(upbeat music) - In 2022, the pandemic was largely in the rear view mirror, but there's much to talk about.

Inflation, the economy, and, of course, politics.

We look back on 2022 and examine what may be in store for 2023.

The old and the new.

It's our year end review on in Studio.

(upbeat music) By no means did Covid disappear in 2022, but at least it did not dominate the headlines.

The pandemic gave way to talk of inflation, the economy, politics, and downstate a devastating hurricane.

The Sunshine State continued to be a desirable place for folks to relocate.

And in northwest Florida, it seems the energy and robust attitude has returned to pre-Covid levels.

On this edition of in Studio, we wanna look back on 2022 and get our guests' thoughts on what we may see in 2023.

Our panelists are journalists who cover and report on the pulse of Northwest Florida.

From broadcast to print to digital, Rick Elson has it covered.

He's the owner and publisher of the Inweekly newspaper and the must-read Rick's Blog.

Weekday mornings from 7:00 a.m. until 8:30, you'll find him on the radio hosting his Real News program on 1370 AM WCOA.

And when he tires of real news, he turns to fiction.

Elson is also a published novelist.

Jim Little is a welcome addition to our panel this year.

He is a reporter with the Pensacola News Journal.

Since 2017, he has covered Escambia County and Pensacola government, as well as politics.

He is an Auburn graduate and an Air Force veteran.

Andrew McKay is back with us this year.

For over eight years, he has been host of Pensacola's Morning News on News Radio 92.3 FM and AM 1620.

In 2022, Andrew received a Service to America Award from the National Association of Broadcasters for his reporting on Covid 19.

Gentlemen, welcome.

Thank you for joining us, and Jim, welcome to the program.

- Thanks for having me.

- Good to be here.

- Well, Rick.

- You raised the whole level.

- [Jeff] Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

- [Andrew] That means we're supposed to be better, right?

- That's right.

Rick, you're the old pro.

Let me start with you.

Biggest story of 2022, in your judgment?

- Locally, I think probably the mayor, the election of Mayor DC Reeves.

I think he raised a phenomenal amount of money, almost $300,000 in a race that he way out distanced his opponents in the race.

But I think we still felt like it'd be, it'd be tough for him to win without a runoff.

And he did.

He's had three months to prepare to take office.

I think he's bringing with him a sense of optimism, much as Ashton Hayward did 12 years ago.

Ashton was sort of the Gen X guy that came in and opened up the doors of City Hall for a whole generation.

I think with DC Reeves, it's the same thing.

It's millennial, it's a different, there's a lot of expectation, a lot of excitement, and he's coming out of that Studer incubator and being able to have sit at the, you know, at the lap of Quint Studer and listen to him and meet all these thought makers around the country.

There's a lot of excitement.

So I think DC, on one level, I think was probably the big story.

- [Jeff] Andrew?

- Yeah, I agree.

I think the mayoral election was big.

I'm actually really, I've been captivated by the city of Milton lately because they are very entertaining to pay attention to the city council meetings.

And they had an anti-incumbent wave come through.

The three of the city council members that were up for reelection lost, and two of them, I think just two of them had been appointed to the seats because other people had left.

The one person who wasn't running again, then the person who came in to fill for that seat also had been before the former mayor, didn't win.

And the Mayor Lindsay was the only one who hung onto her seat.

Same thing happened in District 4 in the county commission where Dave Peach, who I fully expected to win by a hefty margin.

He's a very good commissioner, very effective, very capable, built air bases, you know, for the Air Force.

And a complete unknown newcomer comes in and wins, not the district that they live in.

He lost that, but won the other forum with the, you know, at large elections in Santa Rosa County.

So big anti-incumbent way.

People are upset about roads, infrastructure, the way things are being managed, and it showed in Santa Rosa County.

So from an elections point of view, I agree with Rick, DC winning an outright majority in the primary was huge and the transition.

- [Jeff] Right.

- That's been, in comparison with how Grover was brought in under Mayor Hayward, and now how DC has been brought in with Grover, it's honestly, it's kind of a beautiful thing to see such cooperation and such an open opportunity to develop a transition.

So you hit the ground ready to go.

