUTCOME wasn’t yet known when I called Hoffman on
Election Night. What was apparent was that the wheel of fate had
turned. A mere 18 months after a Time magazine cover story
declared Republicans an “endangered species,” Democrats suffered
their worst loss in any congressional election since 1938.
“I think my campaign, and the people who were supporting me,
woke up America and said, ‘We’re fed up. We have to do something
about it. We’re not going to take more spending, more taxes, and
more government regulations,’ ” Hoffman said. “I’m disappointed
that I’m not going to be part of the excitement and going to
Washington, but if the legacy of my race last year is the people
who are going to Washington this year, then I’m very proud to watch
what’s happening tonight, and anticipate the Republicans taking
over the House.”
Many of the newly elected Republicans were, like Hoffman,
ordinary Americans with little or no prior political experience. In
Florida, where four incumbent House Democrats were defeated, the
GOP’s winners included a funeral director (Steve Southerland, 2nd
district), a former sheriff’s deputy (Sandy Adams, 24th district),
and the man whose election the crowd in Boca Raton had gathered to
celebrate, Allen West. Given short shrift by party leaders two
years earlier, the Iraq War veteran this time was one of two black
Republicans (Tim Scott of South Carolina is the other) elected to
the 112th Congress.
It was past 11 p.m. before West gave his victory speech, which
was repeatedly interrupted by supporters chanting “USA! USA! USA!”
West invoked the Founding Fathers and the Gettysburg Address —
“government of the people, by the people, for the people” — and
closed by employing a phrase made famous in an American
Spectator article by Angelo Codevilla.
“I’m not going to Washington, D.C. to seek to be a Ruling Class
elitist….I’m going to Washington, D.C., to fix the problems of
this nation — and then I’m coming home.”
