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

- [Announcer] Coming up next, as Florida sees record high temperatures and another major insurance company announces its leaving the state.

Governor DeSantis faces some strong headwinds as he seeks the GOP Presidential nomination.

And it's still unclear who the Democrats will select to run against incumbent Republican US Senator Rick Scott in next year's election.

All this and more right now on "Florida This Week."

(intense music) - Welcome back, joining us on the panel this week, April Schiff is the Hillsborough Republican State Committeewoman, and the president and co-founder of Strategic Solutions of Florida.

Anna Eskamani is the state representative for District 42 in Orlando and a Democrat.

Travis Horn is the president and CEO of Bullhorn Communications and a Republican.

And Maya Brown is a political consultant and a Democrat.

So nice to have all of you, thank you for coming on the program.

- Thanks for having us.

- Well, summer began officially less than a month ago, and already the waters surrounding Florida are hitting record high temperatures.

- [Announcer] Water temperatures across the Gulf of Mexico and the Southwest Atlantic Ocean are four to five degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal.

In the Keys it's worse, water temperatures there are seven degrees above average for this time of year.

The soaring numbers are alarming climate scientists and could have damaging consequences for state waterways, causing more algae blooms, Destruction of coral reefs and fish kills.

It also adds dangerous heat energy to tropical systems that pass through the ocean in the Gulf during hurricane season.

The record high temperatures came the same week that Farmers Insurance informed the state it was dropping home, auto, and umbrella policies across Florida, potentially affecting as many as 100,000 policy holders.

It's the fourth insurance company to leave the Florida market in the last year.

Most of them citing the rising risk from hurricanes.

- And Anna, I wanna read for you what Florida's Chief Financial Officer, Jimmy Patronis, who oversees the Office of Insurance Regulation, sent out after Farmers' Insurance announced, or before Farmers' Insurance announced on Tuesday, seemed to complain that the company was too woke, he had heard that Farmers' was about to leave, and this is how the Miami Herald reported what Patronis said.

"Farmers' business was too focused on sustainable insurance and aligning investments with its social values, like avoiding investing in polluters or companies that sexually or racially discriminate against employees.

A process known as environmental, social and governance investing."

Patronis said, "they're good at virtue signaling, I sincerely believe that with today's actions, Farmers' Insurance is well on its way to becoming the Bud Light of insurance companies."

So Anna, let's start with you.

Is the fact that Farmers' a woke company and is that the reason it's leaving the state?

- No, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, and it's sad to say, but many of our political leaders in Florida have just become conservative memes on the internet, and they're not actually trying to solve these very complex problems that have nothing to do with partisanship and instead have to do with our changing climate, the high risk in Florida, and of course, you know, our inaction and kicking this can down the road or making it partisan, is creating homelessness.

We have Floridians who cannot afford to live in Florida, so we need to look at real solutions, Florida is prone to hurricanes, as you mentioned in this introduction, our water is getting hotter.

We are seeing an environment where there will be more severe storms.

And so not only do we need to prepare Floridians for that, but we need to stabilize this insurance market because folks cannot survive in this environment.

And as Floridians come to call this beautiful state home, they deserve their policymakers to work across the aisle and solve these problems.

- So April, Anna talked about stabilizing the insurance market, we've had several special sessions this year and the year before about trying to stabilize that market.

We gave as a state of Florida $3 billion in benefits to the insurance companies.

Has the market been stabilized and what about those sessions?

Were they successful?

- I think that they have instituted some things that have been successful and that have kept some of the insurance companies here because we had a bigger crisis before, and now it seems to be creeping back again, but the measures that they instituted in the last special session, as well as the most recent regular session, have not had time to really take place yet and to really create the effect that they will have down the road in the industry and in the market, but the fact of the matter is that homeowners are feeling the crunch of the insurance ridiculously, those that were affected by Hurricane Ian that came in in Charlotte County, I know there are people there who cannot repair their homes, they'll never be able to live in their homes, some of them are selling their homes for vacant land because they can't occupy them because the insurance companies aren't responding as they should.

And I think there's a lot more that the legislature can do to make this better for homeowners and not focus on making it better for the insurance companies, but making it better for the homeowners.

Homeowners are getting priced out of their homes just because they can't afford to pay the insurance.

- And Maya, what do you think of the idea that it's just gonna take some time for the things that were done during the special sessions to take effect and we'll see lower rates down the road?

- Listen, I think that that idea is really kind of bananas to think about it.

