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JOE BLACKThe appeal of the president's ideals and an influx of conservatives converted Hernando from Democratic bastion to Republican fortress.
Before Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, Hernando County was a bastion of the Democratic Party.
The County Commission had only a few Republicans ever on its rosters and elected county constitutional offices rarely had elephants stamped on their campaign fliers.
But during the "Great Communicator's" eight years in office, GOP members surged forward. When he left office, the Hernando County Commission became, for the first time since Reconstruction, majority Republican and all constitutional offices were under the GOP banner.
"He gave us the shot in the arm that we needed," said Tom Hogan Sr., a longtime Republican state committee member. "Whether he was in Hoboken (N.J) or in Berlin calling for the wall to come down, Reagan inspired," Hogan said. "We can credit much of our success to him."
The move from being part of the once-Democratic solid South, coincided with a large demographic shift in Hernando County. A mix of conservative Republican retirees migrating from the North added a new dynamic to the voter rolls and helped almost double the number of people living in the county during the 1980s.
Hernando Republicans moved from being a largely fringe group in 1978, two years before Reagan entered the White House, to holding almost 49 percent of the vote in 1988, when Reagan was poised to leave office.
Democrats, by contrast, steadily declined from 68 percent of registered voters in 1978 to having about 51 percent a decade later.
Beginning in 1984, more than twice as many Hernando residents registered with the GOP than Democrats. Local leaders in the Democratic party ascribed that leap to Reagan's charm and popularity at the time, but having typically conservative Republican retirees drove the switch and ballooned the voter rolls.
Supervisor of Election records show that Republicans became the majority party in September 1993 by taking a slim 96-voter majority - a mark that Hogan credits to surging Republican sentiment stemming from Reagan's rebuilding of the party. Now, Republicans have more than 2,500 more registered voters than Democrats.
Reagan's presidency also marked a time when conservative Democrats found it exceedingly acceptable to make the move to the GOP.
Ana Trinque, chairwoman of Hernando Republican Executive Committee, was one of them.
In the early '80s, Trinque, then a recent graduate from the University of South Florida, was attracted by Reagan's message and switched parties in time to vote for him in the 1984 election in Pinellas County.
Reagan's message of optimism and the policies he pursued made it fashionable to leave the Democratic Party, she said.
Coming from a family of Colombian immigrants, Trinque latched onto Reagan's "evil empire" approach to stopping the spread of communism. Also, she said President Carter's term in office, marked by turmoil over high gas prices and the Iranian embassy hostage crisis, was enough to turn people away from being Democrats.
"People more and more thought he was making sense," Trinque said of Reagan. "People saw that he stood by his principles and was willing to act on them."
She said Reagan's message for a strong military still unify Republicans nationally today. On the local level, his ideas of lower taxes and less government intrusion still resonate.
"He kept that vision and he kept giving that hope to people," Trinque said.
The Reagan Revolution saw the defection of state- and county-Democratic elected officials to the GOP.
Two significant switches locally were county property appraiser Lester Samples and former county finance officer Karen Nicolai, now clerk of circuit court. On a statewide level, Secretary of State Jim Smith changed his affiliation and other lawmakers followed suit.
After his time on the county commission, Len Tria in 1988 was among those who made a move to the Republican Party.
Tria said during Reagan's time in office, he found himself agreeing with the president. He said Democrats had too much of a "defeatist attitude" to lure more people to their ranks - or to slow defections to the GOP.
"He imbued people with a "you can do it' spirit," Tria said. "Democrats had lost sight of that, and his party had an optimism."
U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, a first-term Republican from Brooksville, said she plans to attend services at the Capitol on Wednesday, where Reagan will be lying in state.
She recalled meeting him as a New York legislative staff member and seeing him speak during his first inauguration.
He had the power to electrify the room and helped sharpen her beliefs as a Republican, Brown-Waite said.
"He inspired the party at a time when it really needed it," she said."He made us what we are today."
-Joe Black can be reached at 352 754-6117 or jblack@sptimes.com