Editor's note: This story was originally published by The Florida Trib.

State Representative Fabian Basabe wants voters to think twice before judging him solely on a civil jury’s finding this year that held him liable for sexual harassment, battery and defamation. The former reality TV star, running for reelection in Miami-Dade’s House District 106, is instead imploring them to look at his legislative record and consider his wide bipartisan support — as well as how attractive he says he is.

“Seriously, look at me. Open your eyes and look at me. I don’t need to rape shit,” Basabe wrote in an opinion piece shared by the Miami New Times.

He is making his case in an election year when unsavory allegations have become part of the ballot. On Nov. 3, Florida voters will choose among candidates facing accusations that include sexual harassment, association with white supremacists and a range of other kinds of corruption. Yet many candidates have survived the claims, winning primary races with their parties’ backing intact.

Election experts say the constant stream of accusations from both sides is part of the reason.

As Election Day nears, candidates trade aggressive insults, calling their opponents liars, scammers and frauds. The more these words are thrown around, the less weight they seem to carry, making real findings harder to tell from rhetoric, Susan MacManus, professor emeritus of political science at the University of South Florida, told The Florida Trib. And when controversy becomes a normal part of the election cycle, with increasing magnitude of alleged corruption and even criminal behavior, voters tend to tune out the conflicts.

“The rise of social media has made it easier to just pass over scandals and assume that it’s either a lie, an AI fabrication or it’s politics as usual,” MacManus said. “The language that politicians are using, which would have been in previous years considered out of bounds, is now commonplace out of the mouths of candidates themselves, all over social media, and it gets intertwined with all the ads, political ads on television, radio, mailers, you name it.”

Not all candidates are as successful in outrunning controversy. In Florida’s 7th Congressional District, Republican U.S. Rep. Cory Mills lost his party’s primary to challenger Ryan Elijah despite the advantages of incumbency. Mills had faced a series of controversies over the past year, including a police response to a domestic violence allegation, a court-issued injunction restricting his contact with a former partner, a House Ethics Committee investigation and reports that the Justice Department was investigating him. Mills has denied wrongdoing.

“Almost certainly the reason that he lost was because there wasn’t just one scandal. There were about three or four, you know, scandals involving his personal life and his business,” said Aubrey Jewett, an associate director at the University of Central Florida’s School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs.

But in general, voter trust will be hard won this year, MacManus said, shaped more by what matters to them personally than what they read in daily headlines or hear in candidate sound bytes.

“This is an unusual year where people are very distrustful of politicians, the media… We have the lowest levels of trust, and so truth is something that people are saying there’s not much of,” MacManus said. “Unless it’s something that personally moves them or it affects somebody they love, a lot of people aren’t going to use these day-after-day squabbles and legalese as a major voting cue.”

Voters remember scandals they can understand

Allegations involving sexual harassment or child abuse tend to sway, or even flip, voters more than, say, financial malfeasance.

“One of the things is salience, and sex scandals tend to be extremely salient and they’re more easily understood,” said Kelly Smith, an associate professor of political science at Stetson University. “They’re not as complicated usually … as like Medicaid reimbursement. That’s a little bit more technical, and so it can be more difficult to update your vote preferences because of that.”

Mike Caruso, Palm Beach County’s clerk of courts running for election, faces multiple felony charges stemming from alleged sexual abuse of a young family member. After Caruso’s arrest, Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended him from office and withdrew his support. Caruso has pleaded not guilty and plans to continue running for office as he awaits trial.

“The presumption of innocence is a fundamental principle of our justice system, and for that principle to mean anything, it must apply to everyone,” said Juda Engelmayer, a spokesperson for Caruso’s campaign, when asked whether or not the accusations could affect the election. “Mike remains on the ballot and intends to serve if elected. He understands that voters will make their own decisions, and he respects their right to do so.”

Voters who rely heavily on party cues may be less inclined to support Caruso. After his arrest, DeSantis removed him from office, and the Palm Beach County Republican Party no longer has him in its voter guide following criticism from the governor.

In Basabe’s case, a civil jury found him liable and awarded the plaintiffs, two former legislative staffers, a combined $450,000 in damages. In 2024, Basabe made what he called a “verbal contract” with voters, saying he would resign if the sexual harassment allegations against him were proven true. He has not resigned, claiming the verdict isn’t conclusive enough for him, and he’s appealing it.

Both races will test what voters will and won’t tolerate.

“Those kinds of scandals [of sexual abuse] typically are taken much more seriously by voters, and even for people … who political party is important,” Jewett said. “Some things are hard to forgive and overlook, and I would say that those kinds of transgressions might be, you know, harder for voters to overlook.”

Growing tolerance for candidates with white supremacist leanings

Bigoted statements have long been considered politically damaging. But in today’s social media environment, such controversies can be reframed as distractions from other issues that the general public may find more pressing in their everyday lives, such as affordability.