- I wanna come back to more on that in just a moment, but Jim, I'll get your thoughts on the biggest story.

- Yeah, yeah.

I agree with Rick and Andrew.

I think we went into this year with an open seat in the mayor's office.

We didn't know who was gonna win.

We also had a open seat on the Escambia County Commission, so we had two big open seats in the local government.

And DC winning the mayor's race in the first round was a big story.

- You know, speaking of that, and you're talking about him kind of being at the feet of Quint Studer and kind of learning the Studer way of doing things.

I interviewed DC for another program that I do, and one of the things that I thought was striking that he said, we're gonna measure.

We're gonna measure what we do.

It's not just going to be, you know, we say we're gonna do this, and then we will, you know, some way roll it politically.

He says, we're gonna measure it and put up some kind of dashboard for people to be able to keep track of what they accomplished.

What are your thoughts on that?

- Well, you know, I think DC is sort of a data walk, you know, which is good.

I think that's the background that he's bringing to the table.

It'll be interesting to see how he, and he's, the more he gets into doing press conferences and doing interviews, he'll tamp down the data part and be able to make that transition.

I'm excited about it.

I think it's also, I think it's positive that he's not coming in and cleaning house right away.

He's measuring his staff.

He's looking to see what's gonna fit with his ideas.

He's leaving, he's coming into an organization that Grover's pretty well stocked a team.

He's put together a pretty good team, and I think that makes it a little bit, gives him a little bit of time to work with.

But the data part will be interesting and, you know, I'm dashboard out, but maybe we get a dashboard of all the dashboards and figure out how that'll work.

But I'll reserve judgment on a dashboard.

- Yeah, I saw that with the transition team.

You know, we did this with Grover and they came out with this report and these points and we heard about that four years ago.

And haven't really seen much follow up with that.

Of course, Studer is big on measuring everything.

You know, that's, if you can't measure it, it's not a real thing.

That's how you know you're making progress or not.

I'm particularly fond of DC's repeated comment that his goal is to make City Hall the best place to work.

That he wants the people who work for the government to enjoy it and to feel proud of it.

And not that they didn't before, but when that's your focus, making it a great place to work that can't help but translate into good outcomes.

- Yeah.

I agree.

Jim.

- Yeah, I think, like Rick said, DC's coming into office and we're not gonna really see a lot of changes at first because he is so data driven and he's gonna take the time to collect the data.

But I think over the next year he'll start rolling out some changes and we'll start seeing the real difference between a Reeves administration and a Robinson administration.

- Well, you know, and again, going back to what you were saying, I mean, he's youthful and clearly energetic and he made the remark, I believe it was on Channel 3 News or something like, that when you're, you know, when you're as young as I am and you're taking this on you better get it right type thing.

And so I think he's gonna have a lot of motivation to do that.

- And yet experience, I mean, you know, compared, particularly compared to Ashton.

Right?

He didn't bring any government experience.

Neither of them really have that.

But he brought business ownership experience and business incubator experience, and of course his background in journalism.

I mean, these are all assets for somebody who is certainly running a big organization at a young age, but compared to the field in terms of managerial experience, you know, I think he's got a lot of leg up.

- [Rick] And he helped run the transition team for growth.

- [Andrew] Right.

Right.

- So he's had a peak at all of this.

So I think this, he can't get it wrong.

I mean, he's had three months to get ready.

I mean, and it's, you know, he's got Tim Kinsella heading the transition committee.

I mean, he's gonna make mistakes.

Everybody makes mistakes, but he's, no one's had a period like this before to get ready for it.

And you could tell when he was sworn in, he was chomping at the bit.

So I think all of us are going in real excited about what the city will do next year in 2023.

- I think the one thing, if I can suggest it that DC might have to be careful of is when you're data oriented, rational, creative, sometimes you forget where Pensacola's at.

But you know, for example, Tommy Lighter, former chief of police, now Chief deputy at the Sheriff's office, he wants red light cameras.

And I think they make sense.

I think they work.

I think all the arguments are right.

The question is, are the 50,000 residents of Pensacola ready to embrace red light cameras?

'Cause listen to how they grumble about Gulf Breeze all the time.

Right?

