- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

(gentle bright music) - Coming up right now on WEDU, a look back at the big news stories from 2024 with some of our top guests, Daniel Ruth, Rosemary Goudreau O'Hara, Steve Bousquet, and Tara Newsom, on a special edition of "Florida This Week."

(thrilling newsy music) Welcome back, this is our chance to look back at some of the big news events of the year and discuss the lessons learned.

And our guests are: Tara Newsom is an attorney and political science professor at St. Petersburg College, Rosemary Goudreau O'Hara is the former editorial page editor for the "South Florida Sun Sentinel," Daniel Ruth is the Honors College visiting professor of professional practice at the University of South Florida, and Steve Bousquet is the opinion editor and columnist at the "South Florida Sun Sentinel."

Nice to see you all.

Thank you for doing the program.

Well, there's no doubt that the biggest story of the year for people living on Florida's west coast and the center part of the state was the impact of back-to-back hurricanes, Helene and Milton.

First came Helene in late September.

13 days later, Milton struck.

Helene's impact was felt by businesses and residences in low-lying areas.

Neighborhoods, like Tampa's Davis Islands, found themselves inundated with water.

Floridians up and down the coast found their homes flooded, many for the first time.

On October 9th, a few days later, Hurricane Milton came ashore in Manatee County, bringing high winds that brought down trees and power lines across Tampa Bay.

Power crews from around the country descended on the state to restore power.

Beach communities all along the west coast were buried in sand and continue to recover from the one-two punch of the storms.

Rosemary, what do you think the biggest takeaways are, and what should Tallahassee be doing now that we've seen the devastation of these storms?

- Well, Hurricane Helene really threw a sucker punch at Tampa Bay.

I mean, even those of us who believe in science, didn't believe that a storm that was 100 miles out in the Gulf could send a wall of water four or five, six feet high into people's homes.

People who've lived on the coast or along rivers for decades had never seen anything like it, and so didn't think it could happen.

But now that they have, I can't tell you the number of people I know personally who have moved, are planning to move, planning to rehab and wait it out a little bit, and then move.

These storms were a real wake-up call to the cost of living in coastal Florida or along water anywhere in Florida.

And I think it's hard to, I don't know what Tallahassee will or won't do.

They've not been real prone to wanting to regulate growth.

They've done away with the state's growth management law.

But I can tell you that the FEMA rule, that 50% rule, is having a lot of impact on people's decisions on where to live, on businesses, and it's gonna affect our economy.

- And this is the rule that says that if more than 50% of your house was destroyed, you've gotta build up.

- That's right, yeah.

- Yeah.

You can't build on the same pad that you were on.

- And the reason they do that is that they don't wanna see homes continue to be demolished, rebuilt, demolished, rebuilt, they wanna fix it up.

And cities and counties want to comply with that FEMA rule, because 90% of flood insurance comes from FEMA, so they set the rules.

And if you fail to follow their rules, then you don't get flood insurance for your community at the discounted rate.

- Steve, do you think in Tallahassee there's a feeling that this is the new normal and that because of things like climate change, we're gonna see more of these kind of storms more frequently?

- Yes, I do.

Rob, the new president of the Florida Senate is a guy named Ben Albritton.

He's from a rural part of the state, Wauchula, down near Lake Okeechobee.

Ben Albritton is promising something he refers to as a rural renaissance for the next two years.

He's the first real small-town senate president we've had in Florida in a very long time.

Well, if he wants a rural renaissance, he ought to start with a place like Perry, Perry, Florida.

It's about 50 miles southeast of Tallahassee, it was devastated by these storms, and they had the double whammy of losing a Georgia-Pacific plant that decimated the town's tax base and so forth.

The city of Perry is a laboratory for what can happen to a town when it's devastated by a hurricane.

It's gonna need a lot of help from Tallahassee in the next couple of years.

These cities that we see bearing the brunt of this damage from a storm, Steinhatchee, Cedar Key, places like that, ought to be at the forefront of the legislative agenda next session.

- You know, I'm wondering about insurance too, because I had several state legislators on the program last week.

They all said that the insurance reforms that were passed during the past few sessions ought to be given a chance to see if they work.

And nobody in Tallahassee is suggesting- - They keep talking about reform all the time, and nothing ever gets reformed.

