- [Presenter] This is a production of WEDU PBS.

Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

Florida This Week is made possible in part by support from the Tampa Bay Times.

- [Presenter 2] Coming up next, the former state senator was arrested in connection to election fraud.

The legislature moves forward with the myriad of bills to preempt local government and a new poll shows Cuban-Americans moving in a more conservative direction.

Our panelists are, FIU political scientists, Eduardo Gamarra former Tampa Tribune Editorial page editor Rosemary Goudreau and Tampa Bay times columnist, Daniel Ruth next on Florida This Week.

(bright upbeat music) - welcome back.

In Miami, former Republican state Senator Frank Artiles' turned himself into authorities this week on allegations that he secretly paid for a sham candidate to run in a key state Senate race last year.

- [Presenter 2] The Miami Dade State Attorneys, public corruption task force charged Artiles' with a felony for paying $50,000 to a political newcomer, to siphon votes from an incumbent.

Both candidates shared the same last name and the scam was allegedly designed to confuse the voters.

Also this week, it was reported that 78 year old former us Senator Bill Nelson will be selected by president Biden to be the new head of NASA.

Nelson spent six days in space in 1986 aboard the space shuttle Columbia.

Governor DeSantis announced that he will soon lower the age for getting COVID-19 vaccines to people 55 and older, this comes as a new poll shows 42% of Republicans nationwide probably or definitely will not get the vaccine.

Only 17% of Democrats say the same.

And the rivalry continued this week between the governor and his predecessor.

According to Politico, Governor DeSantis this week flatly rejected Senator Rick Scott's call for all governors and mayors to return their share of the $1.9 trillion federal COVID relief package money.

Scott opposed the bill.

The governor wants to use some of the money to give bonuses to first responders.

Their are differences show that both are vying for the upper hand in the potential battle over the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Finally, long-time Miami Herald Columnist, Carl Hiaasen wrote his final column for the paper this week, warning that despite his best efforts, Florida is still under assault from overdevelopment racism and corruption.

- Politico's reporting that a poll done by the research firm, Ben Dickson, which has been tracking Cuban-American opinion for years has found a dramatic shift towards more support for the Cuban embargo.

Now 66% of Cuban-Americans say they support the embargo.

That's up from 36%, just six years ago.

Eduardo Gamarra is a political science professor at Florida International University and an experienced pollster and he joins us again here on Florida This Week.

Professor, welcome back.

- Thank you very much.

A pleasure to be with you.

- Eduardo, why the turnaround do you think, in the Cuban-American thought on the Cuban embargo?

- Well, I think a couple of things explain it.

First it was the four years of president Trump in office in a relentless campaign particularly here in Miami Dade County, aimed at basically turning around what had been a trend by Cuban... Really I would say the entire Cuban demographic here trending Democrat.

Some of the figures that we had in our own surveys at FIU leading up to 2016, had a very, very different set of numbers.

The impact of this, I would say very well-structured relentless Republican campaign, has worked.

A second factor, has to do with developments in Cuba.

Instead of opening up, which was the promise of president Obama's policies, Cuba has clamped down.

It's clamped down on opposition, human rights abuses have increased and also on the economy side, Cuba has not opened up.

So I think it's a combination of those two factors.

- When we hear that Cuban Americans are becoming more conservative, I've read national polls too where during this election Cuban Americans, Latinos of other nationalities and blacks have slightly trended towards Republicans.

And I wonder if in your polling, you've noticed this trend and what you attribute this to.

Why the slight bend toward Republicans in the last four years?

- Yeah, I think a lot has been made or perhaps a lot more than should about the religious component to that trend.

I think it has much more to do with specific policy issues.

So for example, the issue related to Cuban Americans in policy for Cuba, probably better explains that trend, but there are also a couple of other things that our research over the last few years has demonstrated rather conclusively.

And that is for example, on education.

I think that the democrats misplaced their focus on education reform.

Misplaced the idea that like good liberals, Latinos and African-Americans, would be against vouchers, would be against the, what do you call them?

Charter schools and the like, and instead most polling shows that among the strongest support for those two issues, really, you find very, very strong reporting on those two demographics.

So I think specific issues that the Republicans have been able to identify when were they taken, is basically a commanding lead.

- Cuban Americans have long been dominant in Dade County.

Dade County being a key place where Democrats or Republicans slug it out to win a statewide race.

But we're also seeing a lot of newcomers.

We're seeing a lot of people move here from Venezuela and from Columbia.

We're seeing Puerto Ricans move over from the Island.

There are people from Mexico and other central American nations coming.

