There is no doubt that John Mica helped change the face of Central Florida.
Just look around. If it’s big and involved concrete, bulldozers and gobs of taxpayers’ dollars, there’s a good chance Mica was involved.
Interstate 4. The airport. A new VA hospital. SunRail. Mica’s fingerprints are on them all.
Mica was a man who railed against government largesse while also delivering much of that largesse to Central Florida … and making sure citizens knew he was the delivery boy.
Yet it wasn’t enough.
Not in a cycle where voters craved change.
And not in a district that was no longer gerrymandered for a Republican.
The 12-term Republican congressman lost to a Democratic newcomer who was born two years after Mica won his first political office.
Stephanie Murphy, a 38-year-old instructor at Rollins College, won, thanks to a solid resume, an inspiring life story — and a whole dump truck full of Democratic dollars from Washington.
Murphy made the case that issues mattered more than pork.
And while many voters were grateful for all the infrastructure Mica delivered, they were also sick of him being at odds with so many of their beliefs, viewing him as part of a crowd that reveled in obstructionism.
Murphy vowed to make progress on those issues — health care, higher wages, women’s rights and preventing gun violence.
And D.C. Democrats spent millions to help her spread that message — and on an ad campaign designed to portray Mica as out of touch with his changing constituency.
In some regards, the campaign was right. Some of Mica’s hard-line conservative ideas were no longer in sync with his now-bluer district.
And Mica knew it. That became evident during a candidates’ forum I moderated last summer.
All the candidates were asked about their stances on basic gun issues like mandatory background checks, and Mica was the only one — Democrat or Republican — who refused to say how he’d vote.
Everyone in the room knew where Mica stood. With the NRA. Where he had always stood — at odds with the 80 to 90 percent of Americans from both parties who want basic reforms like universal background checks.
But now that he was facing tough competition in a new district, the veteran congressman who loves to talk issues couldn’t bring himself to give a straight answer.
I’d never seen that before. The Mica I knew was always willing to take a position and defend it. That’s when I knew he was in trouble.
I’ll be honest: I still thought Mica would win. Voters, after all, have a long history of griping about incumbents and then re-electing them.
And Murphy certainly wasn’t as well known as Mica.
She hadn’t ridden in all the hometown holiday parades, spoken at as many luncheons or scooped as many ice cream cones at the local fundraisers. She didn’t have a spouse — like Mica’s wife, Pat — who knows every civic club president in town and can work a room as effectively as any politician.
But it turned out not to matter. As it turned out, issues did.
Mica tried to stave off Murphy’s momentum by portraying her as too new to the area to represent Central Florida and too steeped in Washington politics to be trusted. But the accusation of being new didn’t resonate in a community full of transients. And the charges of being a Washington insider fell particularly flat, since they were being leveled by a guy who had been in Washington for more than two decades.
Murphy, whose family fled Vietnam during the Indochina refugee crisis in 1979, deserves credit for courage. Democrats tried to recruit higher-profile names — “legacy” candidates who were born and raised here. But they were too scared to take on the political giant.
There’s no denying Mica made a big difference in this community. But the electorate wanted more than train tracks and highways.
It wanted change.
And progress on big, societal issues.
And functionality in Congress.
Now the pressure will be on Murphy to deliver.
Because her district is still purple. And if Murphy doesn’t deliver on all the big ideas she promised — and to which voters responded — she could be facing the same frustrated electorate Mica faced two years from now.
