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- [Rob] Coming up next, the governor signs a slew of new voting restrictions into law.

He also fanned local government from enacting their own COVID emergency ordinances.

There are calls for veto, some of the major legislation approved by lawmakers during the session but that's unlikely to happen.

And Charlie Crist is the first Democrat to announce he's running for governor next year.

All these and more next on Florida This Week.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back.

Governor Ron DeSantis signed a series of measures this week that are on his party's wishlist designed to raise his profile as he eyes higher office.

- [Reporter] On Thursday at an event in which the only media invited to attend was Fox News.

He signed more restrictions on mail in voting and drop boxes - Look, I'm not a fan of drop boxes at all to be honest with you but that legislature wanted to keep them but they need to be monitored.

You can't just leave these boxes out where there's no supervision, where they're in all hours of the night.

So the drop boxes will be available only when they're monitored and during regular voting hours - [Reporter] The bill signing brought this reaction from Florida Agriculture Commissioner, Nikki Fried.

Who's considering a run for governor next year.

- We have seen from this governor in the last two and a half years, that he must be a one term governor.

And as the only statewide elected Democrat it makes absolute sense for me to be running for governor.

But today is not the day for me to make that announcement.

- [Reporter] The governor also signed an executive order barring local governments from enacting emergency orders implementing COVID-19 protections.

With the increase in vaccinations, the governor says he wants people to live freely and to enjoy themselves.

- I think folks that are saying that they need to be policing people at this point, if you're saying that, you really are saying you don't believe in the vaccines - [Rob] The ban on local power brought this reaction from St. Petersburg Mayor, Rick Kriseman.

- They should be calling us all up and saying thank you to cities and counties, because what could have happened in the state of Florida as far as the number of hospitalizations and the number of deaths didn't happen because of the actions that cities and counties took that this legislation directly addresses in vast large part prohibit us from doing.

- [Rob] After a busy legislative session.

The governor is hearing from people and groups across the calling on him to veto some of the bills coming to his desk, among the targets the ban on transgender girls in sports.

The bill overturning Key West vote to restrict cruise ships, the limits on impact fees, the bill blocking some local energy bills and the law that would do away with no fault auto insurance.

And this week, the first official democratic candidate for governor next year made his announcement.

Former governor, now Congressman Charlie Crist, made it official on Tuesday in St. Petersburg.

- And the final question to myself was, where can you do the most good for the most people?

And I think that's in the governor's office for Florida.

I love Florida.

I always have and I think Florida deserves better.

- Well, as I mentioned before the Florida legislature has ended this year session but their work is not yet over.

A special session of the legislature is scheduled to start in a few days on May 17th to take up a new gambling compact with the Seminole tribe.

Steve Contorno is the Political Editor for the Tampa Bay Times and he writes The Buzz on Florida Politics column.

Steve, welcome back.

Good to see you.

- Thanks Rob.

- So I want to ask you about the controversy over the Voting Bill signing.

First of all, only Fox News was allowed to show it.

They were the only news organization allowed there.

Some people are saying that that's a violation of Florida Sunshine Laws.

I don't know really what the truth is on that but just the bigger picture I'm wondering about is secrecy beginning to be kind of the hallmark of the DeSantis administration.

- There has certainly been a host of problems that the public and the press have had with the DeSantis administration.

I mean, you go back to the beginning of the pandemic and the administration waited 24 hours to let the state of Florida know that they had their first case and then from there on there were a whole bunch of opportunities for the governor to be forthright with data about, you know?

Where the outbreak was?

Where he was dedicating resources?

How they're spending federal money?

Where they have time and time again refused to provide that information unless news outlets have been willing to sue for it.

I mean, if you go back every weekday, we're getting coronavirus taskforce reports from the white house and it took a lawsuit from the Orlando Sentinel and other outlets for them to give up some of that information.

So, you know, there are other areas where they've been you know, fairly open like they've been publishing since the beginning.

A lot of coronavirus data that is more extensive than other states and they've gotten high marks on that but there've been other times where they just seem to, their posture is that, if you want this information you're gonna have to sue us to get it.