So he might make a decision about something that's really right, but might not be ready for Pensacola yet.

And I'm, you know, that's my only thought is we'll see how that plays out.

- And one of the things too that Reeves is gonna have to address is he's walking this line as we're one of the other big stories of the year was the issue that Pensacola had with affordable housing.

We seen rents reach all time highs and almost no apartment, no one can can find apartments to rent.

And he's made his attainable housing a goal of his administration, but how is he gonna walk that and also not appear to be appealing to developer's interest or things like that and actually solving the issue.

- Yeah, valid point.

Let's talk about Grover for a moment.

First of all, were you surprised, you know, because Grover did not wanna run again for mayor.

- Oh no.

He was so turned off about politics by seeing all the national fighting, especially in Covid.

And he said it many times in his press conferences that he hated the tone, the way politics had gone.

And I, you know, I never heard him say this, but I think he got frustrated just not being able to do some of the things he really wanted to do.

And dealing with the infighting and the pettiness and between some of the players in, you know, Pensacola politics and then city council, I think he was anticipating it would be a smoother ride and it wasn't really in a lot of ways for him.

- Yeah.

Mayor Robinson during the pandemic really came out as a kind of a spokesperson for the Pensacola region and took a lot of the brunt of the criticism for local policies and state policies.

And I think he just, his comments to the press conference when he announced he wasn't running for reelection is I think the, the brunt of that criticism had really gotten to him.

And he was ready to put it in the rear view mirror, I think.

- Well, he did take on, I'm sorry, but he did take on a lot of tough issues.

He took on the Confederate monument.

He took on, of course, COVID restrictions early on when it was really where we were having numbers were going out of the roof.

He stepped up there, he stepped in on homelessness and really dealt with it.

- [Andrew] Black Lives Matter protests.

- Black Lives Matter protests.

He had to deal with the shooting.

So he's had to deal with issues and to his credit, he didn't run away from them.

But that can wear on you.

And I think that, and he's, you know, in talking to him, you know, his dad died and mom, dad died early in his, you know, when they were just starting to enjoy life and he didn't, I think he wanted to be able to do that with Jill.

His kids are almost out of college.

And so he saw this opportunity.

He didn't want to regret not having that time.

So he would've won if he ran again, I don't think anybody else would've run.

And he would've been a good second, you know, he was doing a fine job, but I think that you can't take on all those big issues and not it take a piece of you.

And he definitely enjoyed his, when he traveled with Jill on those weekends, he enjoyed it.

So I think that caught up with him.

- One thing that, just to give him credit for something that was such a contrast with Ashton is you couldn't ask for a more open government.

Obviously the press conferences are one part of that.

But just, you know, Grover would always respond.

He would always give you, sometimes he'd tell you too much.

That's, you know, sort of a flaw as a credit.

But he also, when his interactions with city council were always, that's not my authority to do that.

That's your job to do that.

And whereas, you know, Ashton tried to aggregate power to himself quite a bit.

Whether you agree with that or not, Grover was much more, no, that's council, they need to figure that out.

They need to make that decision.

That's not for me to say.

And I thought a deliberate reestablishment of the boundaries of the separate government was something that to his credit, he accomplished.

- [Rick] He always answered the phone.

- Yeah.

Always.

- He would, you know, so it was that transparency was big.

And it's good to see DC pick up that mantle because I think that's just such a critical part of what we do, but it's also for the citizens to have that access to him.

- Could you imagine 10 years down the road we might see him again on the political landscape?

Or do you think he's done?

- You know, I asked him that question at his last press conference and he definitely ruled out running for office again, though he wouldn't, he didn't rule out, you know, serving in some type of other public role.

But he was pretty firm about not being in an elected office.

- [Jeff] Interesting.

- I think for a lot of folks who do it, even for a while when it's rough, okay.

I think when they find themselves out of it, whether deliberately or not, they find out that that's actually a lot of fun to not be, you know, Dave Peach again in Santa Rosa County.

He wanted to win the seat.

I, my opinion he should have won that seat as a very capable legislator.

And I think about one week out of being out of office, he's like, I love playing with my labs.

You know, I'm okay with this and so be it.

I think it's pretty easy to let go of once you're out of it.

