Peter SchorschThe first full week of January brought lawmakers and politicos to Tallahassee for a round of legislative committee meetings and the inauguration of Gov. Rick Scott. This provided quite a clash of cultures at local institutions where the natives mix with the out-of-towners.
On one side were the legislators, lobbyists and staffers still hung over from the holidays or upset that their plans to travel to Dallas for the college football national championship involved the purchase of non-refundable airline tickets. On the other side were the Florida GOP officials – the party chair from Okaloosa County, the state committeewoman from Santa Rosa – invited to the inauguration proceedings. Those in this latter cohort were easily identified by their elephant brooches, elephant lapel pins, elephant scarves, elephant anything.
What you end up with is a town full of bejeweled tourists expecting to be entertained by those in #TheProcess who themselves would like nothing more than to hit the snooze button on the start of the 2015 legislative session.
I had a front row seat – literally – for this clash of cultures. Me going to the actual swearing-in ceremony of Rick Scott would have been like a Red Sox fan attending a ticker-tape parade for the New York Yankees, so I rearranged the wrought-iron table and chair in front of the Governor’s Inn and blogged away. From there and from more than 18 meetings and several cocktails over the course of 36 hours, here are five takeaways from my trip to Tallahassee.
- Everyone is talking about Jeb Bush. This sounds obvious, but it really is fascinating to watch people, even those with little or no connection to Bush, line up for the ride of a lifetime, which is what a full-blown presidential campaign really is. However, if you talk to the actual few Florida politicos gravitating in Bush’s orbit, many of the people who think they are on the inside aren’t, including several top donors who will be asked to raise as much as a $1 million – all for the pleasure of not having their phone call returned. Just to be perceived as close to Bush is worth the effort of raising six-figures for him.
- Meanwhile, no one is talking about Marco Rubio, at least not in Tallahassee. Of the 100 or so Republican politicos I spoke with during this most recent trip, none said they would support Rubio over Bush. Let me repeat that: No one in Tallahassee is ready to support Rubio over Bush. How does one run for president without the support of the political establishment of your home state? Here’s how much the presidential race has shifted away from Rubio: The talk of the town is not Rubio running in ’16, but that he will run for governor in 2018. What a race that would be … a Republican primary with Rubio, Adam Putnam and, possibly, Jeff Atwater and Will Weatherford.
- With so many Republican Party officials in the same place at the same time, the race to be RPOF chair came up a lot in conversations. Current chair Leslie Dougher is running for re-election and has the support of Scott, Senate President Andy Gardiner and House Speaker Steve Crisafulli. The leading challenger to Dougher is state Rep. Blaise Ingoglia of Spring Hill. The consensus is that two weeks ago Ingoglia was primed to unseat Dougher. However, by a week ago, Dougher had rallied. The race for party chair is, by design, defined by gender as there are state committeemen and state committeewomen. It’s difficult to imagine enough state committeewomen moving away from one of the few visible female leaders in state politics. The race remains fluid, but Dougher will likely win by a couple touchdowns.
- When Scott first came into office four years ago, his team of political novices and outsiders – remember Mike Prendergast? – partially built his administration by rewarding the few campaign staffers who had been loyal to Scott over Bill McCollum with positions in state government. For the most part, these hirings were limited to agencies’ legislative affairs directors and spokespersons. This time around, Scott and his chief of staff, the intriguing Melissa Sellers, are putting their people in as agency heads and chiefs of staff. Quickly and quietly (and without the baggage Steve MacNamara and Adam Hollingsworth brought), Sellers is becoming the most powerful chief of staff since Eric Eikenberg under Charlie Crist.
- There are fewer than 60 days to the 60-day legislative session and there does not seem be a lot of motivation to get much done this year. The driving energy of legislative leaders Don Gaetz and Will Weatherford is not present in the well-meaning but seemingly passive Gardiner and Crisafulli. Remember, my prediction: The Legislature will pass the fewest bills in its history in 2015 as lawmakers punt to an early 2016 session. Despite a boatload of issues confronting them — education testing, gaming, medical marijuana, water policy — legislators won’t act on many of them this year. The problem is human nature. Lawmakers moved up the start of the 2016 session to January, meaning committee meetings for that session will begin in September/October. Look for many a procrastinating legislator to say, “We’ll just wait on issue X until we’re back here in a few months.” Except by then Florida senators and representatives will complain that it’s an election year and they can’t pass anything controversial while they’re on the campaign trail.
One final thought about this past week in Tallahassee: The capital suffers from the worst weather in the state. Seriously. Not hurricane weather, but just a steady diet of mostly cloudy with an almost certain chance of rain. It’s very hard to pack for a visit to Tallahassee because one minute it’s warm, the next it is cold – at least, colder than the rest of the state. Meanwhile, state government buildings have the heat jacked up, leading one to sweat indoors, despite it being 45 degrees outside. With weather like that, it’s no wonder so few people attended Scott’s inauguration.
Peter Schorsch is a new media publisher and political consultant based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