We don't have the luxury of time right now, Rob, in terms of hurricanes to the point that April mentioned before, we had a very detrimental hurricane season last year and already in full swing where tropical storms and just bad rains in Florida are causing the power to go out.

Literally a couple days ago I was sitting at home and my power went out for two hours just because of a bad thunderstorm.

We don't have the luxury of time.

And I would say that this goes beyond just homeowners, if Florida Republicans in Florida leadership care so much about corporations, we should also see this as an economic issue, right?

The idea that we have to make sure that we are addressing climate shame, climate change, excuse me, as a function of tourism dollars, and if we don't address that, that's gonna continue to further harm Florida's economy.

- Travis, what about that?

Should we be doing more to address climate change?

- Well, first off, Rob, the big insurance companies have raked in gobs of money on out of Floridians pockets for years and years, Progressive and Farmers and companies like them, they've done it for years and years.

And I don't think there's a thing we can do as Floridians right now.

If I told you I could solve the climate change problem, we could drop the temperature percentage point, you'd call me a quack, you'd run me outta town, I can't do that, we can't do that.

That's not gonna happen.

I mean, I just don't know that, we talked about this over and over and over again, but there's no plan, the Democrats haven't given any real plan.

- So, Travis, this week, the governor DeSantis turned down $377 million in federal energy efficiency money.

So it was money that we could use to transform some of our appliances and our cars and our industries to more energy efficient- - It seems like on that scale, Floridians are probably doing a pretty good job, my neighbor's driving a Tesla, but again, that brings on a whole other set of issues, we can't handle the grid for that, we've already established that if everybody had a Tesla, we couldn't handle it right now.

- From what I understand, the acceptance of those funds brought with them a very big price tag for the administration of that money and how it was to be spent and doled out to the homeowners of the application process.

So the expense of that was tremendous, and I think that was part of the reason that it was rejected.

- It was $5 million.

- Yeah.

- [Anna] And is a lot- - [Travis] To credit, he turned it back.

- Anna, do you wanna jump in?

Go ahead.

- Yeah, I'd love to, sorry, it's harder when we're online.

Just to add to the conversation, first of all, very refreshing to hear Republicans talk about climate change, so thank you for that.

And I do think there are some serious mitigation tactics we can't pursue, I mean, getting off fossil fuels is important, and I do think there's an ROI on that shift.

In fact, there was estimations of that money would've saved the people of Florida money in shifting to electric vehicles.

But I do agree that insurance companies need to be held accountable, and I think April mentioned that in her remarks, and there was one accountability measure that was passed this previous legislative session.

We haven't seen it really have effect at this time, but I will say that like Maya mentioned, we don't have the luxury of time and Democrats did propose legislation last year during the special session on insurance reform and it was ruled out of order.

So there really has not been a fair shake for Democrats to even have our ideas be considered.

- I want to get the whole panel to respond to this next question.

In May of this year, a report from the liberal group, the American Federation of Teachers called How Ron DeSantis Sold Out Florida Homeowners said this, "The overall insurance industry, which includes property casualty and other types of insurance, has been a top underwriter of DeSantis's political efforts since he announced his run for governor.

Ron DeSantis and the friends of Ron DeSantis political committee have taken a combined 3.9 million in contributions from insurance industry players, including their donations to the Republican Party of Florida since January 1st, 2019, campaign money from the insurance industry ballooned to $9.9 million."

So let me ask you, Anna, back to you, is Governor DeSantis in the pocket of the insurance companies?

- I mean, I think there's pretty substantial evidence to illustrate that point you just outlined in the numbers.

During the special session, we saw a lot of money be moved from insurance industry.

But of course, there's a lot of money in politics and I think both sides partake in that.

My campaign personally does not, but unfortunately, the influence of corporate greed in politics is pretty bipartisan at this point, so we do need serious campaign finance reform to clean up this system.

But I do think that there's been a lot of evidence to speak to this point that Governor Ron DeSantis overwhelmingly sides with insurance companies over consumer rights organizations, because every bill we've seen has really centered on what industry's asking for, not necessarily what consumers need.

And there has to be a balance, because every stakeholder should play a role in that conversation of policy, but you can't just have everything be one sided.

And clearly now that we've waited a year since the previous special session, just listening to the insurance industry is not good policy.

- April, same question to you.

Is the governor in the pocket of the insurance industry, and?

