In separate interviews on CBS Miami's Facing South Florida, Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried and Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power assessed an election cycle that saw Democrats make inroads in the Legislature even as Republicans retained statewide offices.

Fried said Democrats flipped 17 state House seats and one state Senate seat, along with 48 other seats decided before Election Day, including school board and local government positions. She said the party picked up another legislative seat in the week after the election.

"The fact that we were able to have the best night that we've had in 30 years, we flipped as of even this week, we flipped another legislative seat," Fried said.

She described the legislative results as historically significant, saying it was the largest number of legislative flips by either party in Florida since 1966. She pointed to victories in Miami and Key West as evidence of a broader shift.

Fried attributed the gains to rebuilding a party infrastructure that she said had been neglected for years. "Over those six years we have left ground vacant," she said. "And so we had to come in and start to rebuild an infrastructure here in our state party by ourselves."

But Fried acknowledged that Democrats still struggle to compete in statewide races, citing a financial disadvantage she described as nearly 100 to 1. "We have shown significant progress in rebuilding the infrastructure here, but unfortunately we can't do it without financial resources," she said.

Power, for his part, acknowledged that Republicans faced "significant political headwinds from a national level," citing economic uncertainty and the war in Iran as factors that dampened turnout. "A lot of our voters didn't turn out because of those economic issues we talk about and a number of different reasons why they didn't turn out," he said.

Still, Power argued that the party's organizational strength in Florida insulated it from the worst of the national environment. He pointed to a voter registration advantage of 1.5 million and an infrastructure built to turn out voters. "We've had enough voters to go to that we're able to win the statewide races," he said.

Power contrasted Florida's results with those in Texas, saying the state party's groundwork allowed Republicans to "hold the line" in a way he said their counterparts elsewhere could not. "Yes, we lost some state legislative races. I think we'll get them back in time," he said. "I think that's a product of the environment."

The competing assessments leave open a central question for Florida politics: whether Democratic legislative gains signal a durable shift in a state that has leaned Republican in recent years, or whether the GOP's registration edge will continue to decide statewide contests. Fried's answer is that more money is needed; Power's is that the party's voter advantage is deep enough to absorb a bad year.