GOP Works With Democrats To Make Florida Purple Again

Republicans may be heading toward a no-confidence vote in Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez after he and other state legislators have spent this spring attempting to neuter policies that make Florida the national pacesetter for effective governance.

This includes efforts to hamper immigration enforcement, protect education waste and indoctrination, undo lawsuit limits, increase taxes, and smear conservatives. The drama includes an attempt to scandalize a charity Gov. Ron DeSantis’s wife, Casey, supports.

“Florida was very atypical for six years, and then now it’s just going right back into typical mode, which is more like a Texas or an Indiana or a Georgia, a red legislature that, ‘We’re going to do everything we can to bring Walmart’s tax rate to the lowest level imaginable’ and then do absolutely nothing to combat things that affect the quality of life for the desiccating middle class,” says Anthony Sabatini, a Republican former state representative who is now a county commissioner outside Orlando.

Primary battles backdrop the invective-laden, highly publicized spat between the governor and House. Perez is also term-limited and rumored to be readying to run for Miami mayor, an open seat in a Democrat-friendly locale. The current Republican Miami mayor demanded DeSantis reinstitute Covid restrictions and supports high-cost energy.

DeSantis is term-limited out in January 2027, and his wife may seek his position. DeSantis rode high on transforming a politically contested Florida into a supermajority-Republican state that voted for his reelection in 2022 by 19 points, the largest margin for a Florida governor in 40 years.

But he burned some of that capital on a failed primary of President Trump in 2023, even while delivering Florida big for Trump that cycle. That, his term limit, and DeSantis’ effective 2024 support for culturally conservative ballot measures protecting Florida from legalized weed and unlimited abortion resharpened the knives of the big business donor class in Florida.

That party wing now advertises itself as pro-Trump while continuing to suffocate Trump and DeSantis policies that their voters love. This threatens Republican victories in the state long-term and Florida’s policy leadership across the country.

Boosting a Communist Witch Hunt

Some Florida Republicans even participated in a Communist Party-connected smear campaign to block three of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s January appointments to the University of West Florida’s 13-member board of trustees. Students for Socialism and Party for Socialism and Liberation activists at UWF helped create and amplify false claims of “controversy” and “bigotry” with 200-person protests against DeSantis appointee Scott Yenor, according to USA Today.

Yenor is an Idaho professor, prolific scholarly author, and policy hand with a history of facing student protests for publicly stating basic truths such as men and woman are different, feminism hurts society, and family is more important than money.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation is a “revolutionary communist” party that urges “a revolutionary overturn” of capitalism and backs feminist gender theory, according to its website. So Yenor’s many public statements supporting marriage and sex differences triggered protests and false accusations from Marxist students, media, and UWF faculty. Thanks to weak Republicans, their witch hunt worked.

Some Republicans, including ethics committee chair Sen. Don Gaetz, Sen. Alexis Calatayud, and Sen. Randy Fine (now a U.S congressman) even applied the Communist smears to other UWF appointees because the majority voted for Yenor as board chairman.

Fine filed an amendment to Senate Bill 312 to remove Yenor’s position. Republican Rep. Alex Andrade, who led attacks on Casey DeSantis’s charitable efforts, filed a similar amendment in the House. They hysterically claimed Yenor and anyone who works with him hate women and oppose female education, simply because he treats women as equal to men in meriting praise and rebukes, rather than discriminating against women by refusing to challenge a female when warranted.

Yenor’s wife works, and she and their daughter went to college. He helped start a premier classical school that educates women far more robustly than most public institutions, celebrates their participation in sports, and sends high percentages to college. Yenor responded to the outrage-mongers by stating his position that represents the vast majority of Americans’ views: “We should build a country where young girls are encouraged to be young mothers and wives as well as enjoying fulfilling jobs if they choose.”

Purple Region Resists Conservative Transformation

Yet on April 9 Yenor stepped down from his provisional status on the UWF board ahead of an expected committee vote against confirming him. Appointee Gates Garcia also resigned from the board on April 17, likely expecting to lose his vote.

