(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg Sarasota.

- Coming up next, with another year gone by, we'll count down the big stories of 2023.

What are the changes, trends, and political decisions that are shaping our future?

We've invited some of our best panelists to discuss the past year.

Emily Mahoney of the Tampa Bay Times.

Steve Bosquet from the Florida Sun Sentinel, Eric Deggans from NPR and professors Ray Aresnault from USF St. Petersburg and Diane Roberts from FSU.

All right now on "Florida This Week."

(upbeat music) We are back again with our year in review to mull over what happened during the past 12 months.

And we've selected our five top state stories of the year.

Our first story is about new college's transformation.

This year, governor Ron DeSantis set in motion to take over of new college in Sarasota, known for its unconventional approach to academics and its diverse student population.

DeSantis and his allies vowed at the beginning of the year to transform the liberal arts institution known as Florida's public Honors College into a bastion of conservatism.

As a result, many faculty members and students of left the state is pouring record amounts of money into new college, and there's been an influx of new student athletes seeking to join a newly created athletic program.

Ray Aresnault, let me start with you.

The governor is he accomplishing his goal and is the goal a necessary one?

- Well, I think he's accomplishing his goal.

I would say it's certainly not necessary and that it's a kind of a gratuitous political stunt, frankly.

- And what was the reputation of Duke College before the governor decided that?

- Well, it had a great reputation.

It was for some, for many academics, it was the pride and joy of the state system, even more than the University of Florida or any of the other major universities.

It had a sterling reputation, wonderful faculty, excellent students, and a long tradition of terrific liberal arts education.

- The governor says, look, the enrollment is low, so we want to increase the enrollment.

- Well, the enrollment was always put deliberately low.

They wanted to keep the student teacher ratio about 10 to one.

So they had about 750 students and 75 faculty members, and that's the way they wanted it.

And it wasn't supposed to fit the normal kind of data points that large universities would.

It was all about quality education, kind of close, intimate relationships between faculty and students.

Maybe I could read from the American Association of University Professors Report, which came out on December 5th.

The AAUP, as it's called a very, a venerable organization, goes back to 1915.

And they said in their report that the unprecedented takeover of New College of Florida and the imposition at that institution of an aggressively ideological and politically motivated agendas stands as one of the most egregious and extensive violations of AAUP principles and standards at a single institution in recent memory.

And I think they're actually being maybe even too kind to what's happened.

It's, I know I've talked to many, many fellow academics and there's really no precedent for what's happened.

It's extraordinary.

- The governor says he wants to turn it into a version of Hillsdale College in Michigan, which is a, a very conservative private school in Michigan.

Do we need that as an antidote to what's going on in other campuses here in Florida?

- Well, not only do we not need it, it's really against separation of church and state.

It's against First Amendment traditions of academic freedom.

I mean, Hillsdale as a deliberately Christian college, private school has no relationship whatsoever though, to a public institution like New College.

I mean, what I think Governor DeSantis and his Republican allies have done is again, violated the First Amendment thrown to the wind longstanding standards of academic freedom and the ability of faculty and students to explore the world of ideas on their own without any political interference from a governor who frankly has been demagogue and really outrageous in his intrusion into the educational lives of these people.

- Diane, the Florida University System is renowned across the country, FSU and UF, two of the top schools in the country.

I think it's fair to say, what impact does the governor's move to take over New College?

How does that affected the other universities around the state?

- I think we all know we're on the list too.

And while I don't think any of my colleagues are changing their teaching practice, at least not that I know of, certainly our younger faculty, many of them are looking for an exit strategy.

This is no way to produce quality, higher education kind of education that our students will need out in the real world.

The real world, which is diverse, has many different competing ideas, all kinds of different people.

What he's done at New College is absolutely disgraceful.

I mean, not only is it run by an overpaid and under-qualified political ally, it's just destroyed the whole concept of an honors college.

New College was a place for kids who didn't want to go to a school that was dedicated quite so much to football as FSU, Florida.

Not that I don't love football, but they didn't want to be on a fraternity sorority campus.

They wanted to be with creative people and allowed to express themselves how they want to, and he's destroyed that.

- And I wonder, just real quickly, is it harder to attract PhD scholars?

Is it harder to attract faculty or faculty leaving not just New College, but universities around the state because of the governor's changes at New College?

- Well, more than half of the faculty members at New College have left.

Many of the students have left.

I mean, Governor DeSantis has virtually destroyed the institution frankly.

Many of the students now have to live off campus because he's brought in all these basically underqualified students who are student athletes.

They had no athletic programs, of course, and now they're gonna have several, the students who were there now have to live in a hotel.