- No, he's not, and here's the thing, it's not only the insurance industry, it's every industry in the state that gives a lot of money to politicians, particularly those that are in power and to the governor as well, as well as the Republican party and the Democratic party.

So money fuels politics, it always has, it's the mother's milk of politics, as we say, and that's just what it is.

So that's always going to happen because those industries are the ones that want access to legislators, they're the ones that are hiring armies of lobbyists to go up there and to try and convince the legislators to do things that are benefiting their industry.

That's just the way the process works.

The problem is the homeowners and the people of the state of Florida, the citizens and the taxpayers can't send an army of lobbyists up to the Capitol to plead their side of the thing.

So it seems that there's an imbalance because of that, but that's how the process works.

So it is what it is.

- It's a deeply regulated industry and I think but I do think Representative Eskamani found a point of agreement and that is that there is a proliferation of money in politics.

Having said that, I don't know that limiting it is the case.

I think that I want transparency, again, I think the idea of transparency politics, let's know who's giving what and who's voting how, and you can draw your own inferences from that.

- Does there need to be a special session, Maya?

Or would the special session result in the kind of things that have happened already?

- Well, one, I want to say we only got our special sessions last year because of Democrats calls to make sure that we were actually addressing this issue.

So, you know, it's interesting, Travis mentioned earlier about Democrats having a plan and it's kind of funny when Republicans say that when they've been in power for 20 years, but we were able to do this before we were in such a super minority status.

So one, I do believe that the calls to do so by Democrats can help us get there, but there has to be unified goal setting in terms of what we need to accomplish and not, again, bail out and insurance companies.

So if we can make sure, and we all agree and achieve bipartisanship on that, that we need to put consumers, and homeowners first, and tourism, and the economy first, then yes, let's have a special session.

- Okay, I wish we had more time, but we had a good run.

- Pick on Republican Senator Brandes, he's the one who drove that train.

I think he gets a lot of the credit for- - Good time for Republican Senator Brandes.

CNBC reported this week that a growing group of donors who have supported Florida Governor DeSantis's run for president, are worried about his campaign, even after he raked in an impressive $20 million since entering the race in May.

- [Announcer] Despite those big fundraising numbers and his entry into the race on a wave of hype, DeSantis is lagging well behind front-runner Donald Trump in the polls.

The Murdoch family, which owns several large conservative media outlets, including Fox News, have soured on DeSantis.

Fox has always been a safe place for DeSantis to make an appearance.

And the powerful Murdoch family favored the Florida governor in the race for the 2024 presidential primary, largely due to a conviction that DeSantis would be more electable and less chaotic than Donald Trump.

The Rolling Stone reports that in recent weeks, the Murdochs have grown increasingly displeased with DeSantis' campaign's perceived stumbles, his lackluster polling, his focus on culture war issues, and his inability to swiftly surpass Trump.

The New York Times reports that Fox News hosts have begun confronting DeSantis on his weak poll numbers.

Other outlets in Murdoch's Media Empire have also been less friendly lately.

A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal criticized the tough new immigration bill that DeSantis signed into law.

And the New York Post, which hailed the governor as "DeFUTURE" on its front page last year, has covered his lagging poll numbers as well as the backlash to a recent video, his campaign shared that was condemned as homophobic.

- So, April, has DeSantis lost the Murdoch Media Empire?

- I can't answer that question, but what I can tell you is that in every campaign, regardless if it's presidential all the way down, your big donors have a tendency at times to get disenchanted with what's going on in the campaign.

And they also feel that for some reason they should be able to influence what's going on in the campaign, and that's not always the best course of action for a campaign to take.

So, Governor DeSantis and his campaign team know that they've got a long way to go, this is a long campaign.

We are basically six months out from the first primary, okay?

So, it's a slow trudge, he's not going to rise to the stars immediately, they've got a lot of work to do.

They have to introduce him to voters all across this country, and they're working state by state in the early primary states to do that.

And I think they'll be successful, they're just working their way through that program, so.

- Maya, this week in the column The Washington Post, conservative writer, George Will said, he called DeSantis an unhappy warrior.

And on MSNBC, DeSantis was called "dark," Politico, called DeSantis' campaign nonstop doom and gloom.

Is DeSantis too angry and does he need to tone it down a bit to win more voters?

- You know, I find that question very interesting.

And generally, as a Democrat, we're supposed to say like absolutely he's angry and all those things.