Appointee Adam Kissel, a former Trump administration official, lost his committee vote 5-4 on April 22 thanks to Gaetz and Republican Sen. Jennifer Bradley voting with Democrats. Gaetz represents Pensacola, where UWF resides, an increasingly purple locale that strenuously opposes making college work better for students and taxpayers.

“I think there was genuine concern and fear that UWF would become the next New College of Florida, which did need to be rebuilt from the ground up. UWF doesn’t need to be rebuilt from the ground up, but probably needs some significant reforms,” Kissel said in a phone interview. He noted UWF graduates just 61 percent of its students within six years of starting college, below the U.S. average of 64 percent, a situation Kissel called “a humanitarian disaster.”

“You’re out of the full-time workforce for four to six years, and you still don’t graduate,” he observed. “… and now you have debt and maybe you have no degree.”

UWF enrollment is 60 percent female and 40 percent male. Its six-year graduation rate for men is 55 percent, and for women, 68 percent. Women significantly outnumber men in U.S. college enrollment, a well-documented marriage-killer. If the ratios were reversed, Marxists would claim these large gaps prove systemic bias against women.

Universities as Leftist Patronage Systems

Kissel — also a trustee for Southern Wesleyan University and a board member for the National Association of Scholars — noted that typically trustees simply cosign college presidents and faculty. A university employee even gave him scripts telling him what to say at WFU board meetings, a standard practice: “It helps you not look like you don’t know anything.”

WFU colleagues told him, he said, that trustees, the provost, and the president typically spend 10 or fewer minutes reviewing the academic records of faculty before granting tenure. “You’re making a lifetime financial commitment to this person,” he noted. He plans to ask fellow trustees to carefully review professors’ work before voting on 10 tenure applications this week.

DeSantis’ appointments mess with state lawmakers’ penchant for treating education as a patronage system, Sabatini said: “They want to be able to push and advocate for people in their own political systems — staffers, lobbyists, supporters, donors, that are part of their little crew” to get “no-show jobs at the university for fundraising or planning or development, et cetera.”

“Of course, you can’t say that [publicly], so the pretext is, ‘Scott’s a racist or a sexist or whatever.’”

Kissel remains on the UWF board until 45 days after the session ends and could still be confirmed if Senate President Ben Albritton puts his nomination on the floor, he said. DeSantis can also reappoint him.

Florida’s legislative session will now extend through June 6 as lawmakers tussle over relieving property taxes that have soared with inflated home values. That’s yet another issue Perez has fought DeSantis on for no clear endgame except publicly trashing the governor. Perez’s office did not respond to comment requests Tuesday.

Doing Democrats’ Work for Them

This spring the Florida House passed House Bills 1321 and 1267 to force out conservative personnel DeSantis has been installing in state universities and end his recruitment of nationally recognized conservative policy experts in education. It would require them to live in Florida and be quickly ousted via short term limits, as well as create more bureaucracy in personnel changes, especially for college trustees and presidents. HB 1267 died in the Senate in early May.

HB 1321 is cosponsored by Republican Rep. Michelle Salzman and Democrat Rep. Anna Eskamani. Eskamani was formerly a spokeswoman for abortion and gender-change giant Planned Parenthood and an advocate of identity politics at the University of South Florida. In the legislature, she has also attempted to strip school choice dollars from Christian schools.

The Florida Senate refused to consider DeSantis’ nomination of Moms for Liberty cofounder Tina Descovich for a state ethics commission, which removed her from the post on April 29. It’s likely retaliation for Moms for Liberty activists primarying weak Republicans over DEI, school lockdowns, and allowing kids to see queer porn, as well as blaming parents frustrated with school boards for being victims of the Biden administration “domestic terrorist” designation.

Perez also fought to undo state tort reform with House Bill 1551 and Senate Bill 947. These would increase insurance costs and attorney’s fees, said public testimony on the House bill, and “could re-open the door to exorbitant fee awards for billboard lawyers.”

A Senate analysis finds House Bill 1551 could increase payouts to lawyers and insurance costs for Florida residents. Trial lawyers are a top player in politics, with the vast majority of their political contributions funding far-left causes and measures to increase lawsuits. Perez has received major political donations from health care and lawyer lobbyists.

