(Narrator) This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Coming up next: Calls for the resignation of Florida's new surgeon general.

The local connection to the January 6th Capitol insurrection riot.

A Canadian taxpayers group opposes plans for the Rays stadium in Montreal.

And the battle over redistricting.

All this and more, next, on Florida This Week.

(upbeat orchestral music) Welcome back.

St. Petersburg, Congressman Charlie Crist and state agriculture commissioner, Nikki Fried say the legislature should not confirm Dr. Joseph Ladapo as the state's new surgeon general.

Ladapo, who would be in charge of keeping Florida residents healthy, is an opponent of mask mandates and questions the effectiveness of COVID vaccine.

Among other things, Christ was critical of Ladapo's refusal to wear a mask in the office of State Senator, Tina Polsky during a meeting last week.

Polsky was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

- All of us were standing there, there were five people.

I'm masked, my aid is masked and the three of them were not and it's a small space.

So the whole thing became very uncomfortable.

He was trying to negotiate.

He thought by suggesting outside he was giving me an accommodation.

And I said, "Is there a reason you can't wear a mask?"

And he didn't give me one.

- [Rob] The incident prompted Senate President, Wilton Simpson, Pasco county Republican, to take the Ladapo to task for being unprofessional.

And said similar behavior from the appointee will not be tolerated.

Mary Ellen Klas is the co-bureau chief of the Miami Herald Tampa bay times, and she's been covering this story in Tallahassee.

And Mary Ellen, welcome back to Florida This Week.

- Good to be here Rob, thank you.

- Is Dr. Ladapo's confirmation in trouble?

- I think that's too early to tell.

It does look as though he has antagonized some Republicans and certainly all the Democrats at this point.

However, we have watched as it-- It can be as much as two years before he's officially out of his job, before he gets confirmed.

So, we'll see how things play out.

The legislative session begins in January.

And, I think Republicans are watching carefully how he behaves.

- The meeting last week between Senator Polsky and Dr. Ladapo drew that criticism from Senator Simpson.

But, Senator Polsky has been under fire because there are pictures of her posted on a website in Tallahassee, The Capitolist, that show her not wearing a mask and standing very close or being very close to others, including on the day of her meeting with Dr. Ladapo.

Tell me about that.

- Well, I asked, I saw those photos too and it raised questions in my mind and I asked her about it.

And, she said that, she sees people and many people a day.

She has really tried very hard not to have her cancer diagnosis for which she's just recently begun radiation treatment, she doesn't want that to interfere with her ability to meet people.

And so she makes it a point of finding out if the people that she's around are vaccinated.

She said during the pictures that were presented on social media, she was confident and knew that everybody that wa-- When she took off her mask, the people that were there had been vaccinated and she felt less at risk because of it.

By contrast, Dr. Ladapo has refused to say whether he has been vaccinated.

And instead, his discussions about how he has diminished the value of the vaccine made her raise questions about whether he and his staff had been vaccinated.

And so that's why she said she insisted on the mask that day.

- Governor DeSantis gave a speech this week to the Florida Chamber of Commerce in Tallahassee.

What was the reception when the governor was talking about his opposition to mask mandates?

Because, there are some large companies that require their employees to be masked, and require their employees to be vaccinated, rather.

What was their response to the governor's opposition to vaccine mandates?

I should correct myself.

- Yeah.

So the governor had just announced a lawsuit against the federal government for requiring that contractors who do business with the federal government, have their employees vaccinated or use some accommodations for those that qualify.

And, he was using many of the same remarks that he made at the press conference at this chamber annual meeting.

And while I didn't, I was not there in person, I watched it on the live stream.

And normally, the governor would present these lines and pause and wait for applause.

But every time there was normally an applause line at his press conferences, it was met with silence at the chamber event.

Now, I don't wanna read too much into that, except that we know that there are many companies who do believe that by asking their employees to be vaccinated, that is the safest way to bring confidence among their workforce, that people are safe and among their clients.

And so there really is a rift within the Repub--.

I think within the business community, about whether the governor's opposition to vaccine requirements is really big government in some ways.

They, Mark Wilson, the head of the Florida chamber told me that he believes that businesses shouldn't be told what to do, but they also shouldn't be told what not to do.

And, I think that has been not a very high profile debate or rift, but it exists.

- [Rob] And let me ask you quickly, we only have about 20 seconds.

In the upcoming special session that the governor's about to call, what's the word in Tallahassee?

Will he ask for a statewide ban on vaccine mandates?

- So we're waiting to see the specifics, but I don't think he will ask.