Most of them.

You have Richard Corcoran, who had no academic credentials whatsoever, who actually dropped out of the University of Florida when he was an undergraduate and was of course Marco Rubio's Chief of Staff before he went to the house and was the speaker of the house and is an openly kind of Christian nationalist, right wing extremist as is Chris Ruffo, who's one of the kinda the lead figure, an absolutely infamous character who's recently attacked the president of Harvard.

- And he's on the board of trustees.

- He's on the board of trustees, and he's the central figure.

And he has absolutely no credentials whatsoever.

And you can see the proof's in the pudding.

The place is simply falling apart.

- All right, well our next story at number four, Florida book bans, book removal or book banning continued to cross the state this year.

The Writers Group Penn America, says Florida overtook Texas during the last school year for the number one spot.

When it comes to the number of books banned in public schools, there's been a 33% spike in book bans nationally.

Florida now accounts for more than 40% of all documented book bans across the country, with 1400 books removed from school shelves across the state, some of the books removed from the school shelves, "And Tango Makes Three," "The Handmaid's Tale," "Invisible Man," "Catch 22," "Brave New World," "On the Road," "Flowers for Algernon," "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and "Slaughterhouse Five," the governor says there's no statewide ban on books.

He says, these are local decisions urged on by parents who are trying to protect children.

And Diane, what do you make of the governor who held a press conference in Tampa a few months ago saying, there are no book bans in Florida.

- He calls it the book ban hoax.

And what he means is, yes, there's no statewide ban.

The bans are local, but they're based on state statutes.

The infamous Don't Say Gay Law, the new regulations which are enshrined in law about teaching certain things about race or about, God forbid, white privilege, a thing the governor says doesn't exist.

And so, of course, local school boards, especially those with a strong contingent of Moms For Liberty types or those who are frightened of Moms for Liberty, an organization of absolutely no merit as far as I can tell, since they think the book she just showed on your list, many of them are pornographic.

There is a teacher, an English teacher, I regret to say in Escambia County who wants, "And Tango Makes Three" book a true story about two male penguins raising a chick removed from all school and public libraries.

Because what if the children, as she put it, see the penguins as people of the same sex engaged in a loving relationship, God forbid, right?

Or maybe the kids want to turn into penguins.

I don't know.

That's absurd.

But it's the subject of a lawsuit.

There are important lawsuits working their way through.

But the problem, the bigger problem is this chilling effect of children, given the idea that some books will harm them, actively harm them, and all this stuff about protecting children, what we're protecting them from is reality.

If we can't about sex or race or gender or American history in truthful terms, we don't want to upset anybody and the governor means white kids.

- But Diane, as far as the governor would point to the local decisions and say, some of the books contain sexually explicit material.

Kids should not have access to these books in their school library.

- Some of them do have sex.

Many other books have violence.

I don't know if the governor has actually, met say a middle school kid, but if they have access to a computer or a cell phone, they can see way worse stuff.

And they do, I mean, I hear this, I teach high school teachers sometimes, boy have they got stories?

These aren't books.

This is just a click away.

So I think it's disingenuous, but I think these laws and these decrees, whether state or local, are designed to intimidate teachers and librarians.

- Steve, let's go to you.

- And we're, who know this stuff and they aren't, sorry.

- Yeah, I'm sorry too.

Steve, what's your take on this?

- Well, this is something that more people are taking matters into their own hands about, which is a good thing.

We wrote this week about a grassroots event being held in Delray Beach to educate people on the dangers of these book bans and how people can fight back.

And here's another way people can and should respond, in my opinion, amendment one on the ballot in Florida in November is going to be a proposal from the governor and legislature to make school board elections partisan.

They are now non-partisan, but they're pretty partisan.

Just look at the situation we've just seen in Sarasota with the Bridget Ziegler fiasco.

If you make school board elections partisan, you're gonna have a Bridget Ziegler type situation probably in all 67 counties.

This is all related Rob.

And so voters in Florida should take steps in November that should vote no to minimize the level of partisanship in local public education.

- And a huge amount of money is gonna be poured into school board races in the coming year or two.

Well, our next story, at number three, culture wars.

The debate over removing books follows a series of decisions by Tallahassee to limit what could be taught and discussed in public schools.

Limits have been placed on teaching black history and LGBTQ issues and the governor's gone after diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government, universities, and even private businesses.

Last month he said on X, that the left tells us, DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion.

But as practiced, he says it more closely represents discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination.

Eric, does DEI represent exclusion and indoctrination?

- No, it doesn't.

