Florida’s next speaker has three wishes

From: POLITICO Florida Playbook - Monday Sep 18,2023 10:58 am

Sep 18, 2023

Good morning and welcome to Monday.

DRIVING THE DAY — Florida state Rep. Daniel Perez’s House speaker designation ceremony will be in Florida's House chamber this morning. Tune in here at 10 a.m.

Perez told Playbook he’ll use his speech to call on the Florida House to be the “flagship of freedom not just for the entire state but for the entire country.” (Gov. Ron DeSantis won’t be at the ceremony but did attend a reception on Sunday evening, POLITICO’s Gary Fineout learned.)

A general view of the Old Capitol and current Florida Capitol buildings.

A general view of the Old Capitol and current Florida Capitol buildings Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023 in Tallahassee, Fla. | Phil Sears/AP Photo

Perez will be the center of attention in Tallahassee this morning when he’s designated as Florida’s future House speaker. The Miami Republican is set to take the gavel after the 2024 election, so long as Republicans maintain their majorities.

“I welcome the pressure,” Perez said when asked about the national spotlight on the Legislature amid the 2024 elections, repeatedly calling Florida “No. 1” during a 30-minute interview. “People are going to come after you because you're the best … I welcome the bullseye.”

For the upcoming session, Perez’s job will be to help Speaker Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast) advance his priorities. But he came into the Playbook interview prepared to talk up certain topics. Perez, for instance, was far more adamant than DeSantis and other legislative leaders have been that property insurance laws needed more work “because we haven’t absolutely solved that problem.”

“If I were king for a day and I had three wishes, I would tell you that one, two and three would be to fix property insurance,” he said.

Perez — who is Cuban-American — said he’d had “many conversations” about the issue with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who just released a list of fixes for property insurance in the Tampa Bay Times. “We both agree that it's the greatest issue that we have in Florida right now,” Perez said of himself and the former governor, promising to “continue to see what creative ideas we can come up with” to reduce rates.

ANOTHER PRIORITY — Perez said one of his most important goals will be to provide relief for the “absurd” and “wrong” 22,000-person state wait-list for Floridians with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The issue is personal to Perez and why he went into elected office: His brother, who is 32, has a serious form of autism that’s left him unable to speak and reliant on his parents.

DeSantis signed a voluntary pilot program (SB 2510) into law last session that will test whether a private company can manage services for 600 people with disabilities who are on the wait-list. If it works, Perez wants to roll it out statewide, he said.

People are on the wait-list because they need help paying for caregiving at home as well as for services such as speech therapy, grooming, meal deliveries and transportation. Providing such care is complicated, expensive and an unmet need that plagues many states. Whatever Florida decides would have huge implications not just for families who are overwhelmed by the responsibilities of caregiving with little help, but also on health-care businesses and workers.

“If I can take the concern of, ‘Where am I going to get the health-care coverage for my autistic son?’ off someone's table, then I think I succeeded as an elected official and as a future speaker of the House,” Perez said.

ALSO ON TAP — Perez indicated that voting laws needed another look this session. He previously sponsored a sweeping elections bill (HB 7061) DeSantis backed, which created a controversial and much criticized elections police force for the state. “Elections are something that we need to look at every single year and make sure that we are on top of our game in order to avoid any sort of fraudulent or bad actors in the elections space,” Perez said.

LESS CLEAR — Perez declined to offer specifics regarding forthcoming policies on “parental rights” other than to say, “if there's more like-minded bills to come — those aren't before me yet — and that's a decision that I'll make once I see them.” He called questions on redistricting and abortion rights “premature” given that they’re tied up in litigation.

One big unknown, of course, is whether DeSantis will still be governor when Perez is speaker. Perez endorsed DeSantis, but the governor has been falling in the polls while former President Donald Trump has surged. Once the primary or the general election is over, Perez said, “everyone will start to work around what the new normal is.”

— WHERE'S RON? Nothing official announced for Gov. DeSantis. He’ll be on a fundraising sweep through Texas this week.

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... DATELINE TALLAHASSEE ...

TOMORROW — Interim committee meetings for the Florida House will kick off in Tallahassee for just one day. Here’s the full list of committees that’ll participate. Watch this space for new bills filed.

TODAY — The House Democratic Caucus will answer questions from the press at 11:30 a.m. ahead of interim committee meetings. It’ll be live streamed on the Florida Channel.

CLARIFICATION BILL — “Florida bill would shield women who get abortions from criminal charges,” by WFLA’s Rachel Tucker: “Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book said she filed SB-34 in response to a recent claim by DeSantis that only medical professionals involved with abortions would be prosecuted.”

LEARNING TOUR — “Next Florida Senate president, other lawmakers, take unpublicized tour of Stoneman Douglas massacre site,” by South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Anthony Man: “I learned from some of the parents there and looked at the building itself and recognized what may be some places we can use for better security in the buildings that in itself based on the circumstances of that event would have saved lives,” state Sen. Ben Albritton (R-Wauchula) said.

DISASTER PREP — “Florida knows how to plan and respond to hurricanes. Other disasters can be a bigger challenge,” by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Anthony Man: “Elected officials and emergency managers who gathered Friday for a discussion of resilience and emergency operations said the ability to respond to the unexpected — such as the massive flooding in parts of Broward in April or the deadly condominium collapse in Surfside in 2021 — isn’t as well-honed.”

