>>This week on NewsNight, Hurricane Nicole brings damage to coastal areas of Brevard, Volusia and Flagler Counties.

A look at how communities are faring.

What will be the next steps for Ron DeSantis following Donald Trump's decision to run for president again?

>>In Florida, were there a head to head between Trump and DeSantis?

I think Desantis would have a pretty strong advantage right now.

Nationally that's yet to be seen.

>>We rise together.

>>And lift off for Artemis as NASA takes another step on its mission to return humans to the moon.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort, and welcome to NewsNight where we take a closer look at the big stories impacting central Florida and how they affect all of us.

Joining us in the studio this week, Christopher Heath, WFTV, Channel 9 political reporter.

Thanks for coming in, Chris.

And Skyler Swisher, reporter for The Orlando Sentinel.

Thanks for coming in, Skyler.

Appreciate it, guys.

All right.

First tonight, Donald Trump announced his third run for president this week from his Mar a Lago resort in Palm Beach.

It puts the spotlight now on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with polls showing him in a strong position to challenge the former president for the Republican nomination in 2024 following his easy reelection in the midterms.

And this week, the governor had this to say when asked about recent attacks from the former president.

>>When you're leading, when you're getting getting things done, you take incoming fire.

That's just the nature of it.

I roll out of bed in the morning.

I've got corporate media outlets that have a spasm.

Just the fact that I'm getting up in the morning and it's constantly attacking.

And this is just what's happened.

I don't think any governor got attacked more particularly by corporate media than me over my four year term.

And yet I think what you what you learn is all that's just noise.

And really what matters is are you leading?

Are you getting in front of the issues?

Are you delivering results for people and are you standing up for folks?

And if you do that, then none of that stuff matters.

And that's what we've done.

We focused on results and leadership.

And, you know, at the end of the day, I would just tell people to go check out the scoreboard from last Tuesday night.

>>Governor DeSantis reelection was part of a red wave in Florida.

Even while Republicans underperformed expectations nationwide.

I sat down this week with political scientist Frank Orlando from Saint Leo University to discuss what might lie ahead for Governor DeSantis.

But I started by asking him why Florida was an outlier this election.

>>One of the main things is the strength of Ron DeSantis in being able to consolidate Republican support.

I think economic factors throughout the country, but in particular in Florida, with rising costs, with rising, you know, inflation played a role.

The lack of popularity of Joe Biden in the state played a role.

And I think you could also argue that in-migration to the state, even from the COVID era of people coming to Florida, because of the fact that they liked the direction the state was headed, it's I think those things matter.

I think in a low turnout environment, which is what we often see in midterm elections, you're going to see the party that's more energized turn out.

And we didn't see massive, massive turnout in Florida, but we saw a big decrease in Democratic turnout.

>>Governor DeSantis, to you and your family, I wish you only the best.

>>So I think part of the story is the Republican story.

I think the other part of the story is almost the collapse of the organizational and institutional strength of the Democratic Party in Florida, being able to turn out their voters, whether it's lack of enthusiasm or something else.

I think that it's a bit what Ron DeSantis did.

But when you have such a spectacular defeat, it's also a bit of of what happened with the Democratic Party in four years.

>>Really, true that.

>>The governor has sort of talked about Florida being a place where woke goes to die.

>>Right.

>>Is it in this election also the place where MAGA goes to die?

>>Well, that is that is the question on everybody's lips at this point.

And it will be the question we ask over the next few years.

>>We saw freedom in our very way of life in so many other jurisdictions in this country wither on the vine.

Florida held the line.

>>Ron DeSantis is the governor of Florida, you know, is not as well known nationwide.

However, all of the things he's been doing and becoming the place where woke become comes to die and fighting all of these culture war battles that have drawn the ire of liberals nationwide and the adoration of conservatives have lifted his profile.

>>Is that agenda going to translate nationally for him?

>>Great question.

It's kind of like threading a needle.

If he tries to be like Mike DeWine in Ohio or Governor Sununu in New Hampshire, right, he won't secure that Trump adjacent flank.

But on the other hand, if he is Trump 2.0, he runs the risk of losing those, you know, more moderate Republicans that like voting for these normal Republicans.

The interesting thing will be what will the appetite among those normal Republicans be in accepting a Trump adjacent or a Trump lite candidate that's not Trump.

Will it be any port in a storm?

Right.

Just to get rid of Trump, you kind of see establishment support, which was very skeptical of Ron DeSantis even last year or earlier this year.

Coming home to him in a little bit in the hopes of consolidating support around him.