And they don't seem to have much of a regard for the transparency and the opening Sunshine Laws that, you know Florida has come to operate under for many decades.

- Well, Florida is famous for the Sunshine Laws.

Was it a violation of the Sunshine Laws to only allow Fox to show the bill signing ceremony?

- When I talked to legal experts, they have said that the issue isn't the Sunshine Law, it's actually the first amendment.

There's multiple court cases that have come before federal judges who have said that if you are doing a public proceeding, you cannot pick and choose what media is allowed to cover it.

That's been upheld in multiple jurisdictions across the country.

So, that's the issue.

It's not necessarily a Sunshine, that pertains more to meetings and you know, collaborations between the legislature and other government bodies.

- Legislature surely passed a lot of bills this time around, a lot of them had to do with things like protecting or kind of tamping down violence at political protests.

We saw that bill already signed.

There's some bills that groups have called for the governor to veto, including the Transgender Sports Ban Bill and also the reversal on auto insurance and to do away with no fault here in the state of Florida, there's a slew of bills, they're being called for vetoes.

Is the governor likely to veto any of those bills?

- For the most part he's kept his cards pretty close to the vest that, you know it's kind of the Rick Scott playbook where you get, you know, we'll see it, we'll make a determination on it when we see it.

And you know, the one bill though, that he asked that he is going to sign is the Transgender Sports Bill.

He has made it clear that he supports that legislation.

I think it would be a surprise if he didn't sign it.

I think one of the ones that we're gonna closely watch is whether he decides to sign the Police Reform Bill that was agreed to by the members of the Black Caucus in the legislature and House Republican leadership.

It sailed through the House, it sailed through the Senate but it doesn't necessarily jive with the governors you know, posture this session to really focus on going after so-called rioters, instead of looking at ways to improve police transparency and police tactics.

So, that's what I'm watching really closely.

It does have support from a lot of Police Departments across the state but the governor hasn't said yet what he's going to do - Steve, one last question, we only have 30 seconds.

How important was the Biden rescue plan in terms of money being sent to the state of Florida helping Florida's budget picture that the legislature just voted on?

- Well, the governor wouldn't be able to go around the state this week, passing out large novelty checks to police officers and firefighters if it wasn't for that money that was coming in from the federal government, which, you know most Republicans in the house and Senate voted against.

So, you know, it's a record budget this year and the federal assistance is gonna go a long way to helping keep the governor's priorities and the priorities of the House and Senate leadership into this budget when in slimmer times and without that money, they might have to have had a much more difficult negotiations.

- Steve as always, thanks a lot, thank you.

- Absolutely, Rob.

(upbeat music) - Among the bills passed in this year legislative session is House Bill 37 which identifies a mark's abandoned black cemeteries in Florida.

It passed both chambers with unanimous support.

Representative Fentrice Driskell was a sponsor of the bill and she represents Florida's 63rd House District which includes parts of Tampa and Hillsborough County.

She's an attorney with Carlton Fields.

Fentrice Driskell, thanks for joining us.

Welcome back.

- Thanks for having me, Rob.

- So what's the significance of the passage of this bill about black cemeteries?

- Well, this bill has been a long time coming.

We've been working this for two legislative sessions now.

So to see it come to fruition really is very important to me personally but I think it will have effects that reverberate throughout the community in terms of providing some sort of accountability and making sure that we honor the lives of those who have been forgotten for too long in these abandoned cemetery.

- How many abandoned cemeteries potentially are there in the state?

- Well, we don't actually know that number and so the bill, if signed into law will create a task force a statewide task force to examine this issue and try to locate them.

And in Tampa Bay, for example, we know that through the excellent reporting of the Tampa Bay Times, the reporter Paul goes out there that through his reporting on the Zion Cemetery, which was first rediscovered in 2019 that led to discoveries of more abandoned cemeteries in Tampa Bay.