- Let me give you the statistic, Dan.

According to data from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, the OIR, the two hurricanes resulted in 436,000 claims.

27% were closed without payment.

That means that more than 100,000 claims were denied.

- You know, for decades in this country, it's not just Florida and the hurricanes, it's the Midwest with tornadoes, it's the West with wildfires, and so forth and so on.

For decades, we've talked about having a national CAT Fund to help pay for some of this stuff, because the entire country is, I mean, what happens in Florida, there's a domino effect elsewhere across the country.

And so I think we need a more national perspective on creating a CAT Fund that would ease the burden of homeowners across the country who have to deal with these natural disaster.

- And lower rates for us here in Florida.

- Right.

- Yeah, yeah, if it was spread out.

Tara, what do you think?

- Well, you know, I think that although that's true that we need to have a national dialogue about it, locally, it's really interesting.

I mean, I'm from St. Pete, of course, we have to give a shout-out to our Indian mounds.

It could've been a lot worse if we didn't honor them.

And we also saw some of the best of the Bay.

We saw our neighbors and our communities show up for each other.

But I think there's gonna be some local implications.

We learned that we're really good at communicating for hurricane preparedness, evacuation, did a great job with that.

But post-hurricane, municipalities were inconsistent, the debris removal was inconsistent.

- It was very slow.

- And very slow.

And I think those are gonna have big consequences that impact on the next elections for those that were in office.

- Rosemary, do you think that that there should be an attempt to move people back from the coastline?

Because we know that if global warming continues, sea levels are rising, and these homes that are right along the coast are gonna be more and more in danger.

- Right, in Pinellas County, there were 34,000 homes damaged, 23 were substantially damaged, that means, I mean, 23,000, are uninhabitable, that's a huge number, and yet 80% of the economy of Florida is on the coast.

People wanna be by the water, so it drives the revenues for our cities, and counties, and our state.

And so getting people to move back is probably unrealistic, but getting them to move up, to elevate, is more realistic.

But government help, FEMA help, to either relocate or to raise homes is tapped out.

There's just not the money.

And most people cannot afford to spend $200,000 to raise a 3/2 house.

- Yeah.

Well, our next story was the sweeping victory by the Republican Party statewide, and proving that Florida is no longer a swing state.

Not too long ago, Florida was the nation's largest battleground state.

As recently as 2012, Barack Obama won Florida on his way to reelection victory nationwide.

But with the Republican Party surpassing Democrats' historical advantage in voter registration three years ago, and having a million voter advantage on election day this year, Donald Trump won in Florida by 13% over Kamala Harris.

Republicans were able to flip six counties that Joe Biden had won just four years ago.

Hillsborough, Pinellas, Miami-Dade, Osceola, Seminole, and Duval.

Rick Scott won reelection to the US Senate by a large margin, and Republicans held on to their super majority in the state legislature.

Steve, why was the victory by the Republicans so decisive?

- Kamala Harris got a really late start.

Everything was working against her.

You know, she won six counties, six out of 67.

That's not very good.

The Republicans have this growing big, big advantage in voter registration in the state.

You know, if Rick Scott is winning a statewide election by more than two percentage points, you know, something is happening in the state.

- [Rob] Because every one in the past was very close.

- That's right, I mean, he won by the skin of his teeth three times.

He's the luckiest guy in Florida political history until this cycle.

The good news is there's another big election coming up in two years, there's a midterm.

I spoke last night, I did a Zoom call with a Democratic club in Broward County.

You know, they're pretty disconsolate at this point.

They're pretty discouraged.

Because even in a place like Broward County, some deeply entrenched Democratic candidates didn't win overwhelmingly, and they had pathetically weak Republican opponents.

So there's something happening in the state.

If we haven't already, we're moving from red to crimson.

But I think there is a way out of the wilderness.

Democrats need a positive message, they need good candidates, and they need to sort of take it sort of one race at a time starting two years from now.

- Dan, do you think it was Trump's coattails that made the down-ballot races so decisive for the Republicans?

- Well, I mean, Trump carried Florida and the party had a really good day, I agree with everything Steve said, and they have to find a bench.

The Democrats need to find people that people wanna vote for, it's pretty simple.