But I do think that to the point that him being able to get in front of those voters as April mentioned, and be a retail politician, kiss the baby, shake the hands, we've seen that that's not typically his speed, right?

And we will see over time if he's able to be that, you know, transactional, empathetic politician across the country and really be able to relate to folks.

And I'm not sure we've seen that, we've seen his temper certainly when he's been the executive of the state of Florida.

And so we'll continue to see that as April mentioned, as we go through these early primary states.

But, you know, Rob, I'm hopeful that America gets to see what DeSantis has done to Florida on the national stage and understands what's at risk if he becomes our next president.

- Travis, same question to you.

Is he too dark and gloomy?

- I'm known as kind of a happy warrior in politics, but I'm angry too, and I can understand, I've understood DeSantis from the start.

He seemed worked up during their first campaign, but guess what?

He had a lot to be worked up about.

And if anybody's not worked up about inflation and our situation on the national stage with President Biden and how he's handling our country or mishandling our country, or not handling our country, those are things that ought to be upsetting to a lot of Americans.

So I can understand that.

And, you know, I saw him with his kids.

I've seen DeSantis with his kids, and that really hit home with me, seeing him out here at bucks one place for a press conference.

And you know, I just know that he's in a tough spot and he's in a tough position, and he's doing the best he can on it.

- So out of some of the political watchers say that DeSantis has to win New Hampshire, he has to win Iowa, and he has to win South Carolina, if he's gonna have a chance of beating Trump, do you think he can pull off all three?

- I don't, of course, I'm not a Republican consultant, so, you know, take my advice with a grain of salt, but I mean, it's very hard to compete with former President Trump in the Republican primary.

I mean, we've just seen the Republican base really sway, you know, towards former President Trump.

I mean, he has just this really strong hold on that electorate, and I just don't see a path of shaking that.

I mean, you're talking about an individual who has been impeached, indicted, arraigned, and, you know, continues to gather support and have a lead in the polls.

And so, I do think that the fact that there are so many other Republicans in the presidential primary also demonstrate that Governor DeSantis is not the chosen one.

He's not the the it guy to replace Trump either at this point.

And as we see all these other candidates find creative ways to try to get on the debate stage, I think the path is very unclear for him at this time.

- Okay, well next year, incumbent Republican US Senator Rick Scott is up for reelection.

Democrats are still looking for a candidate to take him on.

- [Announcer] Democrats consider Scott vulnerable, that's because he's never run during a presidential election year when turnout is considerably higher.

In addition, he's created controversy with his Rescue America plan that called for all federal programs, including Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years.

Democratic leaders in Washington are trying to convince former Miami Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell to jump into the race.

She says she is considering it.

Former Central Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, a staunch progressive has already filed for the seat, also being mentioned as possible candidates for the Senate race, 26 year Navy veteran Phil Ehr from the Panhandle, he says he's thinking about a run.

Then there is Tampa based State House Democratic Leader, Fentrice Driskell, who says she's focused on her job as minority leader, and Brevard County school board member Jennifer Jenkins, who says she is convinced she can win and rid the state of corrupt career politicians.

- Travis, are Democrats in trouble?

Are they in disarray and do they only have regional candidates they're thinking about for this position?

- I mean, we control every seat from the top town.

I would say that answers itself.

They're certainly in disarray, I wouldn't, if I was gonna try to anchor, proving that we're not in disarray, by taking out Senator Rick Scott.

I think that's probably a bad strategy.

You got a guy who had two donut shops and turned it into Columbia/HCA.

I never underestimate that guy, he's just, he's much maligned in the media at times in the media at times and by, but guy is so engaging and warm in person and caring, and he's always opened his door and been willing to listen to, to things from my perspective as a veteran and a fellow veteran.

And I don't think he's the one that, I mean, he's worked his way into senate leadership and proven his chops in Washington DC, I don't think he's the one to pick this fight with.

- Anna, are Democrats in disarray?

- Well, first of all, Travis, thank you for your service.

And to answer your question, I would say we're in a rebuilding, which means you're trying to get out of a place of disarray, right?

And we have a new chairwoman leading the Democratic Party.

We also have some phenomenal, as you mentioned, regional based candidates that I think would be incredible statewide candidates.

But without infrastructure, without resources, we're going to be in this phase of rebuilding.

And I wanna just add to some of the points made about Senator Rick Scott.

He's also just personally very wealthy, you know, there's been questions about that source of wealth, but having that type of unlimited resources that he has spent his own personal money on his campaigns, and it does make that a challenging race for any opponent, Republican or Democrat.