So I have a feeling that there are probably a bit, it'd be a surprising number once we actually start doing this research - Another bill that was passed this year was a Police Reform Bill and you were involved in getting it passed.

So tell us what's in the bill and do you think the governor is gonna sign it into law?

- Yes and so I'm honored to have been the co-prime sponsor of that bill.

So that's another one of the bills that I was able to shepherd through the legislative process and bring back home for the people of Florida.

And I do have every anticipation that the governor will sign that bill into law.

The Florida legislative Black Caucus leadership met with governor DeSantis during the last week of legislative session.

We discussed that bill amongst other priorities for the Black Caucus.

He'd already heard of that legislation and had been tracking it and could really appreciate that we'd worked hard to get buy in from the law enforcement community.

And so he didn't raise any red flags about the bill at that time - If there was a single most important component of that bill, what would you say it was?

- Well, I love that it's building in accountability and that now law enforcement agencies throughout the state of Florida will have to report use of force incidents to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

This is exactly what we need to be building, accountability and transparency into law enforcement so that we can improve relations between law enforcement and communities of color.

- As you know, there's a big controversy this week about the governor signing the voting law changes in the state of Florida making it harder to drop off mail ballots and also making it more cumbersome to get mail ballots.

I'm wondering, what's your take?

Is this gonna really affect the vote?

Because some of the supporters say it's not nearly as Draconian as what's going on in Georgia and what's being contemplated in Texas it's not nearly as bad as what's going on in those states.

- Well, it is a very bad bill and you don't have to take my word for it.

You can look to our supervisors of elections who are bi-partisan and who really are the experts on voting in Florida recently, Mike Bennett who's a Republican, former Republican lawmaker, served as a state Senator and now is a supervisor of elections in Manatee County.

He didn't go so far as to call it a voter suppression bill but he did acknowledge that anytime you make it more difficult for people to vote it's going to suppress someone's right to vote.

And that is wrong.

We live in a democratic Republic where the franchise, the right to vote is so central to who we are as an American people.

Florida is absolutely moving in the wrong direction by following this national trend of Republican led legislatures suppressing the people's right to vote.

- So, if it does indeed suppress the vote, who's most likely to be effected.

I know that a common cause that the NAACP, the League of Women Voters have all called for the governor to veto the bill.

Can you identify the groups of people that most likely will vote at smaller numbers when this bill is signed into law or now that it's signed into law?

- Yes, we're very concerned that it could have a disparate impact on communities of color.

And so if you look in, for example, black communities, there was testimony or argument given during debate on the bill where people were asking representatives were asking the questions, you know, but what about the church members who may be sick and shut in but they might give their ballots to other members of the church to take them and to drop those off.

And so you just have to wonder, you know, is this going to impact communities of color even more so?

- Well, representative Driskell, thanks a lot for coming back on the show and good to see you again.

- Thanks for having me.

(upbeat music) - Well, we've heard from Democratic Representative, Fentrice Driskell and now to get a Republican perspective on some of the measures signed by the governor.

We're gonna hear from April Schiff.

April is the Hillsborough Republican State Committeewoman and President of and Co-founder of Strategic Solutions of Florida and April Schiff.

Welcome back.

- Thank you, Rob, it's good to be here.

- Let's start with the governor signing the Voting change Bill on Fox News the other day.

The governor says he's planning to head off any sort of future problems.

He admits that we had a good election last year.

Democrats say, though that this is a voter suppression bill.

We just heard from representative Driskell.

She says there's people of color, people in the black community who likely are gonna vote in less numbers because of this bill, what would you say?

- I would say we don't see that happening.

Florida has been tightening their election laws since the debacle of 2000.

And we learned a lot where leader in our elections across the country.

We are far above everyone else.

I think the pandemic led to a lot of issues in many states.

Not here, we had a flawless election but it gave us the opportunity to look at possibilities of what could happen in the future.

So I think that this bill is going to strengthen voter ID requirements.

It's gonna prohibit the mass mailing of unsolicited mail ballots and it will also prevent ballot harvesting.

And it stops the private money from being used in elections by the election supervisors.