Because if we have eight or nine different flavors of non-Trump in the Republican primary in 2024, then that's to Trump's advantage.

If Ron DeSantis can crowd out other Republicans and make it a head to head as head to head race as possible, that gives him the best chance.

>>Frank Orlando from Saint Leo's.

Chris, let's start with you on this one.

I mean, let's pick up on that point.

Given the rejection or apparent rejection of sort of Trump aligned candidates nationally, given that Governor DeSantis has been pretty aligned with the former president in policy terms.

Will that make his message difficult to translate nationally?

>>Yeah, I'm going to channel Al Davis, the former owner of the Raiders, just win, baby.

That's what the GOP wants.

They're looking out at this midterm and saying, with the exception of Texas and Florida, we didn't do very good.

We we we lost races we should have won.

We lost governorships we should have won.

Yeah, we're going to take the house, but by a very slim margin.

And then they look at Florida and they say, Wait, wait, hold on.

You delivered a 20-8 slate of members to the U.S. House.

You ran up the score against Charlie Crist securing another term.

You've got a trifecta in the legislature, not just a trifecta, but a supermajority.

You are looking at Ron DeSantis and saying you can win.

Meanwhile, they look at Donald Trump.

They say you lost the popular vote in 2016.

You lost the popular vote in 2020.

You lost the House in 2018.

You lost the Senate in 2020 and the presidency.

Where are the wins at?

The only question is and this is something that the professor pointed out very astutely.

DeSantis is very hot in Florida.

He might be hot in Republican circles nationwide, but 25 states will vote in primaries ahead of Florida.

Does Donald Trump carry some of those states and really take the wind out of Ron DeSantis sails?

>>What do you think, Skyler?

I mean, does it say anything that, you know, in terms of candidates that the governor backed, aside from J.D.

Vance in Ohio, they all lost.

>>You know, I mean, I don't think that in terms of the political fortunes of Ron DeSantis, I don't think that's, you know, too significant, because I think Trump was a bigger factor and the way this is being viewed is a rejection of Trump.

So I don't really think that hurts the governor's fortunes.

I do think it raises questions whether kind of his firebrand, you know, culture war, MAGA like side is going to translate into other states.

I do think a big moment for him was with Hurricane Ian and when he was there with Biden.

And I think that was him kind of projecting, you know, I can be a leader, I can be an adult when I need to be.

>>And the president saying the governor's doing doing a great job.

I mean, Chris, if Ron DeSantis wants this nomination, he's got to beat Donald Trump first.

What did you make of his response to the former president's recent attacks?

And do we have any indication about what the governor might do now?

What do you think?

>>I would say this.

I mean, if you look at the governor's rapid response, either within the official press office or the apparatus that is his campaign, they go knives out if anyone criticizes Ron DeSantis.

It's been crickets with what Trump has said.

So I think there's still a feeling out here.

They're still trying to figure out exactly where is that line.

Can we go guns blazing at Donald Trump or do we try and dance around it?

And, you know, listen, there are there are definitely benefits to both of those arguments and pitfalls.

Take a look at Ted Cruz in 2016 who tried to cozy up to Trump.

And then, you know, at the end, I will try and absorb his base and absorb his movement.

It didn't work out for him.

So, you know, you're going to eventually have to decide, do you confront this head on?

Because dancing around, it's not going to work.

And right now the Santos team seems like they're probably saying we've got a little bit of time on our side.

We don't have to come out guns blazing now, but sooner or later they're going to have to make a decision.

>>Yeah, it's an issue comparison with Ted Cruz.

I mean Skyler, let's talk about the Democrats.

I mean, they really struggled with registration, first of all, and then turn out on on Election Day.

I wonder where that leaves them.

I mean, they have very poor performance, particularly with Latinos, right, in Osceola and Miami-Dade are the Democrats in crisis?

>>Oh, they're in complete disarray.

You know, some of the reporting that I did, I went out to a library, an early voting site in Seminole County, and the Florida Senate Minority Leader, Lauren Book, was there.

And even before the election, she was criticizing the state party.

She was saying, we don't have the coordination, we don't have the voter turnout effort.

We don't have the money that we need.

So even before the election was over, they were already doing kind of the postmortem analysis.

>>About what was going to happen next.

I mean, Chris, you mentioned the supermajority.

Now that the Republicans have in Tallahassee.

What do you think they're going to do with it?

Do you think we can see we're going to see more action on abortion, for example?

And could they overplayed their hand?

I mean, we saw abortion initiatives nationwide and how that played out.

>>Well, listen to the Republicans.

One of the things they don't want is to put abortion on the ballot for a statewide vote.