- Because Grower was pretty much a rockstar on the county commission.

And certainly by many of his peers thought a whole lot of him, even outside of the community.

His dad had a wonderful track record as a state representative, was well thought of.

So, I mean, you know, just on the surface you would think, Hey, this guy's gonna be, you know, a long-term political player.

- Well, let's see what he, you know, which way he goes.

You know, I think that, I know his name at one time was being bounced around as a potential county administrator at one point.

I think he's, you know, he's definitely, I'm hearing he's thinking about doing some lobbying in Tallahassee, locally.

So there are opportunities for him to look at things.

But I think he's gonna enjoy his wife and his kids for a while.

- [Andrew] Agreed.

- That's good.

He deserves it.

- Absolutely.

He does.

And again, to what you were talking about a moment ago, I mean, the environment of the political landscape has changed drastically in the past four or five years.

I mean, you cover government, you cover politics.

Since just in the period of time you've been covering it.

Talk about some of the changes.

- Yeah.

I think it's, since I've been covering it's definitely got, you've seen the vitriol at the national level kind of bleed down into the local levels of government where it becomes less about policy and more about personality.

But I think we saw that also the kind of cultural wars at the national level come down to the local level in the Escambia County school district where we have now, I think it's like 130 books listed as questionable under the new state law that passed last year.

And they'll go through committees and then the school board is gonna be deciding, you know, what books are banned.

And it didn't seem like we'd be in that position a few years ago, but now that's where we find ourselves.

- I had somebody say to me, and I won't say who it was 'cause he may not want me to bring his name up in it, but it made a lot of sense.

He said, you know, it used to be all politics was local, and now it's almost shifted where all politics is national.

And if you think about where the national narrative is, and it has trickled down, and even several years ago, I mean, we had people who were campaigning for county offices who were talking about national issues, which they would've had no control over whatsoever.

You know what I'm saying?

So now it's just become, let me peg this.

- James Calkins got elected in Santa Rosa County by doing an online ad with a gun and being pro-Trump.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- Period.

That's amazing that local politics could take on that much national flavor for, you know, those kind of races.

That's wild.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- And we had a candidate say that she was in favor of lynching physicians on trans, you know, certain treatments and you've got the other candidate for county commissioner of Escambia county was arrested, packing a gun.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- Campaigning.

- Now to be fair, he did that on purpose.

- I know he did.

Exactly.

- It didn't exactly work out for him, but.

- But you know, it did, it is drifting down.

And I think, Jim, you're right.

I mean, I'm very concerned about the school board weighing in over educators over what books should be used as elective.

The one book that's banned has been an elective for seniors, not mandatory.

If a senior can't handle a book in high school, what kind of, you know, what are we doing here?

So it is that politics is drifting into so much of what we're seeing.

You see it at the public forums, at the county commission meetings.

- Absolutely.

- City council meetings, you know, you're seeing personal attacks happen more than they should.

We're not staying on the issues.

So yeah.

It's concerning.

And it has drifted into local politics.

- And I think, with Grover, that his idea of politics is something more civil, is more respectful, is more genial.

He's absolutely a consensus builder.

Some people fault him for that, that he's not particularly strident.

But I think we're seeing a politics where that kind of civility and consensus building is not rewarded as often as I would like it to be.

It's much more, you know, if you stake your position and you can be strong and be seen to be strong, then that's what's gonna get you support and votes.

And like you say, the public forums in both counties are, I mean, it's entertaining as a radio guy, but it's not particularly healthy.

- Right.

- Well, at the end of the day too, it distracts from the real issues of that local governments are doing, which is, you know, mainly guiding development, ensuring that there's public safety, that our communities are safe.

And that can also distract from those things as time is taken up at these meetings and budgets and everything for these other issues.

- And government's about compromise, it's working towards yes.

Nobody gets everything that they want.

And we, you know, I mean we, you know, with Commissioner Underhill, we had somebody that wanted to be Dr. No.

And he didn't care if he got four other votes and he tried to, and it did a disservice to his district.

You know, we've got at times Sherry Myers could be that way on the city council where it was not counting, how do I get three more people to agree with me?

I got the mic.

