Ron DeSantis slams ‘least productive Florida House’ in modern history

Gov. Ron DeSantis is channeling a Donald Trump phrase to attack the House for “weaponizing (its supermajority) to try to attack our administration.”

DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis have been sharpening their attacks on a frequent critic. They brought the road show to Pensacola, home of Republican Reps. Alex Andrade and Michelle Salzman.

“When they’re attacking me, they’re attacking you,” the Governor said, before contending later that Republican legislators were “stabbing (voters) in the back.”

He even labeled the body “the least productive Florida House of Representatives in the modern history of the Florida Republican Party.”

The goal: to overshadow a local elected official in his own district and his narrative of money laundering and corruption related to the First Lady’s Hope Florida charity.

The heated rhetoric eclipsed the official subject of the presser. The Governor announced 28 Hope Florida on-campus liaisons at state colleges, which he said are intended to offer support services to “single moms” and the like when “misfortune strikes.”

He said “churches” are going to “swoop in” and help “people trying to make something of themselves” but who have “curve balls get in the way.”

Timing was everything. The press conference started as Andrade held a subcommittee meeting asking people associated with Hope Florida how $10 million got steered to it, with much of it ending up after strategic pass-throughs in a political committee controlled by current Attorney General James Uthmeier. Meanwhile, a Senate committee had just postponed consideration of a bill that would codify Hope Florida.

DeSantis suggested such inquiries were a “farce” and a “manufactured hoax,” arguing that the House had gone rogue on the voters, with a leadership “cabal” working “with the liberal media” to “manufacture smears” against him and the First Lady.

He also suggested that political operatives feared a Casey DeSantis political campaign in 2026.

“Some people feel threatened by the First Lady. Let’s just be clear about that. They know this; you saw her up here. You know, if you’re looking at 2026 and you’ve got some horse, you don’t want her anywhere near that. You’re very worried because she runs circles around their people. Everybody knows that,” DeSantis said.

That was just one of many condemnations of the House made in a news conference that ran longer than an hour.

“You wouldn’t think we’d even be in this situation. But we have this almost 3-to-1 supermajority of Republicans in the Florida House of Representatives and it is rotten,” DeSantis said.

“They are behaving more like Democrats. They are colluding with the Left. They’re colluding with the media to try to sabotage all the great success that Florida has had over these last six years. And that is wrong. That is not what they told you they would do when they asked you for your vote.”

Casey DeSantis seemed to diminish her predecessor, Ann Scott, who was known for reading to school childrens, saying she didn’t want “to be a potted plant in the side of the room and watch the world go by and take the path of least resistance.”

“People were saying, ‘You know, what are you going to do? Like, what’s your one initiative? You know, are you just going to read to children? Which is great. Like, I do that. I read to my kids every night. I go around schools, so I do that. But what are you ultimately going to do?” Casey DeSantis said.

The Governor struck an imperial tone on other issues, including universities and his own role in keeping them from becoming “indoctrination camps.”

Ron DeSantis decried a Salzman bill (HB 1321) “cosponsored by the most flamboyantly left-wing Democrat” in the House, which would remove the Governor’s Office from searches for university presidents.

“In order to do this, it requires that the guy that you elected to be Governor by a record margin, 4.6 million votes, that I take what you want to see in these universities and I use my authority to ensure that these universities don’t run off the rail,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis said Salzman sold out the base to accommodate House leadership, using language that Salzman used to highlight her own ethnic background’s Native American lineage.

“She had been a very good, good ally for many years. She had a good conservative record. And I think what happens is these people go to Tallahassee and they go native,” DeSantis said.

“She’s doing the bidding of the leadership and the staff. She’s not doing what you sent them there to do. You did not elect her to undo our conservative reforms in higher education because I’m confident if she ran on that, you wouldn’t have elected her in the first place.”

The Governor objects to the bill’s move to “neuter” his office, which stipulates “that the Governor and the Governor’s Office can have no communications involving who gets selected to be university presidents.”

Without that, he says a radical could take over.

“Imagine that they bring some communist in to be the President of a university and I’m just supposed to sit there and twiddle my thumbs. That’s not how I roll. I’m not going to let that happen to you. I’m not going to let that happen to this state,” he promised.

Ray Rodrigues, Chancellor of the State University System of Florida, also spoke against Salzman’s bill.

He said it “removes the Board of Governors from the personnel management of the universities in the selection of the President” and ensures they no longer “play a role in the selection of the President through the role of confirmation working with the Boards of Trustees.”

The Governor noted that he could simply veto legislation that did this “and keep doing what works” and urged legislators to be willing to challenge leadership, no matter the consequences.

DeSantis also slammed “an asinine proposal” to get agency heads, such as Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, to live in Tallahassee.

“Ladapo has a job at University of Florida as well. He doesn’t live in the Tallahassee swamp, and they’re saying that all of these agency heads must live in the swamp. I want to drain the swamp. I don’t want to refill the swamp. Where are they getting this? It’s an asinine proposal, but it is motivated to try to take out people like Ladapo who’ve stood by you, who’ve done a good job,” DeSantis said.

“Why the hell are they doing this?” he wondered, given the state’s “success” under DeSantis’ watch.

“They’re simply trying to undermine me and attack me and undermine our policies that have proven to be successful and that you voted for,” he added, urging “rank-and-file” members to stand up and help “stop the nonsense.”

A former rank-and-file member revealed how that made him feel “very unwelcome” in “a very different Florida House,” calling it a “runaway House.”

Former Rep. Joel Rudman again complained about a “learning session on how to be a better legislator.” Still, to his chagrin, the meeting was merely intended “to tell us that we’re not going to be Ron DeSantis’ dog, only they didn’t use the word dog, they used a vulgar term instead.”

Rudman chided Andrade, who he said “had a history of fighting conservative Republicans.” He lauded DeSantis as “by far the best Governor Florida has ever seen,” even better than former President Andrew Jackson, who also lived in Pensacola.