Florida’s lame duck governor gets legislative pushback for once, but don’t count him out | Opinion
When Gov. Ron DeSantis surprised legislative leaders by calling the special session set to begin Monday, he immediately received an unpleasant surprise: pushback.
During the first two years of DeSantis’ second term, lawmakers were totally submissive to the governor, who was coming off a landslide re-election victory after a first term that had received good reviews.
The Republican-dominated Legislature routinely rubber-stamped his agenda. Then, like a teenager in a horror movie venturing into nearby woods, DeSantis made a wrong turn by running against Trump.
So a schism developed in the Florida GOP and was in plain sight when House Speaker Daniel Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton issued a joint statement criticizing the special session as “premature.”
Perez subsequently added fuel to the fire by endorsing former GOP Chairman Joe Gruters for the Cabinet position of chief financial officer. Gruters had irked DeSantis by snubbing his nascent presidential bid and, instead, endorsing Trump.
DeSantis, showing he can be as vindictive as Trump, tried to reduce the salary Gruters received as GOP chairman. Gruters irked DeSantis again in 2024 by supporting the constitutional amendment legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, a proposal that DeSantis spent millions of tax dollars to defeat.
DeSantis had previously revealed his vindictive side in his treatment of political operative Susie Wiles. With Trump’s support, she helped DeSantis eke out a victory in 2018. Later, DeSantis not only fired her from his staff, he got her fired from a lobbying job. Not exactly fond of DeSantis, she’s now Trump’s chief of staff and gatekeeper.
As for the special session, arguably DeSantis’ underlying motive was to mend fences with Trump. Indeed, he declared that the session’s main purpose was to put Florida in the forefront of the states supporting Trump’s crackdown on immigrants.
This week, DeSantis finally fired back at his legislative critics. In a statement addressed to “Dear Florida Republicans,” he said, “I was shocked to see the response from Republican leaders in the legislature who claimed that it is ‘premature’ to deliver on the promises we made to voters and that action on immigration can wait…. they could not be more wrong.”
Is this testy back-and-forth a prelude to a more contentious relationship between DeSantis and the Legislature? Probably, and he won’t be the first governor or the last to encounter this kind of a challenge.
Meanwhile, however, DeSantis still wields a lot of clout elsewhere within Florida’s government. For instance, his appointees now form a solid 5-2 majority on the Florida Supreme Court. Moreover, in something new to Florida, he now can exert control over Florida’s independently elected Cabinet.
Ironically perhaps, that’s because of a favor conferred by President Trump, whose appointment of so many Floridians to work in Washington, D.C., created vacancies for DeSantis to fill in Tallahassee.
With Attorney General Ashley Moody departing to the U.S. Senate to replace Marco Rubio, the newly confirmed secretary of state, DeSantis is installing his longtime aide James Uthmeier as AG. And with Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis running for the U.S. House seat vacated by Matt Gaetz, there’ll be another Cabinet post to fill.
So while many previous Florida governors — notably the 20th century’s first GOP governor, Claude Kirk — have had contentious relationships with the members of the independently elected Cabinet, that’s no longer a worry for DeSantis.
So while he may have less clout with the Legislature and be unwelcome at the White House, his wishes generally will prevail in the Florida Supreme Court and always in the Florida Cabinet.
Journalists new to Florida have sometimes referred to “the governor and his Cabinet,” assuming incorrectly that it’s appointed, like a President’s cabinet. Now, realistically, Florida’s Cabinet is this governor’s, along with the Supreme Court. So, as they say in baseball, the sport DeSantis famously played as a youth and at Yale — two out of three ain’t bad, so don’t count him out ... yet.
Robert F. Sanchez, of Tallahassee, is a former member of the Miami Herald Editorial Board.