Charles Horowitz, a 21-year-old from Weston who’s never voted in a presidential election, is Chicago-bound, along with thousands of the nation’s most engaged, influential and plugged-in Democrats. So is Rand Hoch, 69, a West Palm Beach activist who’s been to seven national party conventions.
Horowitz and Hoch have never met, but they’re on the same path, with the same mission: heading to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where they’re expecting a burst of energy and momentum they hope will help propel Vice President Kamala Harris to the presidency.
“I’m really excited because we’re going to win. The party is united around Kamala Harris and (vice presidential nominee) Tim Walz,” Hoch said. “The team is doing such a great job. There have been no flaws yet.”
And, Hoch said, there’s also something bigger and more fundamental.
“I’m a tremendous patriot. I’m a believer in democracy. I like this opportunity for people to participate in government, and come back and encourage their friends and colleagues to do this.”
Sudden change
It isn’t the convention that Hoch or Horowitz signed up for months ago. Along with 252 other Democratic convention delegates from Florida, they expected the four-day gathering to culminate in the nomination of President Joe Biden for a second term.
But they, like the rest of the Florida delegation and Democratic voters across the nation, have in the last month united behind Harris after a switch that upended the presidential race, turning it into a too-close-to-call election nationally and even eaten away at former President Donald Trump’s lead in Florida.
“Democrats are over the moon,” Horowitz said. “I’ve spoken to Democrats who have said that even when Barack Obama ran in 2008 they did not see levels of excitement the way we are seeing now.”
Horowitz said he was in kindergarten when Obama was inaugurated, an event the class watched on a big Zenith TV on a black cart in the classroom.
Laurie Plotnick, who lives in Broward, was an active campaign volunteer in 2008. “I saw tremendous enthusiasm. I saw that people were waiting in lines for four hours in Florida sunshine and heat,” she recalled.
In 2024, she sees even greater Democratic enthusiasm. “I think it’s more than 2008,” she said, pointing to “a coalition of everyone supporting Vice President Harris.”
Biden to Harris
Since Harris became the party’s candidate, the landscape has shifted, said Ronald Surin, president of the Haitian American Democratic Club of Broward, also a first-time delegate.
“The energy level has increased tremendously and we are very excited to support Kamala Harris,” Surin said.
He put Democratic energy and enthusiasm at 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 before. Now, he said it’s an 11.
“It’s what I sense throughout the community. It’s what I feel,” Surin said. “It’s a breath of fresh air for a lot of people who were feeling antsy about the elections but now they have renewed hope that it is within the reach of the Democratic Party to get elected to the presidency.”
The path from Biden to Harris wasn’t smooth for Democrats.
Biden’s poor performance in the June debate with Trump produced such an outpouring of doubts about his ability to win that he ended his campaign in favor of his vice president.
Once Biden was out and Harris was in, Hoch, Horowitz, Plotnick and Surin joined with almost every Florida delegate to the convention, and pledged to vote for Harris. (Her nomination was subsequently approved in a virtual delegate roll call in advance of the actual convention.)
Before that, from the June 28 debate until the Biden withdrawal and Harris entrance, there was lots of Democratic agita.
As pressure was mounting on Biden, Horowitz, Surin and other delegates from Florida’s 25th Congressional District in southern and western Broward issued a statement declaring the president “our best choice this November. … We condemn calls for the president to drop out of the race.”
Plotnick, too, was uneasy about efforts to push Biden, 81, out of the race. Plotnick, 75, is president of the Florida Democratic Party’s Senior Caucus.
“I was, to tell you the truth, concerned, because the people in my universe really wanted President Biden to stay as long as he wanted,” she said. “There are many 80- and 90-year-olds still working, (we) don’t want to see any of them pushed out.”
She’s especially looking forward to giving Biden an enthusiastic reception when he appears at the convention Monday night. But she’s all in for Harris.
“We have no better spokesperson for democracy than a woman with her background,” Plotnick said.
“I was very pleasantly surprised at the amount of support and how everyone did come together to go forward, young and old, all religions, all races, all economic folks,” Plotnick said. “There are so many different groups that all have the same goal, and that is to get Vice President Harris elected as president.”
Hoch said the candidate switch was the right move.
“People were discouraged because Biden had been showing signs of cognitive problems, and he wanted to stay in as long as possible and then he finally made the right decision,” Hoch said. “Everyone was so relieved,” he said, with Harris whom he said was “dynamic and motivational.”
Delegates selected
The delegates were selected long before, all expecting to vote for Biden’s renomination.
Most of Florida’s Democratic delegates are elected by party members within each of the state’s 28 congressional districts. Most districts get five delegates, some get six, and one gets 4 with the allocations based on population and the average vote for Democratic candidates in the two most recent presidential elections.