— “Richard Corcoran says he’s never compared New College of Florida to Hillsdale College,” by Florida Phoenix’s Mitch Perry

PENINSULA AND BEYOND

SUSPENDED — “DeSantis suspends Miami commissioner in corruption probe,” by The Messenger’s Marc Caputo: Miami City Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, a 58-year-old former state senator, was arrested in an alleged $245,000 money laundering and bribery scheme.

REIMBURSED — “Francis Suarez, Ken Griffin say Miami mayor repaid $14K for Miami Grand Prix events,” by Miami Herald’s Joey Flechas, Tess Riski and Sarah Blaskey: “It was the first time Suarez offered any specific details on what he did to comply with ethics rules intended to protect against conflicts of interest that prohibit the mayor from taking free or discounted tickets — or any other gift valued over $100 — from people who have business before the city.”

PICKLES REEF — “America’s most iconic coral reef is dying. Only one thing will save it,” by Vox’s Benji Jones: “Across the Florida Keys and throughout much of the Caribbean, coral reefs have bleached and many of them are dying. Some of these starving corals are literally centuries old. Others were planted recently to revive the reefs, and their bleaching represents a devastating setback for coral restoration. The culprit is extreme heat.”

— “Dirty work: How Hurricane Idalia sent 200 miles of storm surge down the west coast of Florida,” by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Bill Kearney

CAMPAIGN MODE

Rick Scott speaks on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Rick Scott speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. | Joshua Roberts/Getty Images

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — The Florida Police Chiefs Association is set to endorse Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) re-election campaign today, praising his opposition to “efforts to defund the police” and crediting him for creating “safer learning environments.”

“Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies have wreaked havoc on states like New York and California and we cannot ever let Florida go down that path,” Scott said in a statement.

ANOTHER WIN FOR SCOTT — The Republican Party of Florida’s executive board voted unanimously on Friday evening to start the process of endorsing Scott for reelection, Christian Ziegler, chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, told Playbook, saying he was “very proud” and that it was “well deserved.”

“It's a hard bar to get to, but he has earned it,” Ziegler said. “He went out there and fought for our state and he did a great job as governor and is doing a great job as senator.”

The decision is set to be considered to be ratified at the state party’s annual meeting, in January or February.

TRUMP IN IOWA — Trump moves to put the nail in DeSantis’ campaign coffin, by POLITICO’s Meredith McGraw and Sally Goldenberg: The former president and his team are beefing up their efforts in Iowa, hoping to deliver the type of knock-out punch that would effectively end the Florida governor’s bid and send a message to the other campaigns to get out of the way.

HE’S BAAACK — “Trump moves operation back to Mar-a-Lago in Florida,” by The Messenger’s Marc Caputo: “South Florida has increasingly become a haven for conservatives that include the likes of Stone, Republican fundraiser Caroline Wren, Trump super PAC pollster Tony Fabrizio, Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. and fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Trump's co-campaign manager, Susie Wiles, lives in Northeast Florida.”

ABORTION CLASH — “‘A terrible mistake’: Trump criticizes DeSantis on abortion ban,” by the New York Times’ Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman

TRUMP PREVAILED — “Florida Republicans reject DeSantis for Trump in loyalty pledge fight,” by POLITICO’s Kimberly Leonard and Gary Fineout: Top officials in the Republican Party of Florida, under pressure from Trump supporters, voted to remove a provision in its state bylaws that required any candidate seeking to be on the March 19 presidential primary ballot to pledge loyalty to the eventual GOP nominee.

DESANTISLAND

ONLY VET RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT — “DeSantis leans into his military experience to set himself apart in crowded 2024 GOP field,” by CNN’s Jessica Dean and Steve Contorno: “Nick Iarossi, a lobbyist and longtime supporter of Gov. Ron DeSantis, approached the Florida Republican in July with a frank suggestion: Talk more about yourself. More specifically, talk more about your military service. ‘I literally said, ‘Why haven’t you told anybody?’ Iarossi said. ‘He kind of laughed about it and said, ‘Well, I don’t like talking about myself.’”

‘ABORTION TOURISM’ — “Ron DeSantis: I support Sen. Tuberville's hold on military promotions over abortion policy,” by the Des Moines Register’s Stephen Gruber-Miller: “What the Defense Department is doing is outside the law,” DeSantis said. “They are breaking, violating the law by funding abortion tourism with tax dollars, and so when agencies do that, the Congress has to stand up and push back against it."

REPLAY — “DeSantis camp bets on COVID, LGBT backlash to return to 2024 relevance,” by Semafor’s Shelby Talcot: “COVID, anti-wokeness, ‘gender ideology’ — these are all themes DeSantis has gone to in the past that are central to his brand. But they’ve also failed to make a dent in the race thus far, while the bar for even just getting headlines gets higher with every poll showing Trump up by 30, 40, and even 50 points.”

DATELINE D.C.

MAXWELL FROST, STYLE ICON — “A cool thing about our generation is that we’re super-open to whatever fashion and whatever creativity people bring to the table,” Frost, a congressional Democrat representing a district that includes Orlando, told The New York Times of Gen Z’s fashion choices.

ODDS, ENDS AND FLORIDA MEN

BIRTHDAYS: Former Secretary of State Ken Detzner ... lawyer and lobbyist Reggie Garcia ... Jeff Sadosky of Forbes Tate Partners and former communications director for the Republican Party of Florida ... Former journalist John Van Gieson ... Orlando Sentinel editor Mark Skoneki

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