Jacob Ogles
When Florida Republicans promised a bold conservative agenda this Session, Democrats couldn’t help noticing how often policies championed start from lawmakers in the back rows.
Senate Democratic Leader Jason Pizzo of Sunny Isles Beach noted in his official response to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ State of the State address that the Governor called for curbing illegal immigration. Yet it was Pizzo who filed the first E-Verify bill for consideration this year.
“While many have talked tough on combating illegal immigration, here we are in 2025, and I — the Democratic Minority Leader — was the first to file the bill requiring E-Verify for all employers, because you are not serious about curbing illegal immigration, if you continue to cower to donors, and not listen to our citizens,” Pizzo said.
Rep. Berny Jacques, a Seminole Republican, later filed another E-Verify bill for all private employers, though that lacks a Republican Senate companion.
Outside DeSantis’ claims of Florida Republicans leading the way on immigration, legislative Democrats said they took note of how many ideas House Speaker Daniel Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton seized on that have been pursued in the past by those in the minority caucus.
Albritton, in a speech focused on agriculture, raised the subject of food insecurity. “I struggle with the fact that kids in Florida are going to bed night after night, hungry,” he said. “We can and will do better than that. Please join me in this important fight.”
Democrats said they have already been engaged in that battle. House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell, a Tampa Democrat, led a letter last year to DeSantis, Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson and Department of Children and Families Secretary Shevaun Harris calling for the state to participate in the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer program.
“We are sure that Florida’s executive branch ultimately shares our Caucus’s belief that bureaucratic barriers, administrative anxiety, or status quo stagnation should not stand in the way of efforts to ensure every Floridian has the freedom to be healthy, prosperous, and safe,” the letter closed.
Meanwhile, the appetite of Republican lawmakers for investigating allegations of insurance companies hiding profits while denying claims, something called for by Perez in his opening day remarks, follows a call already issued by Driskell last month.
“We must hold those responsible to account, including assisting appropriate officials in pursuing criminal prosecutions if warranted,” she wrote in a letter to Perez. “We must be able to marshal all the facts into a comprehensive legislation solution that appropriately balances consumer protections with long term insurer viability. We must make sure this never happens again.”
Pizzo also noted that not only did many of the solutions to problems now championed by Republicans start as Democratic proposals, but the problems themselves arose after decades of Republican control of state government in Florida.
He also expressed frustration that the Legislature has instead chased a series of right-wing buzzwords talked up as problems.
“I have never pushed to install, or even expand, CRT, ESG, DEI, or ‘Wokeism.’ For none of these lower your property insurance, your rent, nor will they result in your kids’ GPAs getting higher or their test scores,” he said. “And like many of you, I’ve wondered how, with more than 30 years of majority control in the Legislature and executive branches, how any of these issues were so insidious, that they festered into such an instant concern.”
That criticism comes as Pizzo considers his own run for Governor in 2026.
But for now, he said he hopes Republicans speak in earnest about tackling critical issues of the day.
“Many of my Democratic colleagues have filed bills that addressed housing cost concerns, economy, jobs, and education. I look forward for those to be agendaed and to be heard by our colleagues in a nonpartisan, productive fashion,” he said.
“And against all evidence to the contrary, I hold out faith and hope in the decency of our members, and the vast power we hold — that their call to service, once rooted in amplifying the voices of struggling families, the hopes of small businesses, the need to invest in community resiliency, to leave our sons and daughters an environment better off then we found it, will ring louder than the disruptive and divisive whispers of special interests.”