But I have no doubt we will identify a phenomenal candidate to lead in that race alongside many other races across the state.

- Well, speaking of Senator Rick Scott and HCA, I wanna play a video that Senator Rick Scott put up recently and get your response to it.

- Senator Rick Scott here, let me give you travel warning.

If you're a socialist, communist, someone who believes in big government, I would think twice.

Think twice, if you're considering taking a vacation or moving to Florida.

We're the free state of Florida, we actually don't believe in socialism.

We actually know people, some people in our state lived under it we know people lived under socialism, is not good, it's not good for anybody.

So if you're thinking about it, if you're thinking about coming to Florida and you're a socialist or communist, think twice, we like freedom, liberty, capitalism, things like that.

- April, I wanna ask you, Rick Scott made his money from a socialist program, in what the US Department of Justice is called the largest healthcare fraud in US history.

- Yeah.

- His company defrauded Medicare and Medicaid, so- - Rick Scott- - Why is he declaring socialism, because he made his money from it.

- I wouldn't say that's a socialist program.

Rick Scott came out of that without any charges against him.

There's all sorts, that's all a bunch of political dribble of people throwing at Rick Scott, and it's not real.

This video that he made, that's one of the beautiful things about Rick Scott, okay?

He'll say what he thinks, he's very honest, he's very forthright, he's very forthcoming.

That video was made in response to a travel advisory that was put out by the NAACP and Equality Florida.

And they said, "Don't come to Florida because nobody likes you."

And he said, "Don't come to Florida because nobody likes you."

They're just picking their different groups, okay?

But Rick Scott is a formidable force, he's won three statewide elections, he's done a great job in Washington DC, he has built his credibility, and he is one of the best retail politicians I've seen.

He's grown into that, I remember when he first came into the primary, in the beginning, and he became governor that year, and a lot of people doubted him.

And I wouldn't doubt that man for anything, he's gonna be successful.

- I wish we had more time.

Before we go, what other news stories should we be paying attention to?

April, your other big story of the week.

- Okay, the Hillsborough County administration this week presented the budget to the county commission.

They'll now go through workshops and then a couple of hearings before the budget's finalized.

But it's a $9 billion budget and it's 626 million more than last year, because their coffers have increased, the revenues have increased dramatically.

And I would say Hillsborough County has a spending problem, they need to take that budget and refine it, and prioritize the things that are important here, including roads, infrastructure, and get their spending under control and do it in the right way, so the taxpayers of this community don't keep ruining their cars every time they go to work.

- And They killed the ferry.

- They did.

- All right, Anna, your big story.

- Who is a development tax baby?

The TDT, Orange County is going through a process of allocating our TDT dollars, as a reminder, when we have visitors or staycationers sleep at a hotel or Airbnb, we get a 6% tax from that, and it goes into a county-based fund that is pretty restricted in Orange County, just tourism promotion.

And I'm a firm believer that we should also spend that money on infrastructure that benefits tourism as we, just like April mentioned, and Orange County, have major traffic concerns and other needs that often are impacted by the millions of visitors we attract.

So we have TDT decisions being made this week, and I'm very hopeful we'll see some action leadership on providing flexibility to the TDT and not just taking the same status quo approach of bending over backwards to serve the tourism industry when we have so many other local community needs to address.

- And Travis, your other big story, did I steal your thing?

- You stole my thunder, but I, in fairness, I stole it from April.

So ding dong, the ferry, is dead.

(April laughing) The booze cruise is over, the taxpayer-funded booze cruise is over.

I'm just sad, I didn't, I never tried it.

I never been on the ferry.

- Okay, Maya, your other big story of the week.

- Sure, so the abortion amendment is on track to make sure that we collect the number of petitions that we need to make sure that it is vetted by the Supreme Court and then put on the ballot.

I am very curious to see and very excited to see how this moves through the phase to one get on the ballot, and hopefully get passed by the citizens of Florida by 60%, especially when there was such backlash to the six week abortion ban that was passed during the legislative session.

We've seen abortion amendments across the country move voters, and also we know that in Florida, the way the people get stuff done is by constitutional amendments, that's why they changed the law.

So very excited to see how this works out.

- Okay, thank you all for a very high spirited show.

It's great to have you all here.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us.

Please send us your comments at www.ftwwd.org (intense music) and become our friend on Facebook.

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Stay cool and have a great weekend.

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