Before noon on the day after Tuesday's GOP election sweep, the first public call for Democratic Party leaders to step aside came down.
"It's remarkable (Florida Democratic Chairwoman) Karen Thurman hasn't resigned by now," state Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Margate, said just after Democrat Alex Sink gave a concession speech in the governors race Wednesday morning. "There needs to be new leadership of the party ... All the success we had two years ago, they just let that die."
While few Demorcrats were willing to speak as openly about potential changes, there were other Democrats, both elected and rank and file, who said that it was impossible in the wake of the Democrats massacre at the hands of a surging GOP on Tuesday not to discuss whether there should be a change in leadership.
Something needs to change, said Bud Chiles, who ran briefly for governor this year as an independent, but is a longtime Democratic voter and son of former Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles.
The Senate, now all the Cabinet, most of the congressional delegation, said Chiles listing Republican wins. Im sure theres a lot of discussion going on right now in Tallahassee, there darn well should be.
But Chiles and many other Democrats said Thurman and other party leaders were in an impossible position Tuesday against a national Republican wave that anyone would have been powerless to stop.
There were trend lines far broader than the state of Florida that affected this election, said one of the Democratic victims, Dan Gelber, who lost in his bid for attorney general to Republican Pam Bondi. I dont think Karen had the ability to do anything that would have stopped the headwind we were facing. The voters are so angry at Washington, they didnt really care about anything else.
Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston, who was in charge of getting Democrats elected to the Senate, and saw her party lose two seats there, agreed that a nationalization of the election hurt candidates and Democrats didnt have a good answer.
This was a national tidal wave, you couldnt stop it, Rich said. There will be plenty of time to sit down and review what we could have done better, but right now I just dont think (targeting Thurman) is productive. Sometimes theres an external environment over which you have no control.
Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff dismissed the questions about whether Thurman should be blamed.
Chair Thurman is focused on personally thanking everyone who volunteered at our Campaign for Accountability offices across Florida, the grass-roots activists and elected leaders who worked so hard to make the Sunshine State a better place to live, and all of the Floridians who contributed to the Florida Democratic Party over this last several years today, Jotkoff said, declining to comment further.
Chiles said the problem goes beyond Tuesdays election noting Republicans took over the state Legislature in the 1990s and have beaten Democrats in many years since then.
In part, losing to Republicans on the nuts and bolts of running political campaigns get-out-the-vote efforts, picking candidates, figuring out where to spend money and where to sit out a race is what is hurting the party, several operatives said Wednesday.
But some Democrats also acknowledged that in some years the partys policies are simply out of step with the mood of the electorate. Sometimes its a poor sales job on those policies, too. Democratic leaders have pointed to health care for a year, saying they lost the public relations war on the federal health care bill and allowed Republicans to define what it will do.
I dont know that we need to overreact, I dont think we need to storm the Bastille, said Democratic consultant Screven Watson. Its really an opportunity to look at how we recruit, how we spend money, how we prioritize.
But also, he said, Democrats have to figure out how to get across the message that Republicans control state government here and have for a while. Watson said it doesnt make sense that in a supposed anti-incumbent year, Democrats did so badly.
If youre mad at whats going on in your life in Florida, a lot of that is brought to you by Tallahassee, which by the way is controlled by Republicans, Watson said. Weve got to find a way to break through with that message.