But what it does represent is a prime opportunity for the governor to mobilize frustration that people have with government frustration they have, with the educational system, frustration that they may even have with how they've done in their own careers or with business and channel it against something that is a distraction ultimately, what Floridians probably need more effective action on is what to do about our high insurance rates, what to do about the high cost of renting and the high cost of buying homes, what to do about inflation in the state.

But rather than offer us substantive policies addressing that kind of stuff, he wants to go after these issues that he knows will divide the voters, that he knows are sort of easy wins for a conservative and ultimately distract people from the real things that are going on.

Particularly, you know, what is he doing to corral development?

What is he doing to make sure that all the people who are coming to Florida live in places where traffic is manageable, where there's public transit, where development and environmentalism are balanced.

He's not talking about any of that stuff.

He's talking about this stuff that frankly I thought we had already settled.

- Ray, culture wars have taken over Tallahassee, they've passed a lot of measures that I think appeal to social conservatives.

Eric just gave us a list of things that the state is not doing, but what's your take?

Why is Tallahassee so preoccupied with cultural war issues?

- Well, I think it's political demagoguery, frankly.

And I don't think it really has anything to do with social conservatism.

I think many of my friends have started to use a term which they haven't used in years, and it's fascism.

I think this it's really sad what has happened in terms of, at a time when there's so much hate in the world, we need so much more information about race and diversity and to attack Black Lives Matter, to attack diversity, equity and inclusion, to attack a critical race theory, as as if they're as I think Chris Ruffo said, it's the new Marxism.

And of course it is in a sense that it's their bully boy is what they're going after.

And I think it'll take us generations I think to, to undo the damage that's been done.

- I would sum this up in three words.

I would say it's about distraction, it's about projection because he is claiming to be freeing people.

But what he's doing is imposing the authority of himself and Tallahassee on all kinds of local school boards and local organizations.

And it's also about intimidation.

It is about making educators think twice before they teach their kids, the pupils about black history.

It's about making corporate executives think twice before they actually take action to dismantle systemic racism inside their businesses and inside their community.

It's about intimidating people so that they limit themselves so that he doesn't have to do so much overtly to limit them himself.

- And just quickly in the 30 seconds we have left, there's this Ziegler sex scandal in Sarasota involving the chair of the Florida Republican Party.

There are calls for him within the party to resign because he engaged in a three-way sexual encounter with his wife and another woman, for Republicans to have a leader that is privately engaged in gay and lesbian sex, but publicly against it.

What does that say?

- It's hypocrisy at its highest level.

But we've seen this before.

We've seen allegations, terrible allegations against people like Matt Gaetz.

We've seen allegations against people, religious leaders, but back we've seen this.

- But Matt Gaetz allegations weren't proved though.

- Well, we'll see with Matt Gaetz.

But basically we've, again, what we're talking about is what these officials are saying they stand for and why they're doing what they're doing is not what they stand for and not why they're doing what they're doing.

So it's no surprise that a party that's been hypocritical about book bans would also be hypocritical about what their officials do in private.

And if this hadn't become public, I'm sure that hypocrisy would never have been forced to be addressed.

- Okay, well our next story, number two, DeSantis poll numbers dropped in the presidential campaign as the Washington Post and other outlets have reported.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis entered the Republican presidential race with an unmatched war chest and a $269 million plan to change how campaigns are usually funded.

The governor hoped never backed down, an independent pac that he funded would find a way to work with his official campaign to help him win the early primary states, with just weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, the experiment is now in tatters, the super pac that funded almost all of DeSantis advertising and field programs.

And much of the candidates travel and events has been sidelined by infighting and resignations at the independent pac.

Emily, the governor is in trouble as he works on his presidential ambitions in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Why is he in so much trouble?

Why hasn't he made some progress against Donald Trump?

- Yeah, Rob, that really is the question.

And I think we will see just how much trouble he's in, obviously starting on January 15th with the Iowa caucuses.

But it's one that I've been asking Iowans myself as I get ready to go to Iowa next month.

I've been talking to a lot of people in Iowa involved sort of with local Republican politics about, why isn't DeSantis clicking in your state after traveling to all 99 counties and getting all these big endorsements?

And it's interesting because I hear sort of a variety of answers.

I don't think there'll be one sole thing that we can sort of neatly tie this to and say, this is why Ron DeSantis, had the outcome that he will.

But there is a variety of reasons I think for a lot of people.

Decision number one among Republicans right now is, do I still support Trump?

If they do, then they may not even be open to a Ron DeSantis type.

Some Trump voters I spoke to said that he really hasn't presented a convincing enough case for them to depart from somebody that they've been supporting for years at this point.