Do they all share this kind of conservative lean?

- Yeah and one of the things that's important to understand is that, a lot of what's happened with globalization is that our domestic politics has become international.

So our elections are in fact fought in every single country.

And by the same token, by the large number of Colombians, Venezuelans, every nationality here, politics from their specific countries also becomes local politics for us here.

And so for example, in the Colombian case, the conservative... How should I put it?

Socialist divide which is so prevalent in the polarization of that country played a major role in the elections here.

And I would say we've given perhaps a little bit too much credit to the Cubans in terms of this turnaround and not enough to the Colombians, where you have a dramatic shift in how Colombians perceived...

They were previously primarily aligned as Democrats.

And now they're almost, almost Cuban like in their orientation toward the Republican party.

- If the word socialist is a turnoff, can the Democrats fight that or is that going to be a weapon that Republicans are able to use for the next few election cycles?

- It's going to be difficult to fight.

And a lot of it has to do with trends, as I just said not just trends here in the United States.

It's not just the issue of the progressive wing of the democratic party.

It's trends in South America, it's trends in central America.

It's the consolidation of left of center regimes that are continuing to violate human rights, that are using the judiciary, you persecute their opponents and so on.

And so I think it's those developments back home that are going to continue to make socialism, the fear of socialism, a central issue in local politics.

- Well, professor Gamarra, thanks for coming back on Florida This Week and hope to see you soon.

- Great, thank you very much.

Pleasure to be here.

(bright upbeat music) - Rosemary Goudreau O'Hara is an award-winning journalist and a long time observer of Florida politics.

She was the editorial page editor at the Tampa Tribune.

Currently she's the editorial page editor for the South Florida Sun Sentinel and Fort Lauderdale.

And Rosemary, welcome back.

Nice to see you.

- Nice to see you too, Rob.

- So I want to talk about the case of Frank Artiles'.

He turned himself in, he's a former state Senator, he apparently paid somebody at least 44 or $45,000 to run as a third candidate in a three-way state Senate election.

And two of the candidates had the same last name apparently this worked.

Now how often does this happen in Florida politics where somebody is paid to be a sham candidate?

- You know, it's not really clear how often it's happened.

In the past, where we suspect it happened is as writing candidates.

A writing candidate can close a primary so the other people in the other party can't vote and these writing candidates come out of nowhere, and nobody knows who they are but they are shells to protect the party primary.

But this case has really rocked South Florida and it's good to see prosecutor Tallahassee has not taken it seriously.

This is voter fraud.

This is election fraud in Florida.

And what is Tallahassee doing?

You know, they're not talking about this, they're talking about trying to change laws for things that weren't a problem, fix things that weren't even a problem.

The shame of this is, is that Miami Dade had a state Senator Jose Javier Rodriguez who was a really good state Senator, a Democrat.

He wore rain boots to the Florida legislature every day to highlight the issue of climate change.

And he was somebody who the Republicans wanted to take out in order to increase their majority.

And so Artiles'' is charged with having drafted somebody who had the same last name, Rodriguez.

The guy was able to, switch from Republican to NPA.

He didn't even live in the district.

And we have been pounding the table down here about this election fraud which now we know money changed hands.

He was recruited, allegedly, but you know, in Tallahassee they are, mum's the word about what happened and how do we protect the integrity of our elections.

Instead, there wanting to dismiss people's absentee ballot requests and prevent them from being able to drop them off and drop in boxes.

- The Florida Democratic Party, wants a new election.

They want the current Republican Senator to step down because there was, they say fraud in the election and they want a new one.

What are the chances that happens?

- A zip zero and nada?

She didn't do any... Liliana Garcia, she didn't do anything wrong.

She won the election.

So I don't see there being any chance that it will be upended.

- It was a squeaker 32 votes.

So let me ask you-- (crosstalk) - And that guy, the sham candidate pulled 6,000 votes.

So he was the difference maker.

He won but it is good that Artiles'' is charged with a felony but it's just a third degree felony.

I think what the legislature needs to show it's serious about election fraud and deal with what's really happening on the ground in Florida.

- There's a lot of talk this week about Governor DeSantis.

So there was a poll in Iowa this week that said that if, Donald Trump were not in a presidential race that Ron Desantis would be the number one Republican candidate in Iowa in the primary.

There's been a lot of controversy surrounding the vaccine distribution but he's gotten a lot of praise too for not shutting down the state and the economy's really good.

What do you think about DeSantis as a possible presidential nominee in the Republican party?