It's pretty clear that he will not be asking for a ban on vaccine mandates.

Instead, he's going to seek additional repercussions and penalties and basically, remove the liability for companies that require their employees, to remove the liability protections from companies that require vaccines, do some things that are more like penalizing them, because there is no way he has the support because of this divide within the business community to pass a vaccine mandate ban.

- Mary Ellen Klas, thanks a lot for coming on Florida This Week.

- You're welcome.

(upbeat mysterious music) - More than a hundred current and former residents of Sarasota and Manatee counties appear to have been affiliated with the far right Oath Keepers extremist group that was involved in the January 6th insurrection.

The federal government has charged 20 Oath Keepers, including nine Florida residents, two of them from Sarasota county with participation in the January 6th, storming of the US Capitol.

Charges claim they engaged in a conspiracy to stop, delay or hinder the certification of the electoral college vote.

Florida had more Oath Keepers arrested in connection with the attack than any other state.

Zac Anderson is the political editor for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, he's been covering the story.

Zac, welcome back.

- Good to be back.

- So how deep is the Oath Keeper connection to the Sarasota, Manatee county area?

- Well, it appears to be much more extensive than many people may have realized.

I was able to get this list that was hacked off the Oath Keepers website and it was distributed to journalists.

And I looked into it, there was more than a hundred names of people who had been affiliated with the Oath Keepers in Sarasota.

It wasn't a group that was really on the radar here until a couple of people got arrested for participating in the January 6th storming of the US Capitol.

And then people were kind of wondering, what's going on with this group?

And I was able to get ahold of this list.

And it's interesting, the list, it doesn't appear to be an up-to-date membership list.

Some of these people that I talked to had not been affiliated with the Oath Keepers for-- Actually, all the people that I talked to said they hadn't been affiliated with the Oath Keepers for many years.

But it was just interesting to see how many people had been involved with the group at one point or another.

And it does raise questions about how broad the group's reach has been in Florida, in Sarasota and Manatee and across the country.

- So, Vice News recently called Sarasota, the conspiracy capital of the US, not just because there are Oath Keepers or former Oath Keepers in the area, but also there are a bunch of people that subscribe to conspiracy theories, especially the conspiracy theory about the elections.

Talk about how widespread.

And who's living in Sarasota now?

And why do you think Vice called the area the conspiracy capital of the US?

- Well, it is very true that there are a number of people who are fairly prominent, who have been involved, who were involved in the quote unquote, 'Stop the steal' movement involved in efforts to cast out on the legitimacy of the election and involved at a high level.

And Michael Flynn was very much involved before and after the election in casting doubts on whether it would be and had been a fair result.

And then you have Patrick Byrne, who is the former CEO of overstock.com, who apparently from some of the reporting that we've seen, it looks like although he took steps to hide it, has some property in this area.

He also was very much involved in some of this.

You have Cyber Ninjas who was hired to do the audit in Arizona of the ballots in the Phoenix area there.

That company is headquartered here.

So there's a bunch of people and it just does seem like there is just this center of gravity here for some reason.

This is a conservative area, this is a pro-Trump county on the whole that went for Trump by big margins in 2016 and 2020.

And it does seem to be attracting a large number of these individuals.

- For your report for the Herald-Tribune, you fou-- You've talked to, as you said, several people who were involved over the years with the Oath Keepers.

One person in particular had run for Manatee county sheriff, and then had second thoughts about membership in the Oath Keepers, talk about that.

- Yeah.

I thought this was a pretty interesting story.

And this individual really went into depth with me about his involvement in this group.

And he said it started out, he was at a Republican club and he came across a gentleman who was on the Oath Keepers board at that time.

And a number of other Oath Keepers were there.

And, they approached him and he started to go to some of these groups meetings.

He actually went to two meetings in Tampa at the veterans park there.

And his initial thought about the group, he's a veteran, a lot of these people, they recruit from sort of veterans and the ranks of the military, former military.

And he sort of like just thought it was sort of a tea party type group of conservative people with law enforcement and military backgrounds.

But then as he got more aware, he actually went to a conference in Las Vegas and he heard Stewart Rhodes who's the head of the Oath Keeper speak.

And he met other people there.

And he just thought that they had some pretty wild views about...

Some people said, you shouldn't have to have a driver's license to drive, or you shouldn't have to pay taxes.

And then after he lost that election, some people approached him about doing sort of like military style training and doing firearms training and things like that.

And he started to just really be concerned.

Oath Keepers is now known as sort of a militia type group.

And he didn't seem like he was fully aware of that when he initially joined.