And they could do that with a supermajority.

A supermajority, really.

Democrats in Tallahassee have been marginalized so much that going from where they were to now, it's only a matter of degrees.

What this really allows Republicans to do is they can really do whatever they want up there with the rules.

They can put things on the ballot.

They don't they don't need some Democratic buy in to put something on the ballot for a constitutional amendment.

That's what really a supermajority does.

Democrats already didn't have the votes to stop anything once it hit the floor and they didn't have the votes to stop anything in committees.

So they were already pretty well marginalized before this.

As far as abortion goes.

Yeah, I think you're going to see Republicans move forward.

But they were going to move forward.

Whether or not they got the supermajority, simply having a majority, they were going to move forward.

>>Whatever the result was.

We'll be sure to check out my full length interview with Frank Orlando on our website.

It's at wucf.org/newsnight.

Well, the arrest of several former felons before the midterms drew criticism from voting rights groups who feared the move may chill turnout, even among those eligible to vote.

The newly formed Office of Election Crimes and Security said those arrested were ineligible to vote, even though they had received voter I.D.

cards from the government.

The state now says former felons themselves are solely responsible for determining their eligibility.

Neil Volz from the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition blames the confusion on poor record keeping by the state and a lack of effort to help residents determine eligibility.

>>People with past convictions have been arrested for voting, and at the end of the day, the vast majority of individuals got voting cards from the government.

So what we're dealing with is a broken system, a system that actually can't verify somebody's eligibility when you register to vote, and that creates confusion all the way through.

Ultimately, this part of our voting system has been broken for a long time, since before Bush-Gore in 2000.

And we've seen it accelerate since the passage of Amendment four, because so many more people are going through the system and we just don't have a data management process in place that allows us to do what other states do, which is give somebody assurances that they're eligible to vote.

Right on the front end.

>>Neil Volz there.

Chris, why was there so much concern that this could have a chilling effect on turnout?

>>Not just the arrests with where they were and the people who were arrested, but I think a lot of the process behind it and as you heard there, you know, the state dropped the ball on telling people whether or not they were eligible.

Clerks, every single one that I've spoken to, Republican, Democrat, they've all said, you know, this was a very poorly designed system.

People come to us and they say, I think I'm eligible to vote.

And then they send that information up to the state.

And if the state checks off on it, then it goes back and you're good to go.

There wasn't really a robust system in place for these felons to know that they were breaking the law.

And as you pointed out, the state has now done a 180 kind of almost giving up the ghost here and saying, well, now it's on you.

But before this, it was on the felons to know whether or not, you know, the felons was on the state, to tell the felons whether or not.

Now they're saying, well, it's on the felons to do that.

This is this is really one of those things where the state just did not do this well.

This just stunk to high heaven of being politically motivated.

And as we've seen, these cases work their way through the court system, you've seen a lot of that come in with, you know, defendants saying, I was told I could vote.

What did I do wrong?

>>What are these new rules now, Skyler?

>>Yeah, So now there is a form, a probationary form that the voter basically, or the aspiring voter would have to sign and basically say it's on them to have to determine whether they're legally able to vote.

The criticism on that is that it's hard for them to go find a lawyer to tell them whether they're legally able to vote.

>>They might not have the means, for example, to get that legal representation.

Well, be sure to join the conversation on social media were at WUCFTV, on Facebook, Twitter and also on Instagram.

All right.

Next tonight, it's been a difficult hurricane season for residents along central Florida's coastline.

Hurricanes Ian and last week, Nicole, have left parts of provide Volusia and Flagler Counties reeling.

And as NewsNights Krystel Knowles reports, a hurricane doesn't have to be a category five to destroy parts of a community.

>>A calm ocean, people on the beach, soaking up the sun.

A far different scene from the category one winds and water that did so much damage just last week.

Beach access points washed away, parts of the dune gone and the clearest of Hurricane Nicole's impact on the coastline.

Properties like this just feet from the precipice.

>>Looked at it at three in the morning when I came back at eight in the morning, I couldn't believe how much more it happened.

It's crazy.

>>Satellite Beach surfer Dalton Smith says he always monitors upcoming storms, but something felt different this time, even though the storm made landfall just south of Vero Beach, about 55 miles away.

The 75 mile per hour sustained wind left its mark, changing this coastline, possibly forever.

In an interview after Hurricane Ian, Satellite Beach City Manager Courtney Barker said beach renourishment projects helped keep the dunes in place protecting coastal infrastructure.

And this community has been lucky until now.

>>We've had the ocean breach a little bit during the ‘04 hurricanes.

