The Val Demings Gamble

On a hot D.C. Wednesday in the middle of July, an 11-foot statue honoring Mary McLeod Bethune—carved out of marble extracted from the same Tuscan quarry that Michelangelo used for his David—stood draped in a black cloak in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. A group of distinguished guests had gathered to honor Bethune, the prominent educator and civil-rights activist who founded a college for Black students in Daytona Beach, Florida, and later served as an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She is now the first Black American to have a state statue in the hall.

The group, which included several members of Florida’s congressional delegation, smiled as cameras flashed. Two of those present, Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Val Demings, are opponents in the race for Rubio’s Senate seat—a race that could secure the Democrats’ control of the Senate. Together, they tugged at the sheet, revealing the white-marble figure clothed in academic regalia, holding a black rose—which, in life, Bethune viewed as a symbol of diversity.

One by one, speakers approached a lectern in front of the statue to offer remarks. “I remember as a little girl listening to my mother and my father talk about a Black woman, a woman who looked like us, who started a college,” Demings told those who had gathered in the amphitheater. “As I listened to my parents tell the story, it seemed impossible. But Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune made what seemed impossible possible.”

Demings hopes to conjure some from a more-than-100,000-voter Democratic advantage in 2020 to a Republican lead of nearly the same size in less than two years. And for months the polls reflected that, showing Demings trailing Rubio; but in recent weeks, a new batch of polls has shown Demings pulling into an effective tie, or even a slight lead.