And then when they approached him to do this training of other people across Florida, he just decided that this was a little too radical for him and he stepped away from it and ended up blocking these people on Facebook.

And then we see after January 6th, the Oath Keepers who were involved in that there was evidence that they did firearms training and military style training here in Florida.

- [Rob] Zac Anderson, thanks for your reporting and thanks for coming on the program.

- Great to be here, thank you.

(upbeat mysterious music) - This week, Governor DeSantis touted the steep decline in COVID-19 cases here, as he continued to defend his policy against mask and vaccine mandates.

But the president of the Broward County Medical Society says it's premature to declare victory over COVID in Florida.

- [DeSantis] Florida has the lowest COVID infection rate, case rate and infection rate or covidestim in the country.

- [Abram] I don't believe Governors DeSantis can claim victory for anything.

Any physician that has been dealing with the COVID crisis in Florida or anywhere else truly knows that this is only a temporary low in the storm.

- The governor is now suing the Biden administration over it's requirement that all federal contractors that employ a hundred people or more, must have their workers vaccinated by December.

Trimmel Gomes is a veteran journalist and a nonpartisan Florida political commentator.

He's also the host of The Rotunda and the Sunrise podcast.

Trimmel Gomes, welcome to Florida This Week.

- Thanks for having me, Rob.

- Let's start with the governor.

Governor, has been saying for weeks now that essentially, it was his policies that reopened the state, his policies against vaccine mandates and mask mandates have made a success out of-- Have turned the state around and made a success in the battle against COVID.

- To call this into question, you just have to look at what the governor has been saying.

And from day one, he has been declaring victory against COVID.

So you have to be a skeptic at this point to really peer into what the governor is saying.

For those observers who have been trying to figure out and fact check the governor, that has been difficult over the last few months, when you're looking at information coming from the state Department of Health, where you can't even get information about the numbers until recently.

So, there's good reason to be skeptical about the governor's over optimistic view with regards to the COVID situation.

- I guess we'll see how it plays out.

I wanna ask you about redistricting because you've been paying attention to the process up there, it's begun already.

How open is that process?

And what are some of the hurdles for the public to...

If the public wants to observe what's going on, how much access to the public have looking over the shoulders of the people who are redrawing districts?

- So far, legislative leaders have only brought forward a website for the public to participate in this very important, once a decade process.

As we stand now, things are so much easier as advocates have said for the public to participate, we can do and have public hearings via Zoom.

Where an individual, a Floridian across the state doesn't have to leave their homes and participate.

But so far we have not seen this action from Republican leaders who are in charge of the redistricting process right now.

- Trimmel, you and I have known each other for years.

You've been up there for a long time in Tallahassee as a reporter.

I wonder, how would you describe what the state of the press corps is in Tallahassee these days?

- It's a sad state of affairs right now because we're continually seeing newsrooms and bureaus continue to shutter up here in Tallahassee.

Just in Tampa alone, Bay News 9, the Capitol Bureau reporter, Troy Kinsey announced he's stepping away to pursue other career opportunities.

And so far it's a question as to whether that position will be filled.

Newspapers have been shutting their bureaus.

So there are fewer and fewer eyes here in Tallahassee looking at our elected officials and being able to inform the rest of the state as to what's happening in Tallahassee, so it's very concerning.

- How would you describe the size of the number of reporters up there covering The Capitol?

I mean, if you go back to the days of Jeb Bush and the gaggles that surrounded the then Governor Bush during the session, how would you describe the number of reporters that show up these days for the gaggles.

- You've gone from dozens to about a dozen It's that stark when you were looking at the years passed to where it is now.

There's just so few people.

And the industry, it's just struggling.

Many news outlets are still trying to figure out how to fund their entities and doing the revenue generating process.

And you've seen the startups and the infusion of digital media companies or different outlets who are new and making themselves appear as if it's a standard traditional news outlet, but some have been questionable.

So, it's a transformational time in the business and it's more concerning for us all to really have this... To see it the way it is right now.

- [Rob] Well, it's interesting you say that because there are these...

There are many websites now that have started up to cover news.

And the one thing that many of them don't do is they don't reveal who their funders are.

- Yes.

And there's more of that happening.

And if you build it, they will come.

And for those who are new to the process, and they don't know if it looks like a news organization, they think it's a news organization.

And it's not just an issue in Tallahassee, this is happening across the country, especially in Washington, DC.

Everyone is operating in silos.

And we have Facebook and DOmedia to show how that is done.

You have news that's catered to conservatives, news that's catered to moderate and liberal.

So, everyone is in their bubble and it's not really helping us all.

- Trimmel Gomes, great to see you.