So I think all in all we just continue to tighten our election laws so that we see a better cleaner and more flawless election each time we go forward.

- So why do you think so many Republican legislatures around the country are passing similar bills?

Why are they all doing it?

You know?

- Well, it's because of what we saw in the 2020, November Elections, the pandemic allowed certain states to change their election laws on the spot because of the emergency situation.

And it created some issues with the mail ballots in states where they don't normally process mail ballots like we have.

And so I think that everybody's kind of looking at that, looking back and making sure that we don't have any problems going forward in the future.

- But there been no examples where voters, you know massive numbers of voters voted illegally in the election.

So why pass these measures to make it harder to vote?

- I think they're still looking at some of that and we'll see what comes out in the future but at the end of the day that election's over.

And I think they just wanna make sure that we don't have any question that people believe that our elections are conducted with the utmost integrity that they can be and that they have confidence in the elections which will create more voter turnout.

- Do you think the election was stolen last year?

- I don't know that it was stolen.

I think that there was some instances of things that shouldn't have happened.

So, but I do again think that the pandemic allowed that to happen.

- So, the governor was on Fox News to sign the election law bill, clearly he's aiming towards a national audience.

If you were to look at the range of candidates who potentially are running for president in 2024, where would you put the DeSantis?

So which tier is he in?

- I think he's in the top.

I think he has a very strong chance if he chooses to do that in 2024 I think we're gonna see that creates some really interesting participation in our 2022 governor's race because if they can prevent him from winningly re-election in 2022, his chances of 2024 are diminished but I don't think that's going to happen.

I think he's gonna sail through the 2022 elections pretty strongly as he's done a great job for Florida.

He's pulled us through some really tough times and I think he's widely respected for doing that.

- Former president Trump is being coy.

He's not saying what he wants to do but I think it's widely believed that he would like to run again in 2024.

And he said the other day that maybe DeSantis would make a good vice presidential running mate for him.

What do you think about a Trump DeSantis ticket?

- I think it's a great ticket.

We'll see if it plays out.

I'm not sure Trump will at the end of the day show up again in 2024.

- Why do you say that?

- I just, from watching the landscape and see what's going on.

- Okay, all right.

So, are there any bills?

There've been some calls for vetoes of bills that were passed by the legislature.

We've got some groups calling for a veto of the Transgender Bill.

I think the governor has already said he's gonna sign it but do you see any bills that were passed that might deserve to be vetoed?

Or do you think the governor is gonna just pretty much clear everything that the legislature passed?

- I don't know of any particular bill that should be veto.

And I think that he's had a great working relationship with our legislature and I think he'll support pretty much all the bills that have crossed in his desk.

- So, just getting back to the governor's race for a second, I think the governor does have a pretty strong record.

He touts the fact that he reopened the state quickly and how do you think he would do against Val Demings or Charlie Crist or Nikki Fried?

I mean, who would do the most damage to DeSantis of those three Democrats?

- You know, when I look at those three Democrats I see probably Nikki Fried as being one of the stronger candidates in that lineup.

Plus she's a woman which gives her somewhat of a differentiation on the election ballot.

But I don't think that the governor has any problems pulling through an election with either one of them.

- April Schiff, thanks a lot for coming back.

Great to see you.

- Thank you, Rob, it's pleasure to be here.

(upbeat music) - Democratic Congressman Charlie Crist announced his candidacy for Florida governor this week in St. Petersburg, Crist served as governor as a Republican from 2007 to 2011 and has switched political parties, he's now a Democrat.

He currently represents the 13th district in the US House.

Peter Schorsch is the publisher of Floridapolitics.com and Peter is gonna talk about this.

Peter, welcome back to Florida This Week.

- Thank you for having me again.

- Peter, I wanna just play a clip from CNN on Friday in which Charlie Crist appeared and he was asked about the governor signing the Election Law Bill.

- It's gonna suppress the vote.

All of Georgia.

I mean, it's unconscionable that Florida is doing this.

