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

- [Narrator] Coming up right now on WEDU is the fallout in Florida from the leak of the draft Supreme court decision on abortion rights, the justice department will investigate evictions from public housing in Tampa and local residents fight back against Tallahassee over the new anti Disney law, all coming up next on Florida This Week.

(upbeat music) Welcome back, Florida residents reacted positively and negatively to news this week that a US Supreme Court opinion has been written that would overturn the 1973 Roe versus Wade decision legalizing abortion.

- [Reporter] Across the state, there were hastily organized protests by supporters and opponents of the draft decision.

In Orlando, hundreds of pro-choice supporters turned out.

- Everyone here really came together and showed that the Orlando community will not stand for abortion bans that the Orlando community cares about our reproductive health rights and our reproductive justice, and cares about taking ownership of our bodies and showing politicians that we're not scared of everything they throw at us.

We are mad and we have a right to be mad, and we're gonna use that anger effectively.

- [Reporter] This year, the legislature passed and the governor signed a ban on abortion after 15 weeks.

In Clearwater, the governor was asked whether he wants the upcoming special session of the legislature to further limit abortions in Florida.

- You can leak stuff out of a court, which was really unprecedented, but let's see when you actually have something rendered.

- [Reporter] For months, pollsters and political analysts have been downbeat about the Democrats chances to win many victories in the November elections with the governor, US Senate and legislative races, all on the ballot.

Democrats hope the draft decision on abortion will change that.

- And here to talk about whether this issue will ignite the Democrats as Emily Mahoney, she's the Political Editor at the Tampa Bay Times and has heard from several Florida politicians on the question.

And Emily, welcome back, great to see you.

- Yes, great to see you, thanks so much.

- So, what are Republicans and Democrats saying about this?

Whether it helps their chances of winning in the fall.

- So, Democrats are really looking at this as sort of a moment in time, a touchstone moment in American politics, and particularly in Florida, where there could be a momentum change.

Like you said, there's sort of been a lack of enthusiasm among Democrats, particularly in the governor's race.

Their fundraising is so vastly behind governor DeSantis, but I talked to commissioner, Nikki Fried.

She is a woman running to be the first female governor of Florida.

And I think she in particular has really seized on this.

She's held multiple rallies in different parts of the State, trying to really say that this is her time that she's gonna use this to further her campaign.

And meanwhile Republicans are saying that this is completely wishful thinking by Democrats that abortion is not an issue that is top of mind enough moderate and swing voters to really change their mind or increase their chances of coming out in November.

- I think the Democrats have a problem, traditionally, they don't turn out in big numbers in midterm elections, and younger people, I think who might be more motivated on the question of abortion, especially the pro-choice younger people.

They don't tend to sign up and vote in mid-term elections.

So, are the Republicans pretty sure that this is gonna be nothing?

- Well, there is a long time to go between now and November as well, which I think also perhaps could work against the Democrats.

Granted the official opinion by the decision by the Supreme Court has not happened yet.

What we've seen is just a draft.

So, if that decision comes down in June, that might be a little bit closer at least to the primary season.

But there's definitely an open question of whether this would really turn around the momentum of the governor's race in Florida.

- Now we have a special session of the state legislature coming up at the end of the month, the governor was asked there in Clearwater about what might come up, whether abortion would come up.

In Louisiana, they want to move to criminalize abortion and charge people with murder.

If they're involved in an abortion, both the woman and the person that carries out the abortion, John Steinberger, who's a leading anti-abortion activist here in Florida.

He's quoted on your website that he hopes that the legislature will take up a Fetal Heartbeat Bill when it meets at the end of this month.

What do we know about the legislature?

What it might do on the question of abortion when it meets in a few weeks?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

And one we haven't really gotten a straight answer to yet.

I would say Governor DeSantis, when he has been asked, like the clip that you just showed, he has sort of demured on the question.

He says that this is just a draft opinion.

We haven't seen the full decision yet.

