Young, Black and in politics: Who is the future of the Democratic Party in St. Lucie County?

ST. LUCIE COUNTY —  Samuel Cleare spent his Election Day standing outside of Treasure Coast High School twirling a sign for the candidate he heard speak at a local, peaceful Black Lives Matter rally this summer. 

“He’s in the community, for the community,” Cleare, 28, said about Henry Duhart, the young Democratic candidate running against St. Lucie County Commission Chair Cathy Townsend, a powerful politician in the local Republican Party. “That’s what brought me out here.” 

Cleare, a Black man, grew up in Fort Pierce. He said he got in a lot of trouble as a youth, in a place he called the “inner-cities.” At 21 years old, Cleare was charged with attempted first-degree murder and later was convicted of manslaughter with a firearm. He served his time, and this summer paid off hundreds of dollars in costs to have the right to vote, following the partial restoration of voting rights to ex-felons. 

During the Trump presidency, and in particular following the killing of George Floyd, Cleare realized the importance of local politics. 

“When I was growing up, politics was never in my eyesight,” he said. It’s a point often echoed by community leaders in Fort Pierce, some of whom blame a failure by the school system to ensure a robust civics education, which  further disenfranchises the county’s poorest communities. “Now I need to vote for those things because I understand that those things can change.” 

Cleare, like 76,364 others in St. Lucie County, supported 26-year-old Duhart, backing a progressive campaign with the slogan, “Be the change.” Duhart, though, lost to Townsend by 8 percentage points, nearly 12,000 votes, in a tough and sometimes nasty campaign. 

Duhart was part of a small but vocal movement of young Black men running for local office this election cycle. None of them won, but they created momentum among young voters and generated the support of some veteran Fort Pierce community leaders who hope the next generation will be able to succeed against an ever-strengthening, local Republican Party.

The movement, with Duhart at its forefront, punctuated a tense local moment during the nation’s struggle with the best ways to address issues of race and representation. It also, at times, raised further attention to viewed — or not viewed — racial divides in St. Lucie County and highlighted divides in strategy within the local Democratic Party as voter turnout in precincts that voted for Biden lagged by more than 6 percentage points behind precincts that voted for Trump.

All the while people across political spectrums continued to emphasize different solutions to similar problems. 

“We’re all here for the same reason: safety and a better economy,” Cleare said. 

Grassroots growth? 

On the first day of Early Voting, Duhart, like many candidates, could be found at polling sites across the county alongside his supporters. Different from other candidates, it was typically someone under 30 years old holding his signs. 

His hope was the excitement he was stirring among young voters could tilt the scales, something that was lacking in 2016. 

“We’re trying to elevate from that,” Duhart said. 

Voters 18-25 years old make up 10% of registered voters in St. Lucie County, are overwhelmingly Democratic and are the only age group to become more Democratic in the county since 2016, aside from people in their 40s, who made a slight shift to the left. 

Except the growth in St. Lucie West and Tradition, helping to increase the county’s population by an estimated 15% over the last four years, led to a county that has seen Republican registration outpace Democratic registration.

Alongside a backdrop of demographic shifts, Duhart’s progressive, anti-Trump coalition fell short. 

The county’s most-Republican voting precincts, most in predominantly white neighborhoods, voted even more robustly for Trump than they did in 2016, and turned out 81% of registered voters, according to a TCPalm analysis of election data. 

The county’s most-Democratic voting precincts, most in predominantly Black neighborhoods, marginally voted less for the Democratic nominee this time around, and turned out at 69%. If the eight precincts that overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden would have turned out at a similar rate to their Republican-precinct counterparts, there could have been at least 3,000 more votes cast, according to the analysis. 

Voters ultimately selected nearly all Republicans, flipping the historically blue seat of state House District 84, rejecting younger candidates who were less well financed and leaving only select Democratic incumbents to survive the red wave that rode Trump's coattails. 

Duhart views his loss, like those of other young Black men who ran for office in St. Lucie County — Harold Albury III, James Monds Jr., for example — as a moment of growth. 

He sees it as an opportunity to examine the way things are done, place pressure on the establishment and as a reminder to invest in grassroots movements to increase turnout in St. Lucie County, which has 13,000 more Democrats than Republicans. 

“If we do that work, we can increase our power locally,” Duhart said. 

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Democratic debate 

Celeste Bush, the local Democratic party chair, defended the party’s support for local Democratic candidates, and it has done what it can to encourage young Black candidates to get involved in politics.

“Today, color seems to matter more than qualities for the majority of recent voters,” Bush said in an email. It is,she said, “a reality we obviously have failed to recognize, but one we will counter in the years to come as a party for ‘All the People.’”

While the young candidates avoided laying blame directly on local Democratic leadership, former Fort Pierce City Commissioner Reggie Sessions critiqued the party directly. 

“I think a lot of the blame lies with the Democratic administration office in the party,” said Sessions, who lost his own reelection bid after two decades on the commission. Sessions was extremely proud and excited for the new youth rising up, similar to when he was first elected, he said..

 Local party officials, he said, may need to be “cleaned out” after the loss, similar to a football team replacing its coaching staff after a rough season.

“When you blame others, you give up your power to change,” Bush responded. “Instead, let’s use our breakdowns to be breakthroughs.”

“Especially with those three young men," Sessions said, "you cannot get discouraged with defeat in the early stages,just as successful politicians lost in the beginning and lost more than once.”

Two worlds/United vision

Albury has a vivid childhood memory of visiting a cousin who had just moved to Port St. Lucie:

The homes were new. The roads were well paved. Everything was nice. 

“Coming back home from the weekend, you come back to less,” Albury, 27, said. “Our city isn’t as rainbows and sunshine as I thought it was.”

Albury, who ran for mayor of Fort Pierce and lost in the primary, explained internalizing the feeling of "haves" and "have nots" while growing up in the Fort Pierce area during a time of rapid development in Port St. Lucie. It’s something young people have echoed throughout interviews, and has motivated some of them to get involved in politics. 

“I personally did not feel that the city was being set up and designed for us to thrive,” Albury said. That's why, Albury said, he ran, to make sure to improve his city and as a person raised by the city; representation mattered to him. 

Townsend, the commissioner who defeated Duhart in what she described as a campaign that he made “extremely racial about me,” hopes the county can move beyond the issue of race and instead focus on policy. 

“Having a Black person is not going to get them any more representation than from a white personal sitting up there,” Townsend said. “We need to stop with the Black-and-white issue.”

Townsend is focused on a top commitment of hers over the next four years: pairing up people in need of a good job with a good opportunity. 

Duhart’s campaign focused on providing more job opportunities and opportunities for affordable housing. It was at first frustrating, Townsend said, because she felt the county was doing all of those things and people were not seizing the available opportunities.

For example, the county has 200 scholarships to Indian River State College, Townsend said, but they are largely, if not entirely, unused.

With Duhart’s insurgent, young campaign, Townsend realized the county was doing a poor job communicating the opportunities it had created and funded. 

Townsend is committing herself to working with the St. Lucie County School District to find a liaison, or something similar, to link students with existing careers, and with area employers who are in desperate need of skilled labor. She wants to work with the Boys & Girls Club, too, and other community partners. Townsend said she also committed to transitional housing for people coming out of the jail, including job training, and a homeless shelter. 

“That’s my path for the next four years,” Townsend said.

Joshua Solomon is a politics reporter covering the Treasure Coast. You can reach him at 772-692-8935 or joshua.solomon@tcpalm.com.