- Yeah, you know, I'm wondering, you know, the flipping of a place like Hillsborough County, or Seminole County, or Miami-Dade, Rosemary, you know, this is unheard of.

- [Dan] But Miami-Dade has been coming along for a while.

- It's trending that way, you're right.

But, you know- - Yeah, though, Hillary, I mean, Hillary won in Miami-Dade.

So Miami-Dade's transition is pretty dramatic.

And, yeah, as is the Republican takeover of Florida, it's a dramatic swing that's happened, a million vote change in a handful of years, and it's going to continue.

I mean, it is solid, the trend is there.

The Florida Chamber just put out this report last week about demographic shifts in Florida.

We had like 650,000 people move to Florida in 2023, the majority of them over age 60.

For the first time, we had over 500,000 leave, the majority of them young people.

So Florida is continuing to get old, and older people who are moving here from the north are registered Republican.

The one good news I think coming out of the election was in the primary, where the school board candidates, the Moms for Liberty candidates, pretty much went down in defeat.

In Hillsborough County, in Pinellas County, Sarasota County, Moms for Liberty got squished.

So there was some good news for Democrats in the election.

- Well, let's talk about another election issue.

Story number three is about groups hoping to add more liberal elements to the state constitution, but were turned back.

Well-funded campaigns gathered enough signatures to get two proposed amendments on the ballot this year, abortion rights and recreational marijuana.

Despite getting a majority of votes, 57% for abortion rights, and nearly 56% for recreational marijuana, they both lost.

That's because the state's constitution requires that a ballot amendment must get 60% support.

One other reason they did not pass, Governor DeSantis spent more than $50 million in public dollars on messaging campaigns against the amendments, according to estimates from some of the governor's opponents, including millions the state won in lawsuits against the opioid industry.

Tara, 50 million is a lot to spend on ads.

What do you think of the precedent?

This is really unusual.

- Absolutely, I mean, the election in this regard was a win for the Republicans with that kind of majority for those amendments.

You know, although that may be the soft underbelly of the Republicans where they're the weakest, because now Democrats have to look at those votes, who are those 56 and 57% of the voters?

They're gonna have to go after those to actually rebuild the Democratic Party.

But I think the real vulnerability for the governor is $50 million and it's against state law.

And so it's a precedent that is unheard of, we've talked about it before.

But I certainly think that now in the future, if we ever do have a Democratic governor, he'll certainly have these same tools at his disposal.

But I think what we really need to look at in this kind of, these amendments, this is the will of the people.

Citizen initiatives is the one place of direct democracy.

And so to see a sitting governor kind of go against that, even though his rhetoric is one thing, that's really telling, and I think his report card for litigation costs that are gonna come later, might really follow him into his next steps in politics.

- Dan, with the governor having so much power in the state, because he's got a super majority in the legislature, he's got control of essentially the Supreme Court, who's gonna stop him from using state tax dollars to take out ads like that?

- Voters, as long as they reach the 60% threshold.

Typical lawyer getting all caught up with stuff like the law.

- [Tara] I know, I know.

- Come on.

- Shame on me, shame on me.

- Come on, let's be realistic here.

You know, we have this 60% threshold and when that measure passed, it didn't even pass by 60%.

I mean, this is- - It was approved by voters.

- This is an effort, this has always been an effort by the Florida legislature to interfere with democracy.

50% plus 1 ought to be enough to pass, you know, if you win an election by 50% plus, you're elected.

- That's right.

- And that's the way it should be in Florida.

But this is an effort by the Florida legislature to inhibit citizen initiatives.

- Mhmm, Steve, it always struck me that citizen initiatives get on the ballot because the legislature has failed to do something.

Is that the way you see it?

- Oh, absolutely, it's the only safety valve left.

And, you know, Donald Trump likes to talk about elections being "rigged," this is a rigged election in the sense of, as Dan Ruth points out, the 60% threshold, which has been around for a long time, it's been around almost 20 years in the state, they've made it harder and harder for groups to gather petitions.

The stated goal is to prohibit fraud.

There has been some fraud in the petition initiative business in Florida and other states.

Not to the degree that Republicans claim, but it does exist.

And, you know, Ron DeSantis rigged the election by using state resources to, in effect, propagandize, especially against the abortion rights amendment.