While forcing Republicans to defend policy victories they established in previous sessions, the drama has included the Perez-led House not considering bills to establish open carry and ban Marxist queer sex flags from government properties.

Fighting Immigration Enforcement

The sparks started when DeSantis convened a special session in January to back incoming President Trump’s immigration policies. House Speaker Daniel Perez gaveled out the session 19 minutes after it began in a public snub to DeSantis, calling a special session “premature.”

Yet then Perez immediately gaveled in a second special session and handed members a bill that would have put the state agriculture commissioner in charge of immigration enforcement. Illegal workers are 60 percent of Florida farm employees, according to an industry group. As The Federalist reported, Florida’s agriculture commissioner supported giving driver’s licenses and in-state tuition to foreign citizens as a state senator.

Perez’s bill also failed to require local officials’ cooperation with federal efforts by erasing DeSantis’s proposed penalties. It also failed to curtail remittances — U.S. dollars migrant workers send abroad, a key motivator for illegal migration and a funding stream for cartels. Perez touted these proposals as “supporting President Trump,” even naming the bill “The TRUMP Act.”

The Florida House “pushing a bill that would have shut down state efforts towards deportation was a literal translation of their donors’ wants and needs,” Sabatini said. “U.S. sugar, ag, home builders association, chamber of commerce — they all want illegals, obviously, as many as they can possibly get, both as workers and consumers.”

The measure that passed after DeSantis threatened vetoes increased detention capacity, included lower penalties for failing to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, and withdrew college subsidies for illegal residents and the ag secretary plan. State and federal enforcement actions are still far below what’s needed to apply U.S. law to just the more than 10 million foreign citizens the Biden administration let in, Sabatini noted.  

“We have hundreds and hundreds of illegals in our county jail right now without detainer orders,” he said. “… If they just deported the people who are in the prisons already, you would double or triple the amount of deportations.”

‘Mafia-style’ Dramatic Leadership

Perez’s speakership has been marked by middle-school-level reprisals and drama, while he projects the same onto DeSantis: “It seems we’re getting to this regularity where [DeSantis] has a temper tantrum and he gets in front of a camera and he does one of two things: either spew lies — willingly choosing to lie about what he is telling the people in front of a camera — or he is not reading the bills,” Perez told corporate media on April 16.

Besides the special session gavel-out, gavel-in stunt, the leaders of both chambers worked to override DeSantis’ vetoes, the first time Florida’s legislature has done so in 15 years. The last happened as a legislative rebuke after Gov. Charlie Crist left the Republican Party.

After he proposed more stringent immigration enforcement than Speaker Perez, one Monday morning in February, Rep. Mike Caruso, R-Palm Beach, came in to work and found his corner office cleared out. The outspoken DeSantis ally eventually found his goods piled on a different floor on top of his American flag, he told The Federalist.

For disagreeing on immigration policy, Caruso said, Perez also stripped Caruso’s chairmanship of the economic infrastructure committee, denied all his appropriation requests, refused to hear any of his bills, and sometimes won’t even recognize Caruso to speak on the House floor. Of course, even Democrats’ appropriations are considered and their bills heard. Perez also kicked Republican Rep. John Temple out of his office after he after he expressed remorse for voting for Perez’s immigration bill.

This “mafia-style” leadership has caused House Republicans to catch Caruso in private corners and the parking lot to discuss a vote of no-confidence, said Caruso.

“There is a great underlying rumbling from the members that they feel tired of being retaliated on, abused, forced to vote certain votes that they did not come up to Tallahassee to do in fear of retaliation,” Caruso said. He thinks if the speaker “can’t get it together” on the already delayed state budget, a no-confidence vote will become a majority position.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist. Her latest book with Regnery is “False Flag: Why Queer Politics Mean the End of America.” A happy wife and the mother of six children, her ebooks include “Classic Books For Young Children,” and “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media including Tucker Carlson, CNN, Fox News, OANN, NewsMax, Ben Shapiro, and Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Joy is also the cofounder of a high-performing Christian classical school and the author and coauthor of classical curricula. Her traditionally published books also include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.