And so, I'm not really gonna weigh in until we see the final decision, which is a little unusual for a governor who really kind of takes every opportunity to get into the national spotlight, to talk about big national political issues of the day.

And so, it's been a similar tone from leading legislative Republican leaders as well.

Although we know that many of them support the idea of a heartbeat bill, because they've said that in the past, we have not seen any signs that that will be added to the special session.

And so, so far it looks like not.

- The Republicans when the political first reported about the leaked opinion, the Republicans both here in the State and around the country, they're very concerned about the leak.

They say that this violates the tradition of the court.

- Yeah, and that really has been, I think the focus of Republicans in the days since this was leaked, not really saying in many cases in Florida, what will happen in terms of legislation, but more focusing on the leak itself.

And the leak is a huge breach of the way that the court really operates typically, usually behind closed doors.

And I think that in modern history, we haven't really seen anything quite like this.

And so, I do think that there is some definitely legitimate concern about whether this sort of cheapens the Supreme courts, typical procedures, and sort of as being one of the last things that's sort of supposed to be not political.

- And the times reported this week, that majority of people in Florida favor access to safe and legal abortions.

But the question is how high on the list as you pointed out earlier, is it compared to some of the other issues that Floridians are facing.

- And that's been, what we've heard from Republicans sort of in response to all of this is that, with inflation the way it is, with gas prices the way they are, that's something that's staring Americans in the face every single day.

And so, their argument is that that will basically be enough to completely counteract any sort of momentum gained by Democrats with abortion.

- Emily Mahoney, thanks a lot for coming on the program.

- Thank you so much.

(upbeat music) - The Tampa Bay Times reports the US Department of Justice is investigating a controversial Tampa police department program in which officers alerted landlords when their tenants were arrested and they urged the tenants be evicted.

- [Reporter] The justice department informed the city of the investigation in a letter that was sent December 21st to Tampa Mayor, Jane Castor.

The investigation is focused on whether what was called the crime free multi-housing program, violated the fair housing act, which prohibits discrimination in housing on the basis of race and other protected categories.

- The reporter on the story is Christopher O'Donnell of the Tampa Bay Times, and he joins us now.

And Christopher, welcome back.

- Thanks, Rob.

- Tell us more about how this program worked and when was it used in the city of Tampa?

- So, from 2013, until December.

Tampa police routinely would send letters to landlords when their tenants were arrested.

At its peak, there was about a hundred apartment complexes that were participating in the program, which was voluntary.

But we did an analysis of who were these letters being sent about, what apartment complexes were enrolled in the program.

And we found that of 1100 tenants that were flagged over that the life of the program, 90% were black renters.

We also looked at the apartment complexes that did end up participating and of 175 were in neighborhoods where black and minority residents make up a majority of the population.

- Now, is this at the same time that the biking while black enforcement was going on in Tampa?

- Yeah, the programs overlap a little bit.

The report at the times did about biking while black was in 2015 and the subsequent, the OJ investigation into that program occurred as well.

So, there was an overlap of about two years.

- So, this was when the police chief was the current mayor, Jane Castor.

- Yeah, Jane Castor was chief of police when both programs started, I believe.

And she still, to some extent has defended the evictions program, even though the police have now stopped running it and replaced it with more of a neighborhood watch type program.

- Now the Tampa of police didn't really order the eviction.

Did they?

What did they tell the landlords rather?

- Well, it was standard in the training and mentioned in the training that works was given to landlords, that they expected eviction to be used as a tool to reduce crime.

Some of these apartment complexities did have high crime problems.

And in the cases where tenants were arrested, the letters that police sent landlords was very clear that they expected landlords to take action as a part of the program.

- So, the language was pretty strong in the-- - The language was strong and we know that.

Because when the times first started asking for copies of these letters back in 2018, that was when the police actually changed the wording on the letters and just made it more informational.

But before that, it said you must take action to evict vacate or cure.

- So, what struck me in your story too, was that these people were not yet convicted of a crime.