So it's becoming more and more difficult to get a ballot initiative passed, but it's the only avenue left for people who are ignored by this state and by this legislature.

- And don't forget, even when these measures do pass by 60%, there's no guarantee that they'll ever be enacted into law.

The restoration of felon voting rights, for example, did meet that threshold, and we still don't have any enabling legislation from Tallahassee to allow that to take place.

- I do think if Democrats want a pathway forward that all they have to do is look at this election with these amendments.

$50 million to inhibit Florida voters, and they still got 57 and 56%.

This is the roadmap for Democrats to go after.

So, you know, this is something that they need to evaluate.

They were in urban and coastal areas where most of those folks came out, and they have to look at their messaging and seeing what can they do to replicate that in the rest of the state, and can they actually do that in the rural areas as well.

- Okay, well, our next story is about one of Florida's top universities, the University of Florida.

Its president, Ben Sasse, suddenly resigned in July after spending only 17 months on the job.

The former Nebraska Senator said his wife, who has had ongoing health problems, had now been diagnosed with epilepsy.

Sasse faced criticism for lavish spending during his tenure.

A student-run newspaper found that in his first year as president, the university spent $17 million, 11 million more than the year before.

The former president will still be paid his university salary of a million dollars a year until February of 2028, unless he resigns or changes jobs.

His contract states that he can continue to draw the big salary because of his continuing responsibilities with the university, including serving as president emeritus, professor, and an external advisor to the board of trustees.

Dan, do you think that a salary of a million dollars a year after you're president is justified?

- This is an absolute unmitigated outrage.

And as a state university employee, I wanna find out how to get one of those jobs.

(panelists laughing) Because, you know, your piece talked about he's gonna be on this advisory board and he's gonna be a president emeritus.

Let me tell you something, he's not gonna be doing squat.

He may teach like one course a semester.

The incoming president isn't gonna be consulting with him on how to run a university, 'cause Mr. Sasse proved he knows nothing about how to run, especially, a large state university, except padding a lot of people's pockets.

This is an absolute disgrace.

He talks about, "Oh, I have to give up my job because my wife is sick."

Didn't you know that your wife had issues before you took the job?

- Mhmm, Tara, Governor DeSantis kind of greased the way to make this hire happen.

It was done in secret.

- It was done in the dark.

You know, we're doing a lot of our government work, we used to be the Sunshine State and were really thought of as leaders in ethics and government transparency.

But this process really of kind of tapping a politician, instead of an academician, started with Rick Scott.

But really Ron DeSantis has taken it to a whole new level, not just with UF, but with New College.

And we're talking million-dollar salaries that are not necessarily correlating with these performance-based funding metrics that the Republican legislature has put out.

And so it's really interesting to see, you know, now that we've fallen, UF, our flagship university, has fallen from fifth in the country to sixth just in the one year, you know, that he's taken over, what's gonna happen when they start really looking at New College and other institutions?

- And that's a big deal.

- It is a big deal.

- Yeah, because it was in the top five.

- That's right.

- Rosemary, usually, I attribute to Republicans, good stewardship of tax dollars.

But when you have Ben Sasse given a million dollars for his exit job, and Richard Corcoran at New College, a very small college that really hasn't proven much yet since he took over, there's extravagant salaries going on in some of these universities.

- Oh, it's unbelievable how much the salaries of university presidents have gone up.

As my colleagues here have said, the shield of darkness has come down on how they get chosen for these jobs at the same time that student tuition is going through the roof.

Governor DeSantis promised an audit of the spending in the UF president's office when this happened.

You know, we've heard crickets about that since then.

What is interesting since the last time that we talked, I was on the show, we talked about this, is that it's come out the tension that existed between Sasse and the board chair.

And the board chair really wants to be the president.

He wanted all of the communiques with the legislature to go through him before the president talks to a legislator.

He was upset that the "U.S. News & World Report" rankings fell from five to six, and the law school was sliding down, and paid all this attention to the rankings.

And the president, in his opinion, wasn't paying adequate attention.

Florida is the third largest state in the nation, and it deserves to have public universities that are in the top rankings of the nation.

But the politicization of the leadership of the universities and how these decisions are made about who runs what is hurting our ability to rank high and to attract the kind of people that would help us rank high.