And we see that, I've listened to some of the meetings with the Santa Rosa County Commission and the Milton City Council.

You know, the best government works is everybody votes.

And if you lose, you go on to the next issue and you forget that you lost.

- It's really interesting.

Gulf Breeze, which I also cover, their city council meetings are not online.

For a little while, when it was Covid, they were on YouTube and it was, the mic was, you know, across the room, you couldn't hear it.

You know, what are they saying?

And there is an argument to be made that televised politics makes for bad politics.

And people know they're on camera.

They know they're gonna be heard.

I mean, I sometimes think about this, I play clips from these meetings and in a sense I reward the bad behavior because it's entertaining.

But that's a reward and people play to that.

Clearly, they know that they're being covered.

I don't know that that's healthy.

You know, I love the sunshine, but there's a part of me that always thinks, well, you know, people talking in private is different than talking in public, in front of a group where they're supposed to be showing that they're on this side or whatever.

- Well, I get, I'm old school, when you have the press conference.

Oh, you have a bunch of cameras in front of the mayor and here all the reporters are behind it.

And we don't get, we're talking to a camera to get to the mayor.

So, but I'm the old guy.

I'm the angry man in the room.

(everyone laughing) - Here's the thing that concerns me about it, is that it has become such a, it's become so drastic of what we're talking about, just so extreme, about the personalities and what that type of thing.

Who that really, somebody that really knows how to make the trains run on time, so to speak.

Why would they want to do it?

If I'm a businessman and I've run a business and I may be able to actually bring something to the table as city councilman or a county commissioner or whatever, why would I want to go put myself in that position, right?

- Yeah, no, I mean, I think Alex Andrade is a great example of somebody who's extremely capable as a legislator, given his background and what we see him, and he's obviously been tasked by leadership with running bills over and over again.

You know, the card bill, the complex bill, whatever.

And then you see the way the primaries have worked against him and the things that get said.

I mean, it's just outrageous.

And so I have that same thought, like, can we actually persuade good people, decent people, thoughtful, careful people who care about words, you know, can we persuade those people to run for office?

And sometimes yes.

Other times, there doesn't seem to be as much appetite for that kind of a candidate.

- Yeah.

Because at the local level, you have to really make things happen.

Right?

I mean, roads have to be built, schools have to be built, things have to happen.

You know, you can in Washington flip flop around I guess for years, maybe not accomplish a whole lot either way.

But at the local level, the rubber has to hit the road at some point.

- And we saw good elections in the city, Pensacola City Council, when we looked at it, we saw good candidates make it.

And, you know, and the runoffs were smooth.

They were, you know, they went smoothly.

They were, and good people ran and good people won.

And so we, it's there, but sometimes I think we get hung up because it is, the big news is the wacko with the gun and his waving campaigning or the one asking for a lynching.

But, we do have good people running.

Sometimes we get, the others get the bigger attention.

- You we're talking about the city council and then going back to people who have been in office and then out of office.

Well, Charles Bare's back on the city council.

What sort of dynamic does that create?

- Well, I, you know, I think it'd be interesting one, he's, it was what it's been six years.

- Four.

- Four.

- Four, I think but I.

Because it was when they did away with the at large.

- Right.

Right.

I think it's six.

- [Andrew] I've been here eight years.

- 2016.

- Was it that long?

- [Jeff] 2016, yeah.

- Okay.

Alright.

- So yeah.

Yeah.

They, yeah, you know, I think it's he's had much more experience.

He's done more things in the community.

I think he was, name recognition was huge for him.

And, you know, he is a relentless campaigner.

- Three times to a house he was telling me.

He'd go back to the house three times and by the last time they're like, fine, whatever you need.

- But you know, I think he brings experience to him.

I think it'll be interesting to see, you know, when he was there before it was a, there was much more hostile relationship between the council and the mayor's office.

What's he, how's he, you know, what attitude he brings in, time will see.

He seems, the fact that they unanimously elected Delarian Wiggins president, which that hasn't happened before, I think was a really, really good sign, you know Casey Jones is the vice president.

I think that, to me, I got a message out of it.

My message was, okay, this group is gonna try to work together.

And so I thought that was good.

So I'm optimistic.