And some of these crimes were quite small.

There were small driving infractions.

It was panhandling.

In some cases there were big offenses too.

But in some cases there were very minor offenses and no convictions.

- Yeah, we found hundreds of cases where the crimes were what Florida considers a misdemeanor.

So, driving while license is suspended, domestic violence issues, those kind of arrests and police often even sent letters just of an interaction with a tenant.

One officer wrote there's too much baby daddy drama at this property.

- Now the mayor last week in a press conference said only eight people or eight families were evicted.

Does that match up with your reporting?

- No, that doesn't match up with our reporting.

The analysis that the city did looked only at the last five years of the program, our analysis over the whole life of the program showed that it was operated a lot more aggressively in the early years before the time started asking to see the records.

And we know there are dozens of dozens of cases that are omitted from the police analysis.

And we also debunked their analysis.

Evictions happen without records being filed in court.

If you have a notice to vacate posted on your door, a lot of people that's enough for them.

They're not gonna fight that.

They're gonna move out.

The police analysis completely omitted those kinda cases.

- The justice department is investigating this program.

The program is no longer in effect as I understand it.

- Yeah, in December 1st, interim police Chief Delgado announced that they were gonna replace the program.

It's more like a neighborhood watch program, but people do have access to arrest records.

They are public records.

The police are gonna create a dashboard where you can see what crimes happened in your area with a link to request records, should you want, but that's vastly different from what we reported on, which was a data share and agreement with landlords, where almost every interaction with police was sent to landlords, putting tenants at risk of eviction.

- And just in the 10 seconds we have left, this is an investigation to whether the Tampa police department violated the Fair Housing Act.

- That's correct.

- And how soon do we expect the results of this investigation?

- We don't know, but the investigation's gonna focus on whether was a disparate impact on people of color.

That's part of the fair housing acts provisions.

- Well, Christopher O'Donnell, thanks a lot for coming on Florida this week.

- Thanks, Rob.

(upbeat music) - The bombshell report by Politico this week that the US Supreme Court will overturn Roe versus Wade, has brought calls by some to investigate who leaked the draft opinion by Justice, Samuel Alito, to the press.

- [Reporter] It also raised the question, what will happen in the country if the right to abortion is taken away by the high court.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that two polls show access to safe and legal abortions is supported by a majority.

During the 2020 election cycle an Ipsos Reuters poll asked likely voters in Florida, whether they agreed with the board general statement, that abortion should be legal in most cases.

In five surveys that year, a majority ranging from 56 to 60% agreed, while only 35% of respondents or fewer disagreed.

One of the most lopsided results came from in October, 2020 Quinnipiac poll, which found 68% of likely Florida voters agreed in general with Roe versus Wade, just 23% of Florida voters disagreed.

Joining me now on the panel, Steve Bousquet is the Editorial Page Editor for the south Florida, Sun-Sentinel and Darryl Paulson is the Emeritus Professor of government and politics at USF St. Petersburg.

Good to have both of you, great to see you.

Darryl, let me start with you.

If access to abortion is supported by majority of Florida voters, will it have any effect though, on the Democrat's chances in November, what do you think?

- Hey, that's always the big political question, of course.

Will it have any impact at all?

One of the things that polls can't measure is intensity.

I mean, they can tell us that a majority of Floridians, as well as the majority of the nation supports the right to an abortion.

What they can't tell us is how intense those opinions are in terms of do the Republicans hold their opinions more intensely than do the Democrats.

And of course you can't just assume that this is a Republican versus democratic issue.

There are a lot of Democrats who oppose abortion.

There are a lot of Republicans who favor abortion rights, but intensity is always one of those things that's very difficult to measure.

So, you look at Florida and you can see that Florida Republicans tend to be more motivated, more activated than do the Democrats at this point in time, for all sorts of reasons.

If that's the case with respect to the abortion issue, that may well be that the Republicans are gonna benefit from this, even though that's not a normal expectation.

