Ryan Nicol
Well, that’s a wrap … sort of.
The scheduled end date for the 2025 Regular Session has come and gone. But due to some serious sniping between chambers and even more between branches, there remains a lot unresolved — the most important being the budget.
So Session is now being extended until June 6 to try to land the plane on several bills in addition to the constitutionally mandated budget.
We’ve got more to say on the public-facing players later on in the column. And a note, this is still just our weekly winner and loser list. We’ll have a whole different giant column looking at the overall Session dropping shortly.
But as the Capitol goes into overtime, we wanted to shout out the staff working overtime during these last 60 days and, now, beyond.
Katie Betta once again knocked it out of the park on the Senate side, helping us — and, by extension, the public — keep track of this swirling Session.
Clerk Jeff Takacs kept things running smoothly on the House side, with several members praising his effectiveness in comments to Florida Politics.
All of the staff for individual members also just got put through the ringer, and may still have several weeks to go before they can rest easy.
Obviously, lawmakers get the bulk of the credit and blame as Session unfolds. You’re about to see some of that below. But sometimes it’s worth acknowledging the nonstop work done behind the scenes by individuals whose names the public may never know.
But hey at least go celebrate Cinco de Mayo on Monday, you all definitely deserve a drink.
Now, it’s onto our weekly game of winners and losers.
Winners
Honorable mention: Ben Albritton, FRSCC. The defamation lawsuit by failed Senate candidate Bowen Kou against Albritton and the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee was always a long shot.
Kou got mad at some attack ads looking to knock him down as he spent boatloads of his own cash against the FRSCC-endorsed Keith Truenow, who won the Republican Primary — and later the General Election — in Senate District 13.
So Kou sued. Hiring one of the biggest losers in Florida Politics, former state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, was a bad sign from the get-go. And sure enough, Kou’s case this week was entirely laughed out of court.
Kou argued that the ad improperly tied him to China-linked donations. But when it came time to argue that the ad was false, Kou couldn’t, according to Judge Dan Mosley.
“He doesn’t know the citizenship status of most of his donors. But he admits the following: that ‘at least one of’ his ‘donors was, or is, a citizen of China’; ‘at least one of’ his ‘donors has resided in China’; and ‘at least one of’ his ‘donors was born in China,’” Mosley wrote.
“He also identified that one of his donors, Lijie Zhu, who’s his cousin, is from China and is only a green card holder, meaning that she’s a Chinese citizen, not a U.S. citizen.”
There went Kou’s case.
And not only did Kou and Sabatini lose here, but Mosley ruled that the suit violated anti-SLAPP laws and ordered Kou to pay attorneys fees.
And all of this was ordered via summary judgment, meaning the case was so obviously a loser that the Judge basically ended it before got started.
Albritton and the FRSCC come out smelling like roses here, while Sabatini gets to add this case to a long, long list of legal losses he’s piled up in addition to multiple failed congressional bids. Keep up with the edgy posts on X though, you’re doing great.
Almost (but not quite) the biggest winner: Darryl Rouson. Rouson took the high road this week regarding legislation that had aimed to name a research center after the St. Petersburg Democrat.
Amid spats between the House and Senate (more on that in a bit), a mental health bill got caught in the crossfire. The Senate had amended that legislation, which contained various recommendations from the Commission on Mental Health and Substance Abuse Disorders, to name an addiction research center at the University of South Florida after Rouson.
But the House sent the bill back after removing that provision. That prompted Rouson’s Senate colleagues to come to his defense, with Senate budget chief Ed Hooper warning the House to add the language back in, “or else.” That prompted a back-and-forth between the Senate and House Speaker Daniel Perez.
At the time, Rouson said the larger benefits of the bill shouldn’t be derailed and encouraged his colleagues to still vote in favor of it. But outrage during the discussion led the Senate to temporarily postpone the measure to give lawmakers — and especially Rouson — time to consider their next move.
On the final day of Session, the Senate revisited the bill, with Rouson once again coming to the conclusion that losing out on his designation doesn’t mean the bill should go down. He encouraged his colleagues again to vote “yes,” and they agreed.
There was plenty of hardball the last few days of Session, and Rouson could have added this to the list of disputed bills to be resolved during the extension.
Kudos to him for putting the good provisions in the bill above his own ego.
The biggest winner: Marco Rubio. Congratulations to — deep breath — Secretary of State, Acting head of the National Archives, Acting Administrator of U.S. Agency for International Development and new National Security Adviser Rubio!
Rubio is taking over in the latter role for former U.S. Rep. Mike Waltz (more on him later), adding to one of the most comprehensive résumés a Cabinet member has had in recent memory.
These various roles give Rubio an unprecedented level of influence in America’s foreign policy sphere, a key focus of Rubio’s during his prior Senate tenure.
They also earned him glowing headlines that he now “ascends in Trump’s orbit” and that he rose “to a central spot” in the Trump administration.
Yes, serving under Trump will sometimes have you looking like this. Yes, Rubio has had to retreat from many of his previously held positions to align with his new boss.