It did not breach during Matthew.

We have a pretty high dune system, so we're lucky in that respect.

But if we get anything over a cat one, it would breach.

>>I'm a resident and I think the same thing everyone does.

It hasn't happened yet.

You know what I mean?

Like, I can't tell you how many 15 to 20 foot swells from a big nor'easter or hurricane have come through here and not hit like this.

>>Meanwhile, when Hurricane Nicole hit, several residents in Volusia County did not get the chance to mitigate the damage caused by Hurricane Ian.

And with a lot of shoreline erosion, those waterfront properties are considered unsafe.

According to a report from the Volusia County property appraiser, Hurricane Nicole caused $481 million in damage.

That's on top of the $377 million in damage caused by Hurricane Ian.

And those numbers are expected to climb.

These back to back hurricanes put about 30 plus waterfront hotels, as well as short and long term rentals in Volusia County.

Out of commission, indefinitely.

That could be bad news for the tourism industry in Volusia, which last year collected a record $5.5 billion in visitor spending.

Smith says Hurricane Nicole is a wakeup call.

Waterfront development needs to change and adapt to rising sea levels and be more resilient.

But he admits the solution is not going to be easy or quick.

Waterfront Property Sit on prime real estate.

Part of the precarious relationship between Mother Nature and the coastal economy.

>>I feel like it's a conversation that's hard to have because how do you just fix that all at once?

I mean, how do you make you can change stuff moving forward.

What are you going to do about all of these homes up and down the beach?

>>Krysel Knowles reporting.

All right, Chris.

Channel nine has been covering the aftermath of this storm extensively over the last week or so.

Presumably, local officials think the cost could be pretty high in places like Volusia.

>>You know, this was more of a kind of a flooding storm than a wind storm as opposed to what we saw with Ian when it came through.

This was a lot more flooding way.

Yes.

Ian came through it and did a number on the dunes and really exposed a lot of these areas like New Smyrna Beach to some of that erosion and some of those houses, you know, breaking in two.

But, yeah, this is this is going to cost hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, because of just where the damage was, how widespread it was.

And, yeah, this this area, especially in our in our coastline, is going to take a long time to recover.

It's going be very expensive.

>>Just tell me you were out covering the storm, right?

Where did you go?

>>We were in New Smyrna Beach and we got there.

And, you know, you could see where the surf and the water had come in and just undermined all of these homes and condos and seawalls were cracking and pulling away.

There were homes where, you know, one of the homeowners I talked to, he got there and he could see that like the foundation underneath his house was gone.

All the sand was gone.

So they went to like Home Depot to try and get some wood and some concrete blocks to, you know, prop it up.

And he says by the time we got back, we heard creaking.

And the next thing we know, the half of the house that was hanging over the side just cracked.

And I mean, this is what people were coming back to.

>>Really demonstrates the vulnerability of those properties right by the ocean.

I mean, Chris mentioned Skyler that the condos that were declared unsafe after the storm, some people are now returning are engineers certain that these buildings are safe?

>>Well, the engineers are saying the ones that have there are newer and were built with with updated building codes are safe.

But they're still in Volusia County.

I mean, they're 17 buildings that are still unsafe.

So there's a lot of structures out there where the residents can't return.

>>Chris, did the extent of the erosion, the subsequent damage to properties sort of seem to surprise residents that you and your colleagues talked to?

>>No.

I mean, I think the damage, you know, was always surprising because you kind of think, well, it's not going to happen where I live.

Maybe, you know, it's going to happen, but hopefully not here.

But, you know, before the storm, we were talking to people up and down the coast who were saying after Ian came through the dunes were gone, we were so exposed.

And now we have this storm coming straight at us.

Yeah, it was only a tropical storm.

Maybe it was going to intensify to a cat one, which it eventually did, but, you know, we're just there's nothing to stop this from hitting us directly.

We're not sure how bad it's going to get.

And for a lot of people, got very bad.

>>Let's talk about insurance, because a lot of these people are going to be filing insurance claims now at this point.

Skyler let me start with you on this one.

I mean, Governor, the census, as we know, called another special session to tackle the insurance crisis in Florida.

What do we know about that forthcoming session?

Do we know anything yet?

>>Well, we haven't gotten the specific details from the governor, but this is a huge issue.

The chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, one of his proposals is to end something called assignment of benefits.

And that's essentially where your contractor is able to deal directly with the insurance company.

The criticism on that is that it leads to a lot of litigation and that's driving up costs for consumers.

>>Yeah Chris, what do you think?