- And before we get too far down the road, you mentioned Doug Underhill.

Have we seen the last of him from a political standpoint, you think?

- I say it's a coin flip.

I think he may find that he likes being on the farm in North Escambia and hanging out with Wendy and doing the things that they do and, you know, playing water sports with his boys, which he's always loved.

I think he may also see that he has a role that he wants to play, whether it's in Tallahassee or honestly whether it's in DC.

I think he has the view that what he has to offer is very useful and necessary in this country.

Especially the military is transitioning in his point of view.

So give him a couple years, we'll see.

I'm curious to see if he runs for something next time around.

And I don't rule it out at all.

- [Jeff] You want to add to that or?

- Not really.

(everyone laughing) I'm just teasing.

Yeah.

I mean, he'll make a choice.

I mean , you know, as long as he has a keyboard, I think he'll try to be involved some way.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

Interesting.

- [Jim] Yeah.

I have no reporting that's indicating he's gonna run again.

- I mean we do have shuffling coming.

Right?

Doug Broxson is termed out.

Okay.

So you gotta figure that Michelle is probably more likely to want that seat than Alex.

'Cause Alex has got another term to come in leadership.

It'll be his eighth year and he's got, you know, some pretty hefty responsibilities coming up with that.

But will Matt run again?

You know, he obviously won overwhelmingly this time.

Does he wanna stay in DC?

Does he want to do consulting?

Does he wanna do media?

- I didn't think about that.

- Does he wanna, if Trump is running for president, does Matt want to become part of the Trump organization?

You know, there's slots that might well open up in some of the above the just plain local election level.

- Definitely the Broxson, you know, terming out will be, will set some dominoes.

So that'll be interesting to see what that does.

- Yeah.

We could have other people who've been out of the politics world for a while come back to try to run for that seat too.

- Yeah.

You have Frank White's a name.

Grover could pop back in.

Michelle Andrade still could, Jayer may jump back in.

I don't think so.

- I don't think Jayer, I think Jayer's done.

I think he's consulting and happy with family.

- But so there, there's opportunities there.

Right.

- Were you surprised that he decided that he was out the political game or?

- I don't know.

I mean, I'm kind of waiting to see.

I have my own thoughts about why Jayer left, but you know, what he said was more time with family and I'll take him at his word, you know, 'cause I've known Jayer a while and I believe that.

But I was, what I was surprised is all the people that didn't get in that race, you know, Chris Smith, I mean, he was on my radio show saying I'm gonna run.

And then it was kinda like the next day Matt Gates endorsed, you know, Maria Calkins, which of course became a catastrophe for them.

You know, everybody assumed she would win.

And then between, well various things about his association with her, obviously as her husband, the Russia, whatever you make of that story.

And then Joel Rudman running.

I don't know.

- [Jeff] You have any thoughts on that?

You were covering it?

- No, I think Representative Williamson leaving kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier about people not wanting to be involved in the vitriol that's going on.

His message, his kind of closing statement was, really spoke to, you know, he thought his family was more important than having to deal with the stress of the comments from the political world, if you will.

- Yeah.

I was a little surprised.

But I agree with you.

I kind of, from what I saw in the press and whatnot, that was kinda like, I think kinda like Grover, I've had enough of it.

You know.

But anyway.

Speaking of Michelle Salzman, I mean, she's a rising star.

- Clearly.

- And I think has handled herself quite capably.

And the way she defeated Mike Hill the first time, I mean, I thought, you know, that she really went in and focused on the issues and the concerns of Northwest Florida and didn't allow herself to get dragged into some kind of national debate.

And then clearly this time around basically the same thing.

And seems to be building quite a name and platform for herself.

- Well she had a great fundraiser with the house leader.

She came over here for that.

I think that she's definitely known over there.

She's brought back her district brought back projects to the district, funds for projects in the district.

- Bills and money for the first time for District 1.

- Right.

Right.

I think that was a big, I think that's a big thing.

I think that, you know, she's also, you know, she's taken on mental health at that task force.

Now here's the deal is, where are we gonna go with this?

You know, it's, everybody can cut the balloons and eat the cake and have the T-shirt and celebrate the opening of something.