But this is the path Rubio picked. And if you’re going to play this Washington-based Game of Thrones, the best you can hope for is to keep a spot in Trump’s good graces for as long as you can.
With Rubio earning title after title, it seems he’s doing his job(s) just fine.
Losers
Dishonorable mention: Jovanté Teague. New reporting from Fresh Take Florida uncovered that Teague was previously convicted following a probe of allegations that Teague had a sexual relationship with an inmate while he worked as a jail guard.
Teague denied those allegations, and prosecutors eventually convicted him of a lesser crime — “illicitly giving to an inmate or receiving unauthorized communications” — per Fresh Take Florida.
But the outlet cited evidence in the case in its report. That includes, according to Fresh Take Florida, notes obtained by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement indicating a romantic relationship between Teague and the inmate, a recording from a telephone call of the inmate telling her mom she met an officer in jail, and other inmates who saw romantic interactions between the two.
When Teague was arrested ahead of his 2019 conviction, he was serving as the Vice Mayor of Cross City. Now, he’s risen to a top post in the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) after just being elected as Vice Chair.
Of course, the RPOF just recently had to oust its Chair over an entirely different sex scandal, so it remains to be seen the party’s appetite for more questions being fired their way.
But while Teague mostly declined to answer questions from Fresh Take Florida — except to say, “I’m not a perfect man” — he better start explaining just what happened here.
Almost (but not quite) the biggest loser: Legislature. What a mess that was. Let us count the ways.
We had the aforementioned “or else” threat regarding the budget if the House didn’t relent on the Rouson item. They didn’t, and even as the Senate overall approved that larger bill, Hooper continued warning the House about the repercussions to come.
“We discussed this bill several days ago. I might have used the words ‘or else,’” Hooper said. “I still mean ‘or else,’ and ‘or else’ does not have an expiration date.”
So things are going well heading into the extension then.
We had Albritton say with over a week left until Session that the budget would not be resolved in time, prompting Perez to snipe back about negotiating in public and blamed the Senate for pushing for “pathological overspending” in its budget.
We saw petty language battles derail bills. The Senate routinely gaveled out after meeting for only several minutes at a time Friday despite the Session clock winding down. A bill regarding boating safety barely was passed in time as a result.
And look, obviously the last week of Session always has some drama and last-minute sniping. That’s the nature of the game.
But even compared with the normal baseline, this was crazy. This is the least resolved Session of the DeSantis era, forcing that major extension with several bill holdovers. And the budget still remains completely up in the air, especially with a brooding DeSantis waiting to take the ax out when line-item veto time comes around.
Hooper and House budget chief Lawrence McClure did not come close to landing the plane. Is this a one-time struggle or will we be right back here regarding the budget next year?
We mentioned last week our praise for the Legislature actually asserting some independence this Session, but also noted that maybe the pendulum swung a bit far into chaos as a result.
Well, a significant reason for that was the lack of a united front between House and Senate leadership. DeSantis will clearly not hesitate to use the bully pulpit. So if the Legislature was to truly regain its authority, they needed to at least be functional when times got tough.
Albritton and Perez are professionals, no doubt. But again, these last-minute tensions were always, and it’s clear the chambers didn’t have a solid enough plan to address them and subsequently let those battles overwhelm them at times.
The House didn’t need to remove that Rouson language. It was petty. And the Senate left the House hanging out to dry on a handful of veto overrides the House agreed to earlier in Session to stand up to DeSantis. We’re sure that didn’t go over well with the Speaker.
Of course, we’re not absolving DeSantis of any blame here. Even after getting a win with a bill restricting the citizen-led amendment process, DeSantis, after quickly signing the legislation, couldn’t stay magnanimous or just brag about the move. Instead, he used the opportunity to take more shots at the House.
We’re not sure where these relationships go from here. But leaders need to get down to business to pass a budget. And hey, at least everyone will be clear on where each other stands by the time the 2026 Session rolls around.
So maybe let’s do what we need to do to avoid a repeat of this craziness.
The biggest loser: Waltz. The first Florida Man is out. And while Waltz landed a cushy fallback position, he won’t be able to shake that notable knock on his tenure in the Trump 47 administration.
Of course, we are all familiar with the Signal scandal that accelerated Waltz’s ouster as National Security Adviser. And that was, any way you spin it, just an absolutely inexcusable screw-up.
But, as was reported at the time that the scandal broke, there were also some ideological differences and other issues between the President and Waltz that could lead to a parting of ways.
When news broke about Waltz’s ouster this week, the reporting indicated that the President and his team was not satisfied with Waltz’s handling of the National Security Council, and that the President’s public desire to move beyond the Signal stuff was legitimate.
But put everything together, and Trump decided Waltz had to go.
Waltz was swiftly named the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. And no doubt that’s a cushy gig. But in terms of practical influence, few would say parading around the U.N. is more significant than dealing with national security issues inside the White House.
But remember: That Ambassador position requires Senate confirmation. So we’re going to get a whole new round of scrutiny over Waltz’s decision-making regarding Signal from Democrats looking to ding a struggling administration.
Long term, Waltz can bounce back from this. But for now, this is a loss for him.
