Lawmakers pushed back, slightly, against the governor during the annual legislative session.
Florida Republicans had a mild pushback this session against Gov. Ron DeSantis. | Marta Lavandier/AP
TALLAHASSEE — Florida Republicans may be drifting ever so slightly away from Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The GOP-controlled Legislature — no longer tethered to the demands of a governor aiming for the presidency — on Friday ended its annual session in a relatively low-key fashion as lawmakers wrapped up their work and quickly headed home.
This year marked the first instances of lawmakers giving mild pushback against the governor, who was widely considered one of the state’s most powerful governors before he dropped out of the presidential race in January. Republican legislators rejected some of his appointees and rebuffed his push to bring gambling to a Miami Beach resort hotel owned by a top DeSantis donor.
Instead of a session dominated by conservative hot-button issues designed to boost DeSantis’ campaign, legislators wrestled with top priorities of its Republican legislative leaders — including a contentious crackdown on social media for minors and securing hundreds of millions of dollars toward health care initiatives.
“Everything was just crazy [last year],” said Republican Rep. Paula Stark, who was a freshman in 2022. “You had all these things that everybody wanted you to stand up and support because it was a governor’s initiative … Now this session has been calmer.”
It was a turnabout from just one year ago, but the big question is whether this is just a temporary pause in the tremendous sway enjoyed by the governor or a reset following DeSantis’ loss in the Republican primary to former President Donald Trump. DeSantis had successfully used the Legislature in Tallahassee to create attention-grabbing laws that became the foundation of his campaign.
Unlike previous years, DeSantis didn’t enter the session with a lengthy agenda for lawmakers to follow. He started the year on the campaign trail instead of focusing on Tallahassee. And without a strong hand pushing culture war bills, many of the Legislature’s signature conservative proposals died this year, including a measure to protect “unborn children,” legislation banning LGBTQ+ rainbow flags from government buildings and another that would have prevented the removal of Confederate statues.
“A big difference between this legislative session and the last two is that we didn’t have Gov. DeSantis’ thumbs on the scale as much,” said Rep. Fentrice Driskell, the House Democratic leader. “I think he was trying to recover from his failed presidential campaign.”
Still, Republicans fell in line when DeSantis demanded. The governor for weeks indicated he was unhappy with a proposal to restrict teens from social media platforms, a top priority of Republican Speaker Paul Renner, in part because it didn’t allow parents to have any say in whether their kids could be on TikTok or Instagram. DeSantis eventually vetoed the bill, forcing the Legislature to go back and hash out revised legislation to satisfy the governor.
Florida Republicans also nixed an early effort to use taxpayer money to help pay for Trump’s legal bills after DeSantis threatened on social media to kill the proposal. Lawmakers also set aside about $450 million for another year of the state’s “toll relief” program that gives credits to frequent users of toll roads, a top priority of DeSantis. Legislators also agreed to expand “anti-woke” policies by targeting teacher training programs.
“He’s still the boss,” insisted Sen. Joe Gruters, a Sarasota Republican who had clashed with DeSantis after he endorsed Trump over the governor.
DeSantis, during a press conference minutes after the session ended Friday, also brushed aside any talk of reduced relevancy following his January decision to end his presidential campaign.
“Everything we set out to do, we accomplished,” DeSantis, who contended that his push to allow the famed Fontainebleau Hotel get a gambling permit was a “not a key initiative.”
But much of the session was dedicated to nuts-and-bolts legislation, the kind that lawmakers are accustomed to doing under earlier administrations. Before they left town, lawmakers signed off on a $117.4 billion budget for the coming year and a roughly $900 million tax package that includes a cut in taxes and fees charged on insurance premiums, a move that could save the average homeowner an estimated $60 a year.
Legislators also spent their final day going back and forth over proposals being pushed by business interests dealing with when teenagers can work and whether to preempt local workforce regulations dealing with heat exposure that had been under consideration by Miami-Dade County. They also passed a bill that would raise the age requirement for strippers from 18 years old to 21 years old.
The session was replete with special interest tug-of-wars. Those ranged from increasing interest rates on certain short-term loans — that one GOP senator said was akin to legalizing “loan sharking” — to passing a bill putting in tax breaks sought by utilities. Lawmakers also passed a ban on cultivated meat that the state’s agricultural industry wanted. Lawmakers also finally agreed to provide $20 million in compensation to several hundred Florida men who spent time at a notorious and now closed reform school where they were abused.
Democrats — who have spent the last two years consigned to a superminority — criticized their GOP colleagues for not passing any substantial legislation designed to address the state’s affordability crisis including the fragile homeowners insurance market.
But still, some Democrats said they were pleased GOP leaders dropped some of the more contentious bills.
Sen. Jason Pizzo, an Aventura Democrat who will take over later this year as Senate Democratic leader, said he was ending the session “with a sense of optimism that I haven’t felt in a long time.”
“This Legislature has demonstrated that we can work across the aisle on reasonable and rational policy,” Pizzo said. “When we are not bearing the burden of an executive agenda above our own, we see that cooler heads can prevail.”
Source: Politico