Ian destroyed parts of GOP-leaning Lee County. But Republicans are confident ahead of November.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — No one understands how hurricanes affect elections more than Florida Republican Matt Caldwell.

The former state House member in 2018 was running against Democrat Nikki Fried for Florida agriculture commissioner, one of a handful of statewide elected positions, when Hurricane Michael devastated the heavily Republican Florida Panhandle just a month before Election Day. Votes cast in the eight counties most affected by Hurricane Michael dropped by about 50,000, from 203,302 to153,684, according to state election records, and Caldwell lost by just 6,000 votes after a hotly contested recount.

His campaign unsuccessfully sued over alleged irregularities in Broward County, but he said he still believes that, without Hurricane Michael’s effect on Republican turnout, he would have won.

“There are few people on the planet better to talk about this than me, because that year [Hurricane Michael] had an impact,” he said. “There are a few things I think happened in Broward County that we were unable to prove, but without Michael, none of it would have mattered.”

Florida is experiencing a similar situation now with Hurricane Ian, which caused widespread damage in Southwest Florida, one of the state’s most politically conservative regions.

Republicans in Lee County are assessing how the catastrophic storm will affect turnout and hope Ian isn’t an October surprise that could give underdog Democrats a boost. The county provided 62,000 voters for Gov. Ron DeSantis four years ago, and neighboring Collier County delivered another 50,000, the governor's third biggest margin of any county in the state.

Just as Caldwell lost that 2018 election, other Republicans saw narrow margins statewide. DeSantis won the governor’s race against Democrat Andrew Gillum by just 40,000 votes after a recount, and Gov. Rick Scott beat Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by just 10,000 votes to secure his seat in the Senate.

It all could give the GOP reason for concern ahead of Election Day.

Yet the dynamic is different this election cycle, and some Republicans insist they’ll do just fine in 2022 — in part by using the lessons of 2018 as a guide.

DeSantis is heavily favored to win re-election, with a recent Mason Dixon poll placing him ahead of Democratic challenger Charlie Crist by 11 points. This year, Republicans are expected to win against under-resourced Democrats in the three Florida Cabinet races, and Sen. Marco Rubio is consistently polling better than Democratic Rep. Val Demings, by 7 points in some polls.

And because Lee County is so Republican-leaning, there aren’t a lot of competitive local general election races.

There are three school board races in runoff elections — contests that have been much higher profile this election cycle after DeSantis endorsed more than two dozen candidates and poured money into the races.

But some political consultants are downplaying the overall effects the storm will have on turnout and election operations.

“There are many, many ways that people can vote,” said David Johnson, a longtime Florida Republican consultant. “I don’t think it will be impactful on election outcomes. There are, very sadly, people who will not be able to vote, but as we learned in Michael, four-four voters find a way to vote. They always do.” Four-four voters refers to Republicans who have voted in the prior four elections.

Elections officials are now likely to try and replicate efforts done in the Panhandle after Hurricane Michael. In Fort Myers, near where Ian made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, entire buildings were reduced to rubble and catastrophic flooding caused major damage. Officials are weighing a variety of options that they used in the 2018 after Michael, including forming “voting centers” where election workers can collect ballots from voters.

“Obviously the human toll is more important, but I think we have to look at Hurricane Michael and how much the turnout stayed high for that race,” said Skylar Zander, Florida state director for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, which has field teams in southwest Florida. “For center-right folks, I think looking at the Hurricane Michael playbook is as good as we can get, because they did a great job.”

The author of much of that playbook is Bay County Supervisor of Elections Mark Andersen, whose county was one of the hardest hit by Hurricane Michael. Compared to 2014, roughly 30,000 fewer people voted in Bay County, but turnout among those who remained in the region and were eligible didn’t fall off.

“You have to make sure everyone is mentally prepared to perform,” Anderson said. “You’ve got to know how hard and when you can push. Many of the people doing this, including poll workers, will have lost their homes, and you start to discover that stuff as you get going.”

He said he has spoken to Lee County Supervisor of Elections Tommy Doyle since the storm hit, and he is “on his game,” Andersen said.

The 2022 landscape is different than 2018, when each statewide race was competitive, and Democrats put real money behind their recruited candidates. DeSantis won his race 71-16 in Bay County, and scored a 73-27 win in Okaloosa County.

“After Michael in 2018, there was drop off in voters in the hurricane affected areas, but we were able to actually increase the margin of Republican votes in Bay and Okaloosa County, which mitigated the impact,” said Evan Power, the Republican Party of Florida’s chair of chairs.

Florida state Sen. Ray Rodrigues, a Republican who represents some of Lee County’s hardest hit areas, says he is optimistic that the county will be up and running to conduct a sound election. He said they expect by the end of the week that 95 percent of county customers with Florida Power & Light will have power and the Lee County Electric Cooperative will have Cape Coral, one of county’s biggest cities, fully restored by Saturday.

“If that happens, we should be in better shape,” Rodrigues said.

But despite the optimism, Hurricane Ian has Caldwell thinking back to his loss in 2018 and worrying about what happens in November. He warns that the catastrophic nature of the hurricane could play a big role in the Florida midterms.

“It could impact things. Absolutely,” Caldwell said. “I think that it will be just as difficult [as Hurricane Michael] here.”