The 146 district level delegates are evenly divided between men and women.
Another 108 are delegates mainly because they’re elected officials or have leadership roles in the party.
All the state’s Democratic members of Congress, including the five from Broward and Palm Beach counties, are delegates. So are state Sens. Lori Berman and Rosalind Osgood, state Reps. Dan Daley, Christine Hunschofsky and Marie Woodson.
Other Florida delegates are major national Democratic fundraisers, including Mitchell Berger, the Fort Lauderdale lawyer.
Some are members of the Democratic National Committee, including Grace Carrington, who is Broward’s state Democratic committeewoman, and Junaid Akther, Palm Beach County’s state Democratic committeeman.
Others are part of key constituency groups, such as Stephen Gaskill, former president of the Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic caucus, and Lourdes Diaz, president of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus chapter in Broward.
Not cheap
With few exceptions, delegates pay their own way.
Florida’s delegation is staying at a landmark Chicago hotel, the Palmer House Hilton. Several delegates headed to this year’s convention estimate a per-person cost, including airfare and accommodation, of about $4,000. It’s well worth it, they said.
“It was always on my bucket list,” Plotnick said. “I’ve been a Democratic activist my whole eligible voting life, and I just felt that I wanted to be a part of this process of selecting the nominee and the kickoff for the whole election season.”
Her husband, Sheldon Plotnick, who years ago was a School Board member and Democratic Party district leader in New York, has been to conventions before. They’ll be in Chicago together; Sheldon Plotnick is an alternate delegate.
“I’m very excited, trying to stay calm. I’m bringing an extra suitcase, because they said you get a lot of election paraphernalia. I’m willing to pay for an extra suitcase,” Plotnick said.
For Surin, 57, a Navy veteran who was born in Haiti and lived in the U.S. since 1986, money wasn’t part of the equation.
“From the privilege and the benefits I receive this is a small price to pay,” he said. “It’s probably the best money we could spend for what this country has to offer, for me as an individual, for my family, to my people, to this community and to this nation and this world,” Surin said. “ There are places in this world where people have millions of dollars but they don’t have the freedom that we enjoy here and sometimes take for granted.”
Horowitz estimated his cost at about $2,500, something he couldn’t afford as a college student. He made phone calls to Democratic donors who made contributions to defray his expenses.
Hoch attended his first convention when he was Horowitz’s age. He worked on the 1976 presidential campaign of the late U.S. Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, and in 1980 for the campaign of the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. This will be his eighth convention, as a campaign staffer, delegate, alternate delegate, Credentials Committee member, or Platform Committee member.
“It’s definitely worthwhile for me. I’ve been a political animal since age 12. … It’s really great when you put people from all over the country who are focused on electing a Democrat in the same buildings to interact,” he said. “It’s really exciting.”
Florida dreams
Hoch, Horowitz, Plotnick and Surin aren’t predicting a Harris win in Florida, but they’re optimistic about November.
“If you asked me a couple of weeks ago about Florida, I’d say the chances here do not look so good. The political infrastructure here is Republican. There are more Republicans than Democrats,” Hoch said. “But just watching the momentum of the last two weeks, and talking to my friends who are of course going to vote Democratic, but they weren’t excited, now they’re excited.”
Hoch and Plotnick said they know people who have signed up to knock on doors, help with phone banks and contribute money. Plotnick said seniors are “learning apps left and right” to help with mobilization efforts.
Obama in 2012 was the last time a Democratic presidential candidate won the state, and Democrats had a more than 500,000-voter advantage over Republicans. Now there are 1 million more registered Republicans than Democrats in the state.
Still, Hoch said, the state “could be in play.”
Hoch, who served briefly as chair of the Palm Beach County Democratic Party in 1990, and is founder and president of the LGBTQ+ group Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, thinks voters will turn out for the candidate who would be the nation’s first Black woman president. “I think turnout among the Black community is going to be good. And that generally is good for the Democrats.”
And the Democratic activists said they are certain that enthusiasm for Harris would bring more people to the polls and help their party’s candidate win some lower-level offices.
“Democrats in all races will benefit by having her at the top. There is so much enthusiasm,” Plotnick said.
Surin and Horowtiz pointed to polling that shows the Harris-Trump race is closer in Florida than Biden-Trump was.
“We are going to be significantly closer than the polls were indicating a few months ago,” Horowitz said. “I don’t know if we are going to win the state of Florida, but just the fact that we are having these discussions indicates some positive movement.”
Plotnick said she’s inspired to do whatever she can between now and November.
“I couldn’t be prouder than now to be a Democrat,” she said. “The fact that the presidential race in Florida is closing the gap is just making me want to work harder and harder.”
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.