Marshall Rawson, the Republican nominee for Florida House District 10, champions on his website his efforts to protect Florida “from the radical left and spineless politicians.” Earlier this year, local media reports drew attention to statements he made on X in 2023 and 2024 that referenced the Bible as defenses of slavery and punishment of homosexuality by death. He’s also been scrutinized for his past involvement with the League of the South, a group associated with white supremacist and racist ideology, as reported by Florida Politics.

More recently, reports showed that Rawson attended the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville Virginia, a gathering for white supremacy extremists that gained national attention after a driver plowed through a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a woman and injuring dozens of others.

In response, Rawson pointed out that the rally was primarily organized to protest the removal of a Confederate soldier statue. He said he had spent much of his adult life “defending historical monuments from destruction or removal, and I feel that way about almost all monuments, not just those associated with southern history.”

Rawson won the Republican primary of Florida House District 10 with about 55% of the vote.

U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, running for reelection in Florida’s 6th Congressional District after winning the primary, has been criticized for anti-Muslim remarks, including an X post in which he said: “We need more Islamophobia, not less. Fear of Islam is rational.”

Fine’s remarks inspired a flurry of AI-generated images across social media, primarily deriding his appearance rather than the content of his messages.

Mockery has long deflated political vitriol, but social media has bent that effect: The same feeds that deliver news about candidates also turn that information into jokes that can be waved off as a political attack, MacManus said.

“Social media is responsible for the minimizing of scandals in turn, and that means their impact is lessened because more and more people just look at social media for political news,” she said.

The bigger the scandal, the easier to dismiss

The most prominent and politically toxic controversy in Florida this year has yet to prove its electoral significance, or that any candidate tied to it will face consequences beyond news headlines: Hope Florida’s diversion of $10 million from a Medicaid settlement into the program’s private foundation, money that was later sent to political committees opposing a 2024 ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana.

A grand jury report earlier this year concluded the funds had been “misappropriated” for political purposes. But on Oct. 7, a state appeals court ordered the report’s findings to be expunged, which DeSantis and other top Republicans celebrated as an exoneration.

U.S. Senator Ashley Moody and Attorney General James Uthmeier were named in the grand jury report for their involvement, but no criminal charges were filed against them or anyone else, due to “insufficient evidence,” the grand jury report said. Both candidates won their respective primaries.

Allegations of financial impropriety aren’t the same as convictions of sexual abuse and other forms of violence. But the verbal attacks from both ends of the political spectrum have been no less scathing.

Angie Nixon, the Jacksonville Democrat challenging Moody for her Senate seat, has called her a “lying, cheating, thieving, scamming person.” Meanwhile, José Javier Rodriguez, who is also running for attorney general, referred to Uthmeier as the “most corrupt” and “least independent” attorney general in the state’s history. He pointed to the Hope Florida controversy as well as to state contracts for Alligator Alcatraz, the now-closed immigration detention center in the Everglades, awarded to companies that donated to Uthmeier’s campaign, some just before or after winning the bids.

As incumbents, Moody and Uthmeier have an advantage in their respective races.

Incumbents usually do, said Kelly Smith, an associate professor of political science at Stetson University. They tend to have greater name recognition because they have already campaigned and held office. They may also be better positioned to raise money and prepare for a campaign.

Moody and Uthmeier were never elected, though; both were appointed by DeSantis. And that appointment carries an advantage of its own, said Jewett, the associate director at UCF.

“I think for many Republican voters, they didn’t take that charge very seriously because Gov. DeSantis has said over and over again … that there’s nothing there, that nothing bad or illegal happened,” he said of the Hope Florida scandal, adding that “a lot of Republicans just didn’t believe that that was a scandal. They believed the governor.”

Party affiliation can serve as a shortcut for voters weighing allegations against candidates, especially when they trust party leaders to tell them what to believe.

Research from the University of Florida has examined the way people increasingly encounter news incidentally, rather than actively seeking it out. When social media platforms rely on algorithms to determine what users see, voters are unable to take a critical lens to what information they’re consuming, making it harder to distinguish reliable reporting from misinformation, UF experts say.

“The voter really needs to trust some people, but who?” MacManus said. “Are they just going to trust people in their circle that are driven by the same thing? You can’t just rely on a single source. But again, most voters don’t have the time or won’t take the time to do extensive background research on a candidate or an issue.

She said voters often struggle to evaluate the steady stream of negative information about candidates, and the result can be disengagement. “Voters just don’t have the time to really look at it, and that’s why we have turnout issues. Everything they hear is negative and consequently, it just makes people throw up their hands and say, ‘Well, it’s not worth my while to vote.’ That’s the biggest consequence of all.”