Rick Scott and Cabinet to brief media on 2015 session agenda

Florida’s leading lawmakers Wednesday will speak before state editors and reporters at the annual AP pre-session briefing in Tallahassee. Gov. Rick Scott, the Senate president, and House speaker will outline their agenda for the 2015 legislative session along with Democratic leaders and members of the Florida Cabinet.

The Legislature convenes March 3.

Gov. Scott spiced this year’s pre-session briefing with added drama – he and the Florida Cabinet are engaged in a power struggle over Scott’s firing of Gerald Bailey as head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The drama is heightened by two Cabinet members as potential rivals for governor in 2018.

Scott’s behind-the-scenes manuevering made them appear clueless or negiligent and powerless.

Florida government is unique in that the duties of the executive branch, traditionally those of a governor, are shared among a four-member Cabinet; governor, agriculture commissioner, attorney general and chief financial officer. When meeting as the Cabinet, the governor is the first among equals – winning all tie votes – and together the four manage a handful of agencies like FDLE, the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, and so on.

While the Bailey snafu percolated, up popped the revelation that Scott was conducting a search for a new insurance commissioner. The law requires Scott to get the CFO’s permission to replace Kevin McCarty. Jeff Atwater was not aware that McCarty was on the way out.

Atwater and Agricultural Commissioner Adam Putnam want a new appointment process for executive agencies and Scott is resisting.

“This certainly won’t make for easier politics for the governor,” said Charles Barrilleaux, the Leroy Collins professor and chair of the political science department at Florida State University.

“The Bailey dismissal (if we accept Bailey’s claim that he was dismissed and did not retire) may just illustrate the governor’s understanding that he has run his final race for office. Putnam and Atwater may now function as free agents.”

Atwater received a half million votes more than Scott, bested Putnam by 11,000 in November and is a potential 2018 gubernatorial candidate.  Supporters have been talking about a Putnam gubernatorial run since he was elected at the age of 22 to the Florida Legislature in 1996.

On Wednesday the three follow each other in appearances before state writers and editors.

“It seems clear that all the Cabinet members are potentially jockeying to run for another office in four years and that they are well aware that Gov. Scott, although managing to get re-elected, is not particularly popular and has always had a strained relationship with the Republican Party establishment going back to his first run for governor when he knocked off Bill McCollum and received almost no support originally from the party,” said University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett.

“I suspect they all will be able to maintain a professional working relationship on most Cabinet issues, but it is certainly possible, if not likely, that there may be some tense moments in the upcoming Cabinet meeting,” said Jewett, who is writing about the Florida executive branch for a book on Florida politics.

Wednesday is the first time the four attend the same function – albeit at separate times – since Scott rejected Atwater and Putnam’s proposal to change appointment procedures.

Although Scott successfully challenged the Republican establishment when he captured the GOP gubernatorial nomination in 2010, such victories are rare. The previous governor fought it but Charlie Crist never played Republican poohbahs like they were irrelevant and clueless.

The surprise in the veto of SB 6 – which would have ended teacher tenure and apparently did end Crist’s political career – was not that Crist did it but that he had the spine to do it while the establishment said he had supported SB 6 until he no longer did.

One can expect discussion of the Bailey affair and the attempt to remove McCarty will dominate the questions asked of Scott, Atwater and Putnam regardless of what they say in their prepared remarks.

Senate Democratic Leader Arthenia Joyner opens the event at 9:30.  She can be expected to build on her November speech during the organizational session when she called for Medicaid expansion and increases in the minimum wage and education spending because people are stretched to the “limit of endurability.”

Joyner, state Rep. Mark Pafford and Senate President Andy Gardiner and Speaker Steve Crisafulli will provide the policy substance for the day.

The political junkies, however, will be waiting for Jeff Atwater to walk up to the microphone at 10:00.  He will be followed by Scott at 10:30 and Putnam at 11.

Then Gardiner and Crisafulli will deliver a joint presentation.

The afternoon session will feature Barbara Petersen of the First Amendment Foundation, House Democratic Leader Mark Pafford at 1:00, Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Labarga at 1:30 and Attorney General Pam Bondi at 2:00.