Ryan Ray
Sen. Arthenia Joyner didn’t mean it in a good way when she said recent actions taken by Gov. Rick Scott and her GOP colleagues in the statehouse represented “just another day in Tallahassee.”
After taking to the rostrum to the tune of Aretha Franklin‘s “Respect,” Joyner heaped criticism on the governor and legislative leaders for “grand abdications of the public trust.”
“How often does a legislative body formally confess to purposefully violating the very Constitution that each of them swore on the Bible to uphold?” inveighed Joyner.
“How often are legislators chastised by the state Supreme Court for destroying evidence and misleading the public. It seems more like a House of Cards than it does another day in Tallahassee. But here we are.”
Joyner also had words for former Gov. Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who like Scott are pursuing higher political office.
“What did they actually accomplish here that would help them solve a single problem facing our nation?” asked a term-limited Joyner, visibly incensed by the notion of Bush or Rubio in the White House.
“If a man cannot engage to solve the problems of his state, if he has the proclivity to leave town or remain aloof every time the Legislature convenes to reach a compromise or propose solutions, if he cannot do the job he was elected to do, why should we reward him with higher office?” Joyner said of Scott, on the governor’s rumored interest in a 2018 Senate race.
“In what sort of fantasy world is he living?”
Joyner challenged Scott to take the “minimum wage challenge” several Democratic lawmakers have taken of late, living on just $17 dollars a day to mirror the lifestyle of an $8-an-hour Florida worker, of which there are millions.
Noting that Scott frequently makes mention of his upbringing in a family who used public assistance to get by, Joyner said “surely this minimal task of one week of survival on the minimum wage shouldn’t be that difficult for the governor to do.”
“Jeb Bush walked to the statehouse from the Governor’s Mansion, so he wouldn’t have transportation problems,” said Joyner. “He could walk here.”
Joyner went on to adumbrate her party’s legislative priorities for the 2016 Session, including standardized testing and charter school reform, Enterprise Florida funding, renewing the Seminole Indian gaming compact, and amending the state’s death penalty statutes to require a unanimous jury verdict to enact capital punishment.
Though few if any of those priorities may receive a hearing in the Legislature, “the Democrats will be there to espouse the beliefs and values we believe in,” Joyner said.
