Inside the effort to flip the last Republican seat in Broward County, Florida

So goes Broward, so goes Florida, so goes the entire election, according to pundits

Linda Thompson Gonzalez is running for the Florida state house (Erica Manfred)

As I sat in the rain in a library parking lot in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, trying to get up the nerve to approach strangers on the first day of early voting, I wondered what the hell I was doing there. Why had I volunteered for Linda Thompson Gonzalez, a down-ballot Democrat running for the state house in Broward County? Why not work for the better funded Biden/Harris campaign? They had tents and bottles of water. They had snacks.

Here’s why: I’m a sucker for the underdog.

Linda is running a grassroots campaign in Broward’s District 93. According to some pundits, so goes Broward, so goes Florida, so goes the entire election. Linda is trying to flip the last red seat in Broward to blue. She needs me a lot more than the Biden campaign does.

So, who is Linda? She's a 71-year-old former foreign service officer. She was planning to retire but became so concerned about local issues–  especially flooding and background checks for gun ownership after the Parkland shooting – that she felt she had to run.

Born in a small town in Michigan at a time when girls were supposed to get married and raise families, not pursue high-powered careers, Linda put herself through college and law school. She met her husband, Pedro Gonzalez, while studying in Bogota, Columbia. She raised three children in Washington, DC while building a successful career in government service. When her kids went off to college, she fulfilled a lifelong dream of becoming a foreign service officer in Latin America.

After 30 years in government, she and her husband planned to retire in Florida. But four years ago, Pedro died. The void that created in Linda’s life, plus her horror at the reactionary policies of Trump enablers Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio, convinced her to get into local politics.

If Linda could come out of retirement to run for office, then the least I could do was help her out for a couple of days. For my second day of volunteering, I put on my mask and joined her at the polls in Pompano Beach, not far from where I live. 

Campaign workers at the polls have to be 150 feet away from the entrance, which means the parking lot. This is where I found Linda, a slim blond woman in khaki shorts, sneakers, a straw hat and disposable mask, campaigning solo. She looked closer to 50 than 70, and had more energy than most 40-year-olds. Her demeanor was deceptively low-key. She’s an extremely forceful personality, relentless in her mission to win over undecided voters.

By the time I arrived at 4pm, Linda had been there for nine hours and was planning to stay for another four. Most of that time she was on her feet, running up to talk to voters as they arrived.

She’d chosen that early voting site because it was the home precinct of her opponent, Chip LaMarca, a local businessman and Republican. Chip was standing in the same parking lot, surrounded by a bunch of firefighters moonlighting as campaign workers.

Linda didn’t miss a voter. She’d spot them from across the parking lot and run over to introduce herself before one of the firefighters beat her to it. She told me she’d already won over quite a few people who had never heard of her before.

When I asked why she was putting herself through this grueling campaign, Linda told me: “I’m the un-Chip. I had to get involved.” But why run for office for the first time at her age? She laughed at that question. “Well,” she said, “the last Democrat who ran for this office, a woman half my age, didn’t want to run again and she told me the office needed a young person like me.”

I was awed by the calm, reasonable way Linda talked to everyone, Trump supporter or not. She even went up to the firefighters and discussed the election, asking why they supported Trump. She didn’t argue or mock their answers. She just listened.

“That’s the key for me,” she told me. “Listening to people. If you ask them what they care about and listen to the answers, you can get them to hear what you’re saying.”

The outcome of this election remains to be seen. But if Linda wins, with her steady demeanor and ability to cross the aisle, she’s sure to be a force in Florida politics for a long time to come. And that’s why the time spent campaigning on her behalf is anything but wasted.