- Yeah, well, and the last of our top-five stories, the saga over whether the Rays baseball team in the City of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County could reach a deal to build a new stadium and keep the team in St. Pete.

A deal had been reached and announced back in September with the team's principal owner saying, "Major League Baseball is here to stay."

But that was before Hurricane Milton tore the roof off Tropicana Field causing tens of millions of dollars in damage.

And that was before new members were elected to the St. Petersburg City Council and the Pinellas County Commission who were not gung-ho on the stadium project.

Now the team says delays caused by the Pinellas County Commission have pushed back the opening date of the new stadium, making the Rays' costs go up, and the team now wants more financial help from the city and the county.

Dan, are the Rays' justified in asking for more money since there's been a 49-day delay by the County Commission to approve the bonds?

- Not really.

Not really.

I'm no fan of these deals where we pay for the playgrounds of these sports moguls, but, in this case, a deal is a deal.

The Rays agreed to it, the city agreed to it, the county agreed to it.

The reason we had the delay was because the county, and the city to a certain extent, dragged their feet on it.

So if there are any additional expenses, the County Commission, those commissioners should be responsible for it.

As far as I know, everybody acted in reasonably good faith here.

I'm not happy about it, but if you wanna have a professional baseball team in your city, if that's what you decide you wanna have, this is what it's gonna cost you.

And if you don't wanna spend it, then don't spend it.

- I don't know who to be angry at in this deal.

I mean, first I was angry at the County Commission for delaying the vote on the bonds, until after the election when people who don't support public financing as stadiums gets elected.

So, okay, well bad, you know, a deal's a deal.

But now they voted for the bonds and now the Rays are saying, "Uh, we don't really wanna do this deal because it's 49 days later."

49 days later means a one-year delay and over $100 million more?

- And $150 million.

- And your problem is the existing facilities is gone.

- Right.

- Tropicana Field.

- But there's a consequence too, the policy reparations that this represented for the gas plant district in St. Pete, those people are the real people that are hurting from this.

Not just the economy, but those communities.

- They don't see the improvements.

I have a final question to the group, "Politico" reported this month that John Morgan, one of the wealthiest trial attorneys in the state, is considering running for governor in 2026.

He will not run as a Democrat or as a Republican.

He says he wants to start a new political party, the Capitalist Party.

What do you make of this announcement, Steve Bousquet?

- It's fascinating, I hope he does it.

It'll liven up our state's politics dramatically.

But, as we talked about, Rob, third-party candidates have a history of not doing very well.

The most recent example we have goes back to 2010 when Charlie Crist had no choice but to run as an independent for the US Senate, and that's the year that Marco Rubio got elected senator.

Charlie Crist finished a distant second with 30% of the vote.

Very quickly, if John Morgan does this, A, he's got strong name ID, he's got a ton of money, he's a lawyer who's universally known around the state.

I think it ends, I wanna hear what the other panelists think, but I think it removes any possibility the Democrats could win back the governorship, because people know, you know, underneath that Capitalist slogan, people know that John Morgan's basically a Democrat.

- Yeah, all right, Dan?

- I agree with everything my learned colleague, Steve Bousquet said, but also to point out that Morgan has the name recognition.

- [Rob] His billboards are everywhere.

- And I think the closest parallel we might find here is that when Rick Scott ran for governor, he went from zero name recognition to winning the Republican nomination in less time it takes for spring baseball to run its course, because he dropped $70 million of his own money into that race.

And that buys you, if you already have the name recognition, that's gonna buy you a lot of attention.

- Rosemary, you think he's got a chance?

- I do not think he will run.

I think he loves flirting with the attention.

- He's done it before.

- I think he loves his little grandkids and he loves his home in Hawaii, and I do not think that he wants the job.

- Tara, we have five seconds.

- I think if he runs, he's gonna align with the Democratic Party.

And if he puts his resources, it might be the ticket to remake it in the state of Florida.

- I agree.

- All right, thanks, everybody, for a great show.

That's it for us.

Our guests have been Tara Newsom, Rosemary Goudreau O'Hara, Daniel Ruth, and Steve Bousquet.

If you have comments about this program, please send them to ftw@wedu.org.

Our show is now available as a podcast.

And from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend and Happy New Year, everybody.

- Happy New Year.

- Happy New Year, Rob.

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