Republican state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia has won re-election. He was first elected to the state House in 2014 and to the Senate in 2022. He’s a close ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis. He also made some accurate predictions: that President-elect Donald Trump would win Florida by 12-to-13 points and the presidency with 291 electoral votes…and that Amendment 3, approving the use of recreational marijuana by adults, and Amendment 4, enshrining abortion rights in Florida’s Constitution, would both fail. Ingoglia spoke with WFSU.
WFSU: Congratulations.
Ingoglia: Thank you. Appreciate it.
WFSU: We are very impressed with the numbers that you predicted President-elect Trump’s victory by and are wondering how you got them, how you were able to be so accurate.
Ingoglia: I think I’ve been accurate ever since 2016 in predicting how Florida’s going to come. I was one of the first ones on national TV to predict that Donald Trump was going to win the 2016 election. The way I do it is, basically, I go into the polls, the public polls, and I readjust the polls for the way voters actually vote in the state of Florida. The public polls do nothing but promote the pollster. They’re not necessarily there to be accurate. So, I go in and I started adjusting it, and I started seeing the trends.
Now, with that, you also have to take into account the large voter advantages …that which party has during the during the Early Voting phase and the Vote-by-Mail phase. So, when you put it all together, you know, a 1.2 million voter advantage after it was all said and done, figuring out how the NPAs are going to break, how many Democrats are going to come out still…That’s how I came up with Trump winning between 12 and 13 percent and that’s how I knew that the amendments were going to be defeated.
WFSU: Okay, the amendments were my next…Would you say that Amendment 3 failed because one giant company was going to benefit?
Ingoglia: I think that is a reason, but I don’t think it’s the only reason. I think that most voters in the state of Florida agree with decriminalization of marijuana. I don’t think that anyone really thinks that you should land in jail for the possession of small amounts., and I think everyone can agree with that. But I think this went a step further. It went to full legalization without the Legislature’s ability to regulate it. And you know, when you go to places that have full legalization, you can smell it almost everywhere. And I just think that Floridians, because remember, we have the Open Indoor Air Act, I think it is (Clean Indoor Air Act) where you can’t smoke in a lot of places…just the fear of cigarette smoking…oh, I’m sorry, marijuana smoking in public was a little bit too far.
So, the amendment wasn’t about decriminalization, it was about full legalization. Now, yes, there would have been a lot of companies that would have benefited from this. But I think the benefit also went a little but too far, because if you were for full legalization/decriminalization, you would have written it into the constitutional amendment that you’re allowed not only to possess but to grow it. And I think that proved to be a downfall.
WFSU: So, last year you suggested making the Florida Democrat Party illegal.
Ingoglia: Well, yes and no. The Ultimate Cancel Act said that the Secretary of State shall immediately decertify any political party that adopted pro-slavery tenets into their political platform. Never said which party did it, but then [Florida Democrat Party chair] Nikki Fried, in all of her infinite wisdom, came out with a press release saying that Hey, you are going to decertify the Democrat Party and we were, “Gotcha, Nikki!” because it as the Democrat Party that did that, it wasn’t the Republican Party. So, obviously, it wasn’t a proposal that we thought would see the light of day, but it was there to make a political point.
And because I think Black voters, not only in the state of Florida but in the United States, are being taken advantage of by the left. They’re being used for their votes, they’re being promised things that aren’t going to come to fruition, and the only thing that it benefits is the actual politicians that are promising these things. So, I think that’s one of the reasons why you see Donald Trump now making historic inroads with Black voters is that he’s basically, for lack of a better word and pardon my French here, he’s calling B.S. on the Democrats and saying, “Look, you haven’t done anything for Black voters and Black communities. I will, I have.” And Black voters, specifically, are rewarding …Now, there’s plenty of inroads and work to be continued there, but there is obviously a realignment within politics where a lot of Black voters, especially Black men, are moving to the Republican Party.
WFSU: Has the Florida Democratic Party canceled itself?
Ingoglia: I think it has. I don’t think the Democrat Party is a viable force. You know, when you start looking on a county-by-county outlook, the Democrat Party in a lot of counties are actually the third-largest party, behind NPAs. So, they marginalized themselves. They’ve done it with ridiculous policy proposals that obviously should be ridiculed. That’s one of the great things I loved about Ronald Reagan: when a Democrat policy came up, he would laugh about it, he would joke about it. I think we need to do more of that, because some of their policy proposals are ridiculous. Now, not all of them are, and they make some really good points. And when we start going through and when we start going through the committee process and legislative process, they make valuable input. But their big top-line arguments are sort of laughable, and voters are starting to see through that. So, the answer to your original question: The Democrat Party here in the state of Florida…I saw this on Twitter the other day. It’s sort of apropos that they changed their logo to the panther because they pretty much are an endangered species at this point.