- Steve, I think Democrats are hoping that because they've got a bunch of women running for statewide office, for instance, there are two women, Nikki Fried and Annette Taddeo are running for the gubernatorial nomination.

And Val Demings is running against Marco Rubio for US Senate.

The Democrats hope that this abortion issue is gonna catch on, what do you think?

- I pretty much agree with what Darryl said.

I agree that it crosses party lines clearly, you have to remember something that candidates, democratic candidates all up and down the ballot are gonna be talking about this issue.

It's gonna be amplified in race after race after race.

And I do think maybe I'm a bit overly optimistic.

I do think this is that rare issue that can animate and get democratic and independent voters motivated in a mid-term election.

You have to remember something about mid-term, non-presidential elections in Florida.

Republicans always do a better job of getting their base voters off to the polls.

Democrats are harder to motivate, but this issue and the issue with the open carry of guns might be the exception to that rule.

- John Stanberger who's one of the leaders of the anti-abortion movement here in Florida.

He's really prominent in the Christian Conservative Movement said that this is an opportunity to show that we can love children and not kill them.

And I'm wondering what, how do we treat children generally in Florida?

Are we pretty good about the way we treat children in Florida?

And Steve, let me ask you that question.

- Year after year, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which is a reputable yardstick of these questions shows that Florida does not do well in areas of nutrition, infant mortality, stable home life situations, and all that.

No, are recurring theme in the letters to the editor that I see at the Sun-Sentinel from readers and obviously this comes from democratic voters.

They say something to the effect of Republicans care about the unborn.

I wish they cared as much about kids after they were born than they do.

For example, guns, keeping guns out of the hands and out of the accessibility of children, Florida could do a lot better job than it's doing in that regard alone.

- Darryl, what would you say?

- Well, I mean, it's amazing that Florida is patterning, it's abortion law after the State of Mississippi.

Now that's not necessarily great praise.

I mean, it's not often that you wanna say, gee, we're doing just what Mississippi did.

You would rather be the follower than the the leader than the follower behind the State of Mississippi.

There's also an interesting provision in the Florida Abortion Bill, which allows for abortions in the case of what are called Fatal Fetal Abnormalities.

I mean, that's just one of those phrases that demands further scrutiny, but if there is some life threatening condition, in other words, that would justify an abortion in the State of Florida under its abortion laws, that some of the other states don't have that policy.

But yeah, it's gonna be a real battleground in Florida.

And once again, going back to this intensity, I'm not as sure as Steve is that this will be that kind of issue that for whatever reason sort of shakes everyone up and creates a different political climate than we've seen in the past.

- Okay, several central Florida residents are suing the State after lawmakers in April voted to strip Walt Disney World of its self-governance status.

- [Reporter] The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, claims the bill is unconstitutional and will significantly injured nearby tax payers, who may be forced to pay up to a billion dollars of the company's debt.

It also alleges the repeal of self-governance is punishment for Disney's opposition to the Parental Rights and Education Bill, or as the critics call it the Don't Say Gay Gill.

- Steve, the governor says he has a plan to stop this tax increase on the tax payers in Osceola and Orange counties from happening.

What do we know so far?

Has he said much about what's in the plan?

- No, he hasn't.

DeSantis has a plan for everything, but we haven't seen the details here.

This was sprung on an unsuspecting public, of course, and on Disney, it's not gonna be resolved if it is resolved until the 2023 session of the legislature.

And so, you're gonna have a different legislature, different legislative leadership.

You might very well still have DeSantis in the governor's office.

Rob, my money is on Disney.

My money is on Disney and its army of lobbyists to prevail here somehow.

And this issue of Disney suspending its campaign contributions.

I don't know how long that's going to last, but Disney still has an enormous amount of clout and their clout is greatest in and around Central Florida.

- Well, that leads me to my next question.

Let's put up on the screen.

Disney does make a lot of donations in the current cycle.

It's made about 2.2 million in political contributions to candidates and political committees.

