Demings speaks in Fort Pierce; tells interview, 'Let's don't play politics with people's lives'

FORT PIERCE — Florida's U.S. Senate campaign came through the Treasure Coast Tuesday when Democratic candidate Val Demings addressed an enthusiastic crowd here.

The campaign stop, put on with the help of the St. Lucie County Democratic Party, drew about 350 followers Tuesday night to the Havert L. Fenn Center, said Falon Lofley, local party chair.

“She came in and she really fired us up,” said Lofley. “People were really excited to be there, really excited to hear from her.”

Demings, an Orlando-area congresswoman and former Orlando police chief, is running to unseat incumbent Marco Rubio in the general election.

The Palm Beach Post — part of the USA Today Network-Florida — interviewed Demings Thursday after she spoke to a gathering of Palm Beach County Democrats in Delray Beach. (The full transcript can be read at palmbeachpost.com.) Here is the abbreviated interview:

Q: On this year's ballot, your name will be first, and the first time a Black woman tops a ballot in Florida.

A:  ... I grew up poor black and female in the South in a rural part of Duval County. My mother was a maid, my father a janitor, but I remember my mother used to talk about: don't allow the world to define you. You be defined by your ability to work hard, and play by the rules to treat people with respect. ... We're poor. How am I going to be anything I want to be anything I want to be or whatever?  ... And I've learned to just kind of block out all of the negative talk because I could remember being told the "You're the wrong color," "You're the wrong gender," called names, racist, racist names. And that I wouldn't amount to much. But I had an opportunity to be the first in my family to go to college. Youngest of seven, but the first to go. From there, worked as a social worker. From there, joined the police department. Was elected president in my academy class. Worked my way up through the ranks to become Orlando's first woman Chief of Police, serving in the House of Representatives, and now running for the United States Senate. Only in this country, is that story possible.  ...That's an example of the strength of America. And what we can do in this country. I'm not at the top of the ticket because I'm a Black woman. I'll be at the top of the ticket because I won a four-way primary with 84% of the vote and the voters that sent me to be at the top of the ticket. I just happen to be Black. I've worked hard. I play by the rules. I'm dedicated to public service, and the fruits of that is running for the Senate and being at the top of that ticket as a Black woman. Those are the kinds of opportunities that this country can give us.

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Q: Sen. Rubio also has kind of a unique story: Hispanic, son of Cuban immigrants. You guys also represent two core constituencies for your party. How do you not turn this into a base-versus-base election, but rather one where you become inclusive and you try to get votes?

A: Marco Rubio would like to turn this into a base-versus-base election. The difference in Marco Rubio and me is that I have dedicated my life to public service. I chose tough jobs. I've always been in jobs where I've worked to improve the quality of life for individuals, individual families, people who look like me and did not look like me. I've gone into some tough places and dealt with some tough issues.  ... It's about representing people and solving problems like I did as a police officer and a police chief for people who cannot solve those problems by themselves.  ... I really want to solve problems. Marco Rubio wants to be reelected and then go to the next office, whatever that is for him.

Q: How good is your ground game in South Florida to get enough votes on Nov. 8 to pull ahead and win?

A: I'm doing what I did as a police chief and as a police officer. I don't have the luxury of just going into places where I was comfortable or just talking to people who looked like me, or talked like me, or who believe in everything that I believed in. I went in those communities to solve problems. I'm not just going into blue counties either. I'm going into some red counties. That's what I did as a police officer. And I'm talking to people about things that matter to them. Our nation is in trouble right now. When we look at the attack on democracy, when we look at the attack on constitutional rights, like a woman's right to choose, and signaling attacks on other constitutional rights, like marriage equality, or even a woman's right to contraceptive, those aren't Republican or Democratic issues. Those are American issues ...

Q: How concerned are you about access to voting?

A: We are a nation of laws and I've spent a lot of time enforcing them. I now write them. But we also know that there has not been any widespread voter fraud. And when I made arrests as a police officer, I didn't check the political card or the voter registration card. If someone broke the law and the elements of the crime were there, they went to jail. Isn't it interesting that those arrests (referencing recent arrests made by Gov. Ron DeSantis' election-fraud task force) have only been made in blue counties when there was a spotlight on voter fraud, if you will, in the Villages (in Orlando), for example? So let's don't play politics with people's lives. It is just too important. You run on your record, I run on mine and may the best man or woman win at the end of the day, not try to suppress one of the fundamental rights that people have lost their lives to protect. And that is the right to vote.

Q: The Unidos poll basically says Hispanics are putting more emphasis on abortion than they ever have in the past. How would you reach out to Hispanic voters in that sort of sense?

A:... What we find out, although we spend a lot of time focusing on our differences, if we would just sit down and talk to each other, we find out that we're worried about the same things, right? We're worried about the cost of goods and services, the price of gas or children's future. We don't want our children, for me, my grandchildren's future, to be worse than my life is. When we signal that it is okay to start taking away constitutional rights, I think about my four granddaughters who under the current system right now would have less constitutional rights than me. Of course, the Hispanic community is concerned about that. And what we've talked about though, is some people may say, a woman's right to choose is not their issue. And what I say is, we have to be careful about discrimination of any kind, or rolling back constitutional rights of any kind. Because if we signal or send a message that it's okay over here, sooner or later it will be in your neighborhood, on your street, about an issue that you care about. Of course, the Hispanic community cares about protecting constitutional rights. That's why we're all here.

Staff reporter Thomas Weber contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Val Demings talks about race, abortion, Marco Rubio and Senate