Thanks for coming on the program.

- Thanks for having me.

(upbeat mysterious music) - [Rob] A Canadian taxpayers group put up a billboard this week near Tropicana's stadium in St. Pete, saying, Montreal will not pay for a new stadium for the baseball team.

The owners of the Tampa Bay Rays are currently negotiating a possible team sharing agreement with Canadian billionaire, Stephen Bronfman, between Montreal and Tampa Bay with new stadiums to be built in both the Tampa Bay area and Montreal.

Renaud Brossard is the Quebec Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the group that put up the billboard and he joins us now from Quebec.

And Renaud, welcome to WEDU.

- Well, thanks so much for having me.

- So why are you opposed to a public financing of the stadium there in Montreal?

- There's a couple of reasons why.

The first one is, the deal doesn't make sense from an economics perspective.

What we're being asked to do is to pay funds for a whole new stadium and only get half a team.

We'd get a team that would play there part-time, they'd be playing from that stadium for about 40 games a season, and we'd still have to build a full sized stadium and pay a couple of hundred million bucks to do it.

So that doesn't really seem to make sense.

But even when you ask economists, whether or not stadium subsidy deals are a good deal for taxpayers.

Economists are (indistinct) unanimous saying that these are always bad deals for taxpayers, even with full-time teams.

So we figured we had to send a strong message to the Rays saying that if they wanna come and play in Montreal, they're more than welcome to do so.

And we'll buy some tickets, we'll go see some games and everything, but we won't let them dig into our wallets to build their own stadium.

- [Rob] So my understanding is that sometime after or sometime in the next two weeks, the details of the Montreal stadium will be announced there in Montreal.

Are city officials backing this there in Montreal?

- There's not a lot of appetite, thankfully, from city officials to be backing this.

(mumbles) So right now, we're in the middle of a municipal election campaign.

Our current mayor is very much against putting money in the stadium, thankfully.

The other likely candidate that could win, her main opponent, has been a little bit flaky on the issue.

He's tried to avoid a question rather than answer directly.

But really where we're seeing the biggest risk in terms of taxpayers, is at the provincial level, our kind of equivalent of your state level.

Where our minister of the economy, a man named, Pierre Fitzgibbon, seems to be very willing to back the project and is openly looking into ways to put taxpayers money into this deal.

- What's the financial situation of the city of Montreal right now?

- Right now, it is pretty bad.

So cities in Canada are not allowed to run deficits.

And for 2022 Montreal is looking at a 300 million dollar shortfall between its revenues and spending.

So, not only doesn't it have a couple of hundred million bucks to spend on a stadium, but it also needs to find ways to cut spending by about 300 million or 5%, in order to keep its balanced budget promise for 2022.

So, it's not truly something that would be feasible at a municipal level.

Then of course, at a provincial level, right now, our province has a significant budget deficit, about 12 billion was the latest number we got.

So there's no money on that at that level either.

But even if there was some money, there's also a matter of priorities.

If you were to ask taxpayers in the province of Quebec or in the city of Montreal, what would they prefer to spend money on between fixing our road infrastructure or supporting our ailing healthcare system or reducing what are the highest taxes in North America or building a stadium, I'm pretty sure you would have most people supporting one of those first tree things instead of saying building a stadium first.

- Have there been any public opinion polls about this?

Do Montrealers want to see public financing of a stadium?

- There have been public opinion polls about this and both in the province of Quebec at large and the city of Montreal, about 60% of people say they're opposed to having their money spent on such a stadium.

So once again, people are not opposed to having baseball come back in Montreal.

They very much would like to see one more sports team in Montreal.

But we do recognize that this is first and foremost, a for-profit business.

The Tampa Bay Rays are a very, very profitable enterprise, they're are worth about a billion dollars.

The people behind this project are very wealthy individuals that have a couple of billion dollars when we put them together.

And all we wanna see is that these people that believe in the project should be the ones paying for the stadium and taxpayers should be paying better for things like healthcare or fixing the roads or tax relief.

- Renaud Brossard, thanks a lot for coming on Florida This Week.

- Well, thanks for having me.

(upbeat mysterious music) - That's it for this week, thanks for watching.

Please send us your comments to FTW@wedu.org.

This and past shows can be viewed online at wedu.org or on the PBS app.

And Florida This Week is now available as a podcast and you can find it on our website or wherever you download your podcasts.

And a reminder that Tuesday is election day in St. Petersburg.

From all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend and happy Halloween.

(upbeat orchestral music) - [Male narrator] Florida This Week, is a production of WEDU who is solely responsible for its content.

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