With a big primary season behind us, we are now entering the home stretch of one of the most pivotal election cycles in U.S. history. We face a choice between the Republican Party, which represents the rule of law, secure borders, low crime, protecting individual freedoms, economic prosperity and competent governance, and the Democratic Party, which supports open borders, mass immigration, soaring crime, chaos and shutting down free speech.

Victory up and down the ballot for traditional America is at stake and the Republican Party of Sarasota County is geared up and ready to support all our candidates at every level to ensure that we have victory for regular Americans. In fact, we have 24 candidates on the ballot in Sarasota County, from President Donald Trump down to Charter Review Board to city elections and to the amendments on the ballot, and we are ready to make sure every one of them wins.

With our popular conservative ideas, strong leadership and relentless work, Republicans now own the biggest voter registration advantage in Sarasota County history, and it just keeps growing. Voter registration as of Aug. 30, 2024, according to the Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections office:

• Republican: 156,475

• Other: 86,608

• Democrat: 86,132

• Total: 329,215

No one is accidentally choosing Republican. More are because the Democrats have lost their way, to put it mildly, and the Republican Party stands against the tide of leftist globalism. 

But all the work of actually electing Republicans remains, and the RPOSC is working daily to do that. The key is getting voters to the polls — whether by mail, in early in-person voting or on Election Day. We have a robust ground game to accomplish this, including Super Saturdays where we marshal our strong volunteer base to go door-knocking throughout the county, run phone banks, publish Voter Guides, send mailers and make sure we are at every polling place when voting is going on.

All of this work pays off. Our voters really turn out. In a normal Presidential general election, the average voter turnout around Florida is about 75%. But the average turnout of Republican voters in Sarasota County is about 82%.

This sort of turnout is why Sarasota County is such an essential element in Florida Republicans winning. We run up the score here to make up for other areas. Each time President Trump has been on the ballot, he has increased his margin of victory in Sarasota County, and we expect that to happen again in November. Sen. Rick Scott will win big with Sarasota County’s help. We look forward to returning all of our incumbents and electing our new candidates to office Nov. 5.

Jack Brill is the Republican Party of Sarasota County Chairman.