Alex Sink rips on Republicans at Hillsborough County Democratic meeting

Sink spoke for a few minutes after she and the other Democrats in the room viewed a presentation on VoteBuilder, an online database which holds the voter files of all registered Democrats in the state. The party wants every precinct captain to use the program to get Democrats to the polls this November.

The program has been used by Democrats throughout the country in recent elections, and an impressed Sink said she had never seen Hillsborough County Democrats so organized and enthusiastic this early in an election year.

Talking about her own experience, losing by one percentage point and 61,500 votes to Rick Scott in 2010, Sink said Democrats could not allow themselves to wake up the morning after the general election and feel they hadn't done enough to get the vote out.

"Just think about Rick Scott. Elections do matter. And voting matters, and who gets into office matters," Sink said. "If I were your governor, we wouldn't be doing things this way up in Tallahassee."

Sink has kept herself active since her narrow loss to Scott 15 months ago. She has created a think tank focusing on small business issues, and was the featured speaker at an Awake the State rally in Tampa last November.

But whether or not she intends to run for governor again in two years, some Democrats won't be so open to a second candidacy. In a column written in the Tampa Bay Times by Steve Bousquet, House Democrat Rick Kriseman says Sink did nothing to excite the base of the party in her unsuccessful run for governor. Bousquet also quotes state Senator John Thrasher of the state GOP as relishing the opportunity to have her as the Democratic standard-bearer again in 2014.