With a new Republican boss in Florida, DeSantis is learning the price of burning bridges | Opinion

Power is fleeting in politics, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is learning in his battle with Republican lawmakers after they bucked his order to convene for a special legislative session, and then passed an immigration bill he now says he will veto.

In his ascent to the center stage of American politics, DeSantis was dominant in Florida, running roughshod over the Legislature for years. He didn’t need to foster relationships — his voter popularity and sheer power alone were enough to compel lawmakers to comply with virtually all of his requests to pass laws, since he could potentially become the next American president.

But then DeSantis lost the Republican presidential primary to Donald Trump last year and his relationship with the Legislature headed south. Now there’s a new 800-pound gorilla calling the shots in state politics from Mar-a-Lago and the White House.

DeSantis is almost halfway through his final term as governor and is fighting the lame duck label. Don’t count him out just yet, but building goodwill with other Florida political leaders might have served him well right about now. Instead, he became known as vengeful and acted as if he was above the personal schmoozing that creates many effective politicians.

A simple phone call might have averted DeSantis’ public showdown with the Legislature. House Speaker Danny Perez, R-Miami, told Herald reporter Ana Ceballos this week that the governor informed him about his plans to call the special session to help Trump’s immigration agenda in a voicemail.

“I called him and he did not answer,” Perez told the Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau. “And he did not call me back.”

Eight minutes after the call, the Herald reported, the governor announced he was calling the special session for Jan. 27. That clearly angered Perez, who said the impasse “could have been avoided if communication were an option.”

After calling the special session “premature,” the Legislature, in quick consultation with the White House, passed a bill nicknamed the TRUMP Act to change the state’s immigration enforcement laws. It includes some provisions DeSantis asked for, such as ending in-state tuition at Florida universities and colleges for undocumented students, but he has derided the legislation as weak. It’s uncertain if lawmakers have the necessary two-thirds majority vote to override his expected veto.

In a twist of fate, the bill offers payback for another DeSantis foe: Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, to whom lawmakers want to give immigration enforcement powers instead of the governor.

In 2022, DeSantis publicly humiliated Simpson, an egg farmer who was then the Senate president. DeSantis vetoed a Simpson priority: $300 million to buy land for water projects. Then, with Simpson standing behind him at a news conference, DeSantis bragged about cutting the “pork” lawmakers had inserted into the state budget and, gesturing to Simpson and other lawmakers, added: “They may not be clapping about that.”

The following year, DeSantis vetoed another $100 million Simpson, in his elected post as agriculture commissioner, wanted for a program that helps farmers preserve their land.

As Simpson said when DeSantis’ presidential hopes were resting on winning Iowa, a state heavily reliant on agriculture, “Karma’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

Of course, Simpson, Perez and other top Republicans in the Legislature stood by DeSantis for years. They rubber stamped, sometimes with little discussion or proper vetting, some of DeSantis’ most bombastic and extreme ideas. They helped him demonize teachers as being far-left radicals and granted him a spending bonanza to perform stunts like flying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas border to Martha’s Vineyard.

Things only changed when lawmakers sensed DeSantis’ power wasn’t so absolute.

“We have a plan to help @realDonaldTrump. #RinoRon has a plan to compete with him. I think we’ve been misspelling his name all along: Ron MeSantis,” state Sen. Randy Fine, a former DeSantis ally who switched his support to Trump, wrote Wednesday on X, referring to the immigration bill the Legislature passed.

His words, said publicly, would have seemed unimaginable just two years ago, even coming from Fine, who’s known for hurling insults at his adversaries.

DeSantis has proven to be a resilient, pugilistic politician, so this doesn’t mean his career is over. But his skirmish with lawmakers is a sign he might have burned too many bridges.

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This story was originally published January 31, 2025 at 9:26 AM.