It wasn't that long ago that Floridians including Governor DeSantis were praising the Florida vote last November saying how flawless it was, how good it was and now they're trying to correct something that's not broken.

It makes you wonder what's going on but I don't wonder about it very much.

I think it's clearly voter suppression.

- So Peter, Chris was really strong in that CNN interview but I'm wondering, does he have the fire in his belly to go you know, the next month or a year and a half in this race for governor and what's his path?

What's his coalition?

Or what's his regional coalition to becoming the democratic candidate for governor?

- Great questions.

I think that he would tell you that he presents a Biden ESC chance for a reset for the Florida Democratic Party.

I think he's almost in the same position that Joe Biden was in, that there was a lot of doubt about whether or not he had the horses to make it but who is the best fighter in the general election against a Trumpian figure and that's what Ron DeSantis really is and I think that, that is Charlie Crist right now.

I think he presents the best contrast.

And I think that that's why, you know he launched on Tuesday and he's had a very good week.

Can he keep it up?

If he can keep it up I think you're gonna see like a tumble week.

He'll just continue to attract more donors, et cetera.

I think there's a lot of people in the Democratic Party.

They're staying on the sidelines right now, looking at Nikki Fried, looking at Val Demings, looking at Charlie Crist.

But if Charlie looks formidable, I think some of the old gang will come back together.

I think as far as the coalition, you know Charlie is going to depend on, you know he's got deep roots in the African-American and black community throughout Florida.

He plays well in South Florida but you know there was an interesting interview he had with Florida Politics, Joe Henderson and he said, "hey, listen, in 2014 I forgot about the Panhandle and I seeded it to Rick Scott," right after he launched his campaign.

Charlie Crist was in the Panhandle.

He campaigned there.

He campaigned in central Florida in the Lake County.

And so I think Charlie Crist is hoping to cobble together some of the old Democrats that may be turned off by the extremism of today's Republican party.

- I remember being with you on election night, just seeing you on election night when Rick Scott and Charlie Crist were both running for governor and you pointed out that their turnout in Southeast Florida especially Dade County, Broward County was really weak for Charlie Crist during that election.

How does Chris pull voters out?

You know, that's increasingly those are counties of color and increasingly Latino counties.

How does Charlie Crist appeal to those people?

- I don't think Charlie Crist is gonna have a problem appealing to black voters in South Florida.

That I think is going to be one of his, one of his bases.

I think that Democrats, not just Crist but Demings and Fried have a big problem right now, without are they, how do they turn out Latino voters?

That, you know, I think that have been misjudged by Democratic strategists and pollsters that they've been taken for granted in terms of that they would just come home to the democratic party that has not happened.

You know we've seen South Florida, Hispanics, Texas Hispanics basically along the border that they've actually grown more conservative, that they're turned on by Trump.

There's a problem with evangelical Latinos for Democrats.

And so that is gonna be a big question.

I don't know that Charlie Crist has an answer to that one yet.

I don't know if any Democrat has an answer to that yet other than, you know, I do think that Charlie Crist, one of the things that you can't say about him is that he is a defund police guy.

That was a big issue in South Florida.

The argument that Democrats would defund the police.

I don't think that that's entirely Crist background.

I don't think that there's a lot of votes there.

So that is one attack line that Republicans won't have in 2022.

- Doesn't Ron DeSantis though for any Democrat have a pretty powerful message that is he says "I've reopened the state, I've kept taxes low.

Although we are gonna see a rise in internet sales taxes" but you know, he's gonna say, "look I reopened the state quickly" and we have 30 seconds.

How do you fight against Ron DeSantis' record?

- Ron DeSantis is in a better position than any Republican governor running for re-election even more so than Jeb Bush in 92.

He's gonna have a boatload of money.

He just raised $14 million last month.

I don't know that you have a case against Ron DeSantis.

I think it is gonna be a style issue and that's why I go back to the argument.

This is a case of Biden versus Trump, just on a Florida scale.

- Peter Schorsch, thanks a lot, great to see you.

- Thanks Rob, take care.

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