But now we're still trying to figure out what to do with the Baker Act.

We're still figuring out, we don't have enough mental health counselors.

Now it's gonna get harder.

And she's going into the legislative session.

What is she gonna do on mental health?

So I think there's a challenge there.

- And I think that also, you know, to go back to the shuffling, if she does decide to run for the Senate, win or lose, who then is D 1 for the house?

- [Rick] Right.

- I mean, does Mike try to come back again or do we find some new talent, you know?

- Steven Barry is a possibility.

- [Andrew] Sure.

- There's people from that area.

So Yeah.

What happens?

- Yeah.

Were you surprised that Mike jumped in the race?

- Yes.

- This past time?

- Yes.

I thought it was a, I honestly thought it was a hopeless cause for him.

And I was surprised.

I mean, I'm not really surprised he did as well as he did.

'Cause he has great name recognition and there are people who are diehard Mike Hill supporters in the north of Escambia County.

But yeah, I was surprised.

I thought he would've got the message the last time.

But he didn't.

- They don't.

(everyone laughing) - They don't.

- We are going to take a quick break here.

We are discussing the big stories of 2022.

There's a whole lot more to come.

Hope you'll continue to hang out with us.

You're watching in Studio on WSRE Television.

PBS on the Gulf Coast right now.

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(upbeat music) - Welcome back.

This is in Studio on WSRE television PBS for the Gulf Coast.

We are looking back on the big stories of 2022 and looking ahead at what 2023 may bring.

Our guests, Rick Elson from Inweekly and WCOA Radio, Jim Little from the Pensacola News Journal and Andrew McKay from News Radio 92.3 FM and AM 1620.

We were talking primarily about local politics here before the break.

Let's expand, let's talk about the state politics.

Statewide, what's going on?

What's your analysis?

- This is Florida's Ron DeSantis state.

I mean, he has a tight grip over the state legislature.

He has daily press conferences.

He controls the media.

At least the news cycle continuously.

He won by the biggest margin any Republican has won in the state of Florida.

And you know, he is setting the agenda for the state.

And the legislature isn't bucking him.

They're following what he, his leadership.

So he has become a force within the state.

Huey Long, maybe be the next governor that's been this powerful control over a state like DeSantis has over Florida.

- Yeah.

We saw in the midterms the high expectation that Republicans would maybe take back the Senate overwhelmingly take back the House.

The Red Wave turned out to be a Red Ripple, but it was a Red Wave in Florida.

I just, I was stunned to see, I mean, we kind of knew based on registration numbers, Democrats had very low registration numbers.

Republicans had very high.

Lots of people came here during the pandemic, whether they were coming for the economy or the Florida of it, or freedom, or whatever.

They came here and the uncertainty was would they bring Blue State politics with them?

And the answer looks like no.

In fact, they were fleeing blue state politics to come here.

But yeah, I surely thought that Governor Chris would put up a better fight in the statewides.

But it was a, as you said, it was a blowout, absolute blowout.

They barely needed the panhandle, you know, it was that bad for the Democrats.

And so yeah, he's in charge.

He can do what he wants.

And of course a lot of people are expecting a 2024 presidential run.

I still don't know whether he will or he won't.

And I try not to call that because when Trump's in the mix, who knows?

I wouldn't be surprised if he ran.

I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't run.

But if he wants to run for president, I think he definitely does.

I don't see it working where he'd wait a cycle 'cause then he's two years out of office and it's better to be in office running than it is to be out of the news cycle trying to run.

- That's one of the things we'll see in the coming year is if DeSantis is gonna run, he'll have to commit at some point.

And then I guess the question becomes is that gonna distract from state issues or can he he juggle both while also potentially challenging Donald Trump for Republican nomination for president.

- Well, on the other side of the coin is the Florida Democratic Party's completely decimated.

They did not, their candidates did not excite people.

They did not get the vote.

The Democratic vote did not come out.

They've lost the Hispanic vote in the southern part of the state, in several counties.

They had a rising star in Nikki Fried and that they went with Charlie Chris.

I don't know if Fried would've done much better, but it would've created something to run on in the future.

With Charlie, you don't have anybody, there's nothing there.

Val