- I think there's no question, but that he's positioning himself to run and that he will be... Is obviously a strong competitor.

He holds the bully pulpit in Florida and he holds the bully pulpit on Fox news.

So he's able to manage the message.

In some ways, I feel like he got lucky.

At a time when public health officials were telling us to wear masks and social distance, he didn't want to issue a statewide mask order.

So where is our death rate?

Florida's death rate?

What I think it's 23rd or 24th in the nation.

So we're not the worst, but we're in the middle.

That's a good thing but he's able to manage the message, spin the numbers but it is true that, unlike Northern States that have had a brutal winter, we've been able to be out and about and being in the fresh air is not the danger that we initially thought when they were trying to close the beaches.

So people are moving to Florida and opening businesses in Florida and I guess that's to his credit.

- Rosemary, one last question, the state legislature wants to change the way Bright Futures Scholarships are handed out for some degrees, they want to give less money for other degrees, they want to give the same amount of money they originally promised the parents.

What do you think about the proposed changes to Bright Futures Scholarships?

- Well, I think that from what we know, the governor deserves credit on that because he said he's not in favor of it.

So I don't know what the chances are.

But it's like we all need to be engineers.

Now, if we want Florida to fulfill its promise the commitment that it made to keep the best and brightest and it's not just engineers who are our best and brightest, it's also lovers of the art and authors and journalists too.

I mean, we would only get half of our credit hours paid for under this proposal.

So I guess we're going to have to just start calling ourselves journalist engineers.

- Rosemary, it's great to see you.

I understand you're moving back to the Tampa Bay area.

I can't wait to see you in person.

Thanks for coming on the show.

- Thank you, Rob.

It's great to be here can't wait to be back in Tampa.

(bright upbeat music) - Dan Ruth is a newspaper columnist and the Honors College visiting professor of professional practice at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

He's been a writer and reporter for the Tampa Tribune the Chicago Sun Times and the Tampa Bay Times.

Dan Ruth welcome back.

Nice to see you.

- Thank you.

Good to be here.

Good to see you.

- Dan, in Tallahassee the governor says that he would like to get ahead of any potential future voting problems by changing the voting system here in Florida and he wants to make it a little tougher to get a mail-in ballot and he wants to make it harder to drop off those mail-in ballots.

Those are two of the ideas.

This is not the only state.

Other States are considering making it hard to vote, Georgia being the most prominent.

What do you make of these efforts to make it harder to do things like mail and voting?

- The problem is if you make voting easier for people, what happens?

They vote.

We can't have that in this state.

You simply cannot make it easier for people to vote because then they'll A, they'll vote and B they may not vote for you.

And so it's critical to make sure if you're Ron Desantis and you're the Florida Republican legislature that you make it as difficult as possible for people to vote out of a sense of survival, I suppose.

What all this is really doing, this is classic voter suppression.

We saw its ugly head get raised when they overturn the will of the voters by making it that would have allowed former felons to vote.

This is a solution in search of a problem.

Florida's election in 2020 went off without a hitch.

Everything was just fine and there's no reason to change it, if anything, we should be expanding voting hours, expanding mail and voting opportunities.

If you're really going to call yourself a democracy well then be a democracy and allow people to vote.

I'll tell you what really makes me just outraged about this and I tend to get easily outraged, I suppose but our national cemeteries are filled with the remains of men and women who died in the service of this country to protect this democracy and an intrinsic part of this democracy is making sure that people have a right to vote.

And every time you engage in one of these voter suppression efforts and that's all it is, you are basically spitting on the graves of the hundreds of thousands of millions of Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice to make sure that you could vote.

- Let me ask you about another topic.

This week it was reported that Florida is number two when it comes to hate groups in the USA.

We're second, only to California.

This is an increasing problem.

What are your thoughts?

Why Florida?

Why does Florida beat places like New York and Texas?

- I'm sure with hard work and effort, we can get to that number one spot in no time.

I don't think we're all that far behind California but one of the things and you know this as well as anybody, cause you've been a journalist in this state in your entire career, people often mistake Florida or fail to recognize that Florida is a deep South state.

You hear it all the time from the major national media when they talk about referring to the deep South, they never include Florida.

Florida is about as deep South as you can get.

We're not all Mickey mouse ears and margaritas, we are a state that has a long dark history of racism, clan activity.

Go read Gilbert King's book, "Devil in the Grove."

It was not that long ago that sheriff Willis McCall was murdering black inmates in his jail.

And this is still a very dangerous place to be if you're black.

And so it's not at the least bit unusual that Florida would simply follow the traditional historical patterns of other Southern States and have such a rich fertile field of hate groups running around.

- Do you think the state leadership is taking this problem seriously?

- No.

No, of course not.

They're not taking it any more seriously than Donald Trump did.

They're not taking it any more seriously than the likes of Matt Gaetz and Greg Stuby did after the insurrection we had on January 6th.

Where now those two guys by the way, refused they were part of a minority, refused to honor the capitol police who protected them against a bunch of racists trying to take over the Capitol.

If Matt Gaetz and Greg Stuby are basically the poster child for the bias and the prejudice and the racism that exists in the state.

- There's a lot of people lining up looking to take on Governor Ron DeSantis next year.

DeSantis is looking pretty good in the state polls and he's looking good in the Iowa polls too, but Charlie Chris is talking about taking him on, several members of Congress are talking about taking on DeSantis.

Do you think he's vulnerable?

Do you think the Democrat or do you think that Florida is a red state at this point and that no Democrat-- - I do think he's vulnerable If you have the right candidate.

I think it's really grotesquely premature to start measuring the drapes of the oval office over the DeSantis household.

Much of his polls I think he could attribute to simply vote on name recognition.

And before he starts chasing the white house, he has to win in 2022.

And Charlie Chris will be a formidable candidate, I suppose.

Val Demings would be an extremely attractive candidate to take him on maybe even Dan Gilbert from South Florida and there are a number of others but I think once we get into a campaign and you see the... And I hope that Democrats would remind people of DeSantis's horrific management of the COVID crisis in this state and this business of giving vaccines to his political donor base ahead of other people, I would imagine that the Democrats will exploit the hell out of that.

So he's vulnerable.

- You've got Nikki Freed and former Republican Congressman David Jolly but the problem for the Democrats is the party has no money and in the last election which should have been a pretty competitive year they lost the Donald Trump by 3% here in the state of Florida and we only have 30 seconds.

- Well, I suspect Donald Trump's influence by 2024, 2022, we'll be waning 'cause he will be spending most of his time in a courtroom somewhere.

So everyday that goes by, he has less and less influence and his coattails get shorter and shorter if he ever had any to begin with.

- Dan Ruth always great to see you.

Thanks for coming on Florida This Week.

- Thank you.

(bright upbeat music) - Well finally, a group of Northern California doctors calling themselves "The Vaccinate," have produced a video to promote the safety of the COVID-19 vaccination.

The song, "My shot," is based on the hit musical, Hamilton.

Stay safe, we'll see you next week.

(upbeat music) ♪ I'm not throwing away my shot ♪ ♪ I'm not throwing away my shot ♪ ♪ Hey yo, I'm just like my country ♪ ♪ I'm down, tired and angry ♪ ♪ And I'm not throwing away my shot ♪ ♪ I have seen a thing or two in med college ♪ ♪ I shouldn't brag but modern medicine can really astonish ♪ ♪ Maladies like smallpox have been abolished ♪ ♪ But out of nowhere comes a zoonotic virus ♪ ♪ For which we've no knowledge!

♪ ♪ It's a different kind of beast ♪ ♪ A new type of threat ♪ ♪ Every doctor dreads ♪ ♪ Now leaving more than a million dead ♪ ♪ 11 months along this pandemic disaster ♪ ♪ These Vacaville streets get older, we shoulder ♪ ♪ Every burden, every disadvantage we've tried to manage ♪ ♪ But without a way forward, we're beaten down and damaged ♪ ♪ The plan is to find a cure to change the game ♪ ♪ In case you haven't noticed let me spell out its name ♪ ♪ It's the C-O-R-O-N-A-V-I-R-U-S, it's COVID-19 ♪ ♪ A vaccine that works most effectively ♪ ♪ So COVID can't strike with impunity ♪ ♪ Essentially it trains your immunity ♪ ♪ To recognize virus parts with most certainty ♪ ♪ Activate T and B cells to fight to disease ♪ ♪ And kill the virus before it can grow with ease ♪ ♪ "Victory!"

we say in parentheses ♪ ♪ Don't be shocked when our history books mention these ♪ ♪ Interventions that fought back infirmity ♪ ♪ Bringing back our very lives and normalcy ♪ ♪ I'm not throwing away my shot ♪ ♪ I'm not throwing away my shot ♪ ♪ Hey yo, I'm just like my country ♪ ♪ I'm down, tired and angry ♪ ♪ And I'm not throwing away my shot ♪ ♪ It's time to take a shot ♪ - [Presenter] Florida This Week, it's a production of WEDU who is solely responsible for its content.

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