I mean, you've covered the insurance industry.

You and I have talked about this extensively.

Do we know when this session might take place and what they might do?

>>We know when it will have to be finished.

And that is reinsurance will come due in January.

And that's when insurance companies will need to go after reinsurance.

So we're going to have to do something between now and January.

And when I say something passed and signed by the governor between now and January, so realistically looking at a calendar, you're saying, okay, after Thanksgiving, but before Christmas, that's probably when they're going to go in.

No bills have been filed.

We haven't really seen the outlines of it.

But as Skyler mentioned.

Yes, assignof benefits on the table one way, attorney fees on the table.

The problem you're getting into is this is extremely complicated.

If it was easy to solve, they would have solved it in the regular session or the other special session or any of the other sessions beforehand.

This is one of those issues where nobody's going to walk away from the table happy.

Insurance companies may not be happy.

Homeowners may not be happy, attorneys may not be happy.

But they've got to do something to stabilize this market.

We've had six private carriers pull out of the state.

More could be following.

>>I mean, I guess the key is to not do something that's going to drive these insurers out of the state.

Like, I think in 2007, there were changes that the governor has said resulted in companies like State Farm leaving.

>>Well, the State Farm represents less than 10% of the market and they're a huge carrier and they're the largest in the state.

And yet they represent less than 10% of the market.

The real problem is, is that citizens policies, their tables are all set by politicians.

And politicians don't have to follow actuary tables.

They get to follow voters.

So citizens, as former Senator Jeff Brandes point out, has become almost a predatory competitor in this market.

They can undercut everyone else.

And so if you talk to homeowners who've lived in Florida for a long time, they'll say, well, ten, 15 years ago you didn't want to end up on Citizens.

Now you have so many people who they're like, I'm on Citizens because I've got no other choices.

Everyone that was private that was out there was way too expensive.

That's where I'm at.

This is a bad situation.

>>And you mentioned former Brandes, Senator Brandes, of course, who was the one that led spearheaded a lot of the efforts on insurance in the past.

You can find our recent special on Hurricane Ian and its aftermath, including coverage of Florida's insurance crisis on our website, wucf.org/newsnight.

Okay.

Finally tonight, lift off for Artemis 1.

>>Five.

Four stage engine start.

Three, two, one.

Boosters.

Indications, and liftoff of Artemis I.

We rise together back to the moon and beyond.

>>We waited for it for a long time.

The launch of the long delayed mission from the Kennedy Space Center marks a key milestone in NASAs efforts to return astronauts to the lunar surface.

Skyler let me start with you on this one.

What's the significance of this for the Space Coast?

Presumably, there's a big economic impact.

>>Oh, absolutely.

I mean, there's a lot of visitors.

I mean, you have hundreds of thousands of people coming to the Space Coast to see these launches, not just Artemis, but there's more commercial space launches.

And space is a huge boon for business here.

I mean, you're talking, you know, 12,000 civil servants and contractors who are employed at the space station about a $5 billion economic impact for the for the state.

>>I mean, I think NASA's probably going to be breathing a sigh of relief.

Right, Chris?

This has been delayed a long time.

>>It was delayed.

We had the hurricane come in.

There was all the controversy of, well, do we do they need to move it back in to protect it from Nicole?

All those things.

And it's exciting.

I mean, it's exciting.

We've been to the moon, but the moon now is kind of become our, you know, next launching pad.

If we can get to the moon and figure stuff out, we can go to other planets in our solar system.

And that's and that's super exciting.

And that's kind of what I think NASA's hoping it will be right.

It'll be a launching pad for other places in deep space.

I mean, this is an uncrewed mission, but it will be followed up by a crewed mission, and that will offer some opportunities for NASA to put folks into space that we haven't seen up there before.

>>Every time you go just a little further, every time you go to the moon or you try and get to the moon and set up something, you're pushing the envelope scientifically.

You are doing things that you didn't have to do before.

We get to stand on the shoulders of, you know, the Apollo 11 mission and all those, you know, missions that figured out how to break Earth orbit, figured out how to get to the moon, figured out how to land on the moon.

We stand on their shoulders, but now we get to go the next step.

That's super exciting.

>>I think you'll find not many people in our area that arent excited about the whole prospect of getting back to the moon.

Well, be sure to tune in for an encore presentation of our special NewsNight program on NASA's Moon Shot.

That's next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

Well, that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Skyler Swisher from the Orlando Sentinel and Christopher Heath, WFTV Channel 9 political reporter.

Thanks for coming in, guys.

We'll see you all next Friday night here at 8:30 on WUCF.

From all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.