But if people are open to another candidate other than Trump, we see momentum behind people like Nikki Haley who's really starting to cut into, I think, some of the support that he was hoping to get in places like Iowa and especially in New Hampshire.

And so I think it could be a death by a thousand cuts situation, but as you mentioned Rob, there have been plenty of self-inflicted wounds along the way.

The infighting and the super PAC has been spilling out into public view.

We're at a crucial time one month before Iowa where voters are really starting to perk up and really pay attention and think seriously about who they're gonna caucus for.

And to have high profile resignations sort of cutting into his sales pitch of, I'm a guy without drama, I'm a guy who's gonna win the general election.

You can trust me, that's all very bad timing for him.

- And Emily, why is there such bad blood between DeSantis and the Trump campaign?

- Well I think there's, there's a long history there with DeSantis' 2018 victory largely coming from Trump's endorsement.

And then Trump over the years seeing DeSantis ambitions, his run for president has been an open secret in Florida politics for a long time, well before he officially announced.

And so the view within Trump world is that DeSantis was disloyal and not waiting his turn.

And I think that sentiment, that contributes to the bad blood from the DeSantis camp as well.

And it's interesting, I have talked to voters who do sort of agree with that line of thinking, people who are still supporting Donald Trump, who think that DeSantis is great, but that he should have waited his turn and that they would've supported him had he just waited another cycle.

And so I do think that there's a lot of talk now about timing and about was this the right election for him to pick to run in?

But you have to remember too, that after the 2022 reelection, when he won by this massive landslide, he had so much buzz and momentum nationally, and it did sort of seem like, possibly the right time for him.

But really since then, his poll numbers have only dropped and dropped and dropped and kept dropping.

- All right, well and finally our number one story for 2023.

(drum roll) The GOP surge in voter registration.

The Republican Party of Florida now has a nearly 700,000 voter registration edge over the Florida Democratic Party.

As of the end of last month, the state division of Elections website shows that 5.2 million Floridians were registered as Republicans, while 4.5 million were registered as Democrats, another 3.9 million were registered with no party affiliation or with third parties.

Democrats historically held a registration edge here in the state, but Republicans overtook them two years ago and they've steadfastly expanded their lead.

And Republicans hold all statewide offices, a majority of Florida's congressional delegation and super majority in the Florida House and Senate.

Steve, why have Republicans been so successful and Democrats apparently so hapless?

- Well, yeah, it's a combination of both factors for sure.

And you have to put the Democrat's failure up there with the Republican's success, it is getting mathematically almost impossible for a Democrat to win a statewide election in Florida.

We're gonna see in 2024, Rick Scott seeking reelection as a senator, as a Republican.

He's got serious democratic opposition, but he's got the wind at his back with these numbers.

Let me explain a couple of things that are going on.

One is, first of all, even though the Republicans have this historic advantage numerically, it's important to remember they only account for 30 little less than 38% of registered voters in the state.

They're not a majority in voter registration, but they are way in the lead.

Democrats are at about 33%, and the remaining 30% are no party affiliation, NPA voters.

The other thing that we're seeing in these numbers, Rob, is that there's a little bit of a mirage at work here because the numbers that you quoted, which are accurate, is the number of what are known as active voters.

Florida calls voters active or inactive.

And without getting too deep in the weeds, you become an inactive voter.

Basically, if you stop voting and you got a postcard mailer from your elections office and you didn't respond, inactive voters may have moved away, they may have died.

They may just not be interested in politics.

And statistically what I keep seeing around the state is Democrats tend to have more inactive voters in their ranks than Republicans do.

Republicans are more consistent voters, they're more loyal voters.

They don't take as much effort to motivate.

And we see that in the results.

I wanna mention two counties really quick about this trend, 'cause I've spent a lot of time researching and writing about it.

Two counties that are really important in this discussion are Palm Beach, which is no longer the deep blue Democratic County that it once was.

It is truly purple.

The Democratic advantage in Palm Beach County is down to about 60,000 votes.

As you know, Dave, Broward and Palm Beach, those three counties are home to about a third of all Democrats in the state.

The other county that's really important in your backyard is Pinellas, Pinellas County, St. Pete, Clearwater used to be for many, many cycles, I watched the numbers there, Pinellas was almost unique in the state, and it had almost exactly the same number of Democrats and Republicans.

And now the Republicans have almost a 30,000 vote lead.

So there you have it.

- All right, I wish we had more time, Steve, everybody, thank you so much for a great program.

Hope you all have a safe and happy new year.

Thank you for being part of this program, and thank you for joining us.

Send us your comments at ftwwedu.org and please like us on Facebook.

You can view this in past shows online at wedu.org or on the PBS App.

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

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