The Republican party gets a lot of the donations, most of the donations, the Florida Republican party got in cash and in-kind donations.

$397,000, the Governor DeSantis re-election campaign got 50,000.

The Florida Republican senatorial campaign got 385,000, Attorney General, Ashley Moody got 25,000 and the CFO, Jimmy Patronis got 61,000 Democrats did get some, a lot of hotel rooms and free bees at restaurants.

So, Darryl, let me ask you, the Disney corporation has suspended its political contributions, but would you expect them to move any donations, move the same amount of donations to the democratic party?

- Well, if you look at traditionally, why political contributions are given to individuals or to a political party, it's because that organization believes it will benefit and why the heck they're gonna benefit in most cases it's because they're looking at who holds the reigns of power in the State of Florida.

And clearly for the last 30 years, it's been the Republicans who control the reigns of government, all the way from the governors on office, on down to the state legislature.

So, they know who's gonna make the rules and regulations affecting them.

But if you constantly keep getting kicked in the kneecaps as the Republican party is as the Republican party is by DeSantis and the Republican party kicking Disney and the kneecaps, they're gonna reevaluate their own policies, say, hey, maybe we can back away from this.

And maybe it's time to rethink our policies.

Maybe it's time to free up some of that money for people who support our policies and not necessarily criticize all our policies.

One other point-- - Go ahead.

- Standard operating procedure on the part of DeSantis seems to be attack.

If somebody says something against you, then attack them.

You either allow them to sue the State of Florida, sue the School Board, whatever.

In this case, it's another attack on Disney because of its policies with respect to the Don't Say Gay Bill.

- Steve, what do you think?

- I agree, we haven't discussed this yet on this program, but a week or so ago, DeSantis surprisingly to a lot of people, he vetoed that net metering sold rooftop bill that Florida power and light wanted.

So, he has antagonized, Florida power and light on that issue.

He's antagonized Disney on the Reedy Creek Improvement District issue.

it's become now modus operandi to go after big corporations, cocktail party talk that I hear in my travels.

People say, who's next?

Who do you think is next?

Publix.

Publix is the one big corporate entity that DeSantis has not antagonized, but logic suggests something's coming over the horizon.

As I said, a minute ago, I'm banking on Disney.

The history is very clear about Tallahassee and the legislature, special interests get what they want more often than not.

And the way this whole thing with Disney was executed is terribly flawed.

And I'd be surprised if Disney doesn't prevail in the end.

- Okay, well, before we go, what other news story should we be paying attention to?

And Steve, lemme start with you, your other big story of the week.

- Sure, in following news coverage around the state, Rob, I noticed that a very disturbing couple of events, there were school board meetings this week, in Jacksonville and in Sarasota that were so disrupted that the chairman had to call a time out.

They had to sort of suspend the proceedings.

There was disruption, the attorney for the Sarasota school board said, you don't have a first amendment right to disrupt the public proceeding, and he's right.

We're coming into a period where school board elections are a focal point of activism, initiated by Governor Ron DeSantis.

And I say this reluctantly, but I'm concerned that we're gonna have more disruptions at more school board meetings on these issues of parental rights and the culture war stuff.

That's been amplified by the governor.

- All right, and Darryl, we've got 30 seconds.

What would you say?

- Well, I think that one of the real issues to watch is the old standard issue and that's the economy.

We're talking about all these other issues, which are very important, but it all goes back oftentimes to the economy.

And we all know the economy is bad.

Inflation is way high.

That's a big concern for the Democrats that in itself may kill democratic chances in the upcoming election.

And even if they have advantages on other kinds of issues as they do in the State of Florida, that one issue in itself inflation, may be the dying breath of the democratic party with respect to the 2022 election.

- Well, Darryl Paulson and Steve Bousquet.

Thanks a lot, great to see you guys.

- Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- Thanks, Rob.

Thanks for joining us.

Please send us your comments at ftwwedu.org.

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And from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend and happy mother's day.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Florida this week is a production of WEDU who is solely responsible for its content.

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