Are Florida Republicans breaking from DeSantis? Divide grows as GOP 'wish list' fades

Republican supermajorities in the Florida House and Senate are poised to deal a political setback to an unlikely target: The Florida Republican Party.

With lawmakers hurtling toward a scheduled Friday finish to the 2024 session, most of the 10 items included in the state GOP’s legislative wish list already have been declared dead or look destined to fall short of clearing both chambers.

For some, it’s a sign that many fellow Republicans are rejecting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ trademark “war on woke” after it didn’t provide much traction for him during his failed bid for the GOP presidential nomination.

Others say it points to deep-seated political divisions within the party’s ranks at both the state and national level, which could foretell wholesale losses in November’s elections.

“If the party does not start reforming itself from within, the voters are going to make that conversion for us,” said Rep. Spencer Roach, R-North Fort Myers.

A long lineup of failures

In the Legislature, efforts appear dead that would:

• Ban cities from removing Confederate monuments or putting up Pride flags.

• Enact new workplace restrictions on the use of personal pronouns.

• Impose term limits for all county commissioners.

• Let 18-year-olds acquire rifles, shotguns and AR-15s.

• Require driver licenses to display a person’s gender at birth, not how they identify.

All have run into a brick wall in the Florida Senate.

Meantime, ideological resolutions were approved by lawmakers that call for term limits on members of Congress and for a balanced federal budget – items that were on the state GOP’s wish list.

And another GOP priority looks likely to win final Senate approval next week: A DeSantis-backed measure aimed at Florida’s homeless, which he cast as helping prevent the state from becoming like San Francisco, a popular focus of Republican wrath.

The measure prevents cities and counties from allowing people to sleep on public property, instead urging local governments to create designated homeless encampments.

While local governments oppose the state directing them how to deal with their unhoused population, this GOP priority looks poised for approval in the session’s closing days.

Still, the GOP’s demand for more divisive cultural legislation, and an arcane proposal supporting gold and silver currency, appear doomed.

Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo: A significant stop sign

Senate President Kathleen Passidomo has emerged as a significant stop sign, with the Naples Republican showing no interest in the hard-right agenda advanced by the Florida Republican Party.

Even before session, she privately told allies that she was looking to dial back the Legislature’s advance of bills which enflamed LGBTQ Floridians, Black residents and other marginalized communities.

When the Florida GOP promoted the legislative wish list at its February annual meeting, a month into session, Passidomo was ready with a response.

“Our bill process is not the Republican Party of Florida,” Passidomo said in response to the party’s priorities.

Since then, much of the Florida GOP’s agenda has languished in the Senate. Passidomo hasn’t shared whether her decision to shelve the contentious legislation grows out of concern for Republican legislators damaging themselves with voters.

Did Florida GOP legislators get a wake-up call in January?

But some Republicans point to a January wake-up call that arrived in the form of the party’s losing a House district in a special election to Democrat Tom Keen of Orlando, who flipped a Central Florida seat after running a centrist campaign against a conservative Republican opponent.

Republicans still hold a dominant 84 seats in the 120-member House. But Keen's victory surprised many within the party.

“Republicans had better sit up and pay attention,” Roach said. “I just think that the party could not be more tone-deaf and out-of-sync with the concerns of everyday Floridians.”

He added, “What’s on the minds of Floridians is property insurance, attainable housing, making sure that they have good schools. They worry about the rising cost of health care and inflation. But 'Exhibit A' of the party’s disconnect is Tom Keen. There’s a reason Tom Keen is in the House today.”

Rep. Dean Black, R-Jacksonville, who also chairs the Duval County Republican Party, is sponsoring two of the GOP's top 10: The monuments bill and the gender measure. He disputed that the legislation is out-of-step with his voters.

"This is the first time the Republican Party of Florida has even put out a list like that," Black said. "But having put that list out, they've made the wishes of the average American known, and it's something that can attract the attention of the Legislature, not just now, but going forward."

He concluded: "This is a starting point, not the end."

Democrats, though, say Passidomo may be protecting Republicans from themselves and the risk of alienating voters with red-meat policies.

Are Florida Republicans 'split'?

“It’s telling of the Republican Party of Florida what their top 10 priority list is,” said Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens. “Nothing really about how we can help Floridians ... it’s more about some kind of culture war or maintaining power.

“But I think Republicans are split," he added. "Many want to get back to governing and others are still stuck in the ‘Ron DeSantis-running-for-president' period. The House is still running along with this, but the Senate seems to be returning to being more of an independent body and one of common sense.”

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Jones went on, “That type of (conservative) agenda is not moving the needle in most states. Republicans are losing the middle and the independents.”

Unlike last year, when DeSantis actively pushed contentious bills that limited abortion and restricted undocumented immigrants, transgender Floridians, socially conscious investing and diversity programs, the governor hasn’t engaged as fully with the Legislature since ending his presidential run in January. That followed a distant second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses behind former President Donald Trump.

At the same time Florida Republicans unveiled their 10-point wish list in February, party leaders endorsed Trump for president.

Florida Republican Party chair Evan Power has shrugged at Passidomo’s resistance, suggesting that while the wish list may rally the party base, it’s up to lawmakers to legislate.

But others aren’t so accepting.

Bob White, chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus, has condemned Passidomo, saying she belongs in the “Oath Breakers Hall of Shame,” for refusing to advance the gun legislation and other efforts aimed at tightening oversight of elections.

“We need leaders in Tallahassee possessed with humility and patience, not arrogance and self-righteousness,” White said.

John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at [email protected], or on Twitter at @JKennedyReport

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida Legislature supermajorities don't help Republican wish list