CROSS CITY — Barbie Higginbotham sipped her coffee at the Southern homestyle diner she owns with her husband, sounding every bit like a Republican voter who could be up for grabs in November.
Read more Central Florida Voter Guide: November general election races and candidates
The economy of this north-central Florida town of about 1,800, she said, has been hurting. Rising diesel prices, now hovering above $6 a gallon, have bludgeoned the local timber and trucking industries. Jobs within the county limits have all but disappeared.
“Affordability,” she said bluntly, “is a big issue here.”
For years, the rural counties in the state’s Big Bend region have been reliably red. But in this year’s race for governor, they have emerged as an unexpected battleground.
The Democratic candidate, David Jolly, is betting that North Floridians are so fed up with the high cost of living that they’re ready for a change — even if that means crossing party lines.
Making them an even more tantalizing target: Three out of every four Republican primary voters in this region picked someone other than the eventual GOP nominee, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, in August.
This week, Jolly’s running mate, former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, held seven events in Levy County, Dixie’s neighbor to the south. During a Monday afternoon visit to the Driftwood Bar & Grill in Inglis, she told two dozen locals that she understood their desire to preserve their rural way of life. Wearing a T-shirt and jeans, her hair swept into a ponytail, she touted her ties to the region; the congressional district she won in 2014 included parts of Big Bend.
One Republican in attendance, Helen Ciallella of Yankeetown, said she was tired of GOP-led austerity measures that decimated the local library’s budget. She’s voting for Jolly.
“I don’t vote for the party, I vote for the person,” Ciallella said.
But other Republican voters in this deeply red part of the state said they would be harder sells. Even those conceding that life has gotten harder in the 30 years since Republicans gained control of the state said they were sticking with the GOP.
“People are Republican or die here, man,” said Jamey King, the chief of Cross City’s five-man police department. “They’re not gonna deviate from that.”
‘That old calculation’
Since announcing his bid for governor last year, Jolly has vowed that he would put together a bipartisan coalition to lift Democrats into the Governor’s Mansion for the first time in three decades.
“We’re going to be in every community you see, not just the blue ones but the red ones,” Jolly told a Tampa crowd in April. “We’re building a coalition big enough to bring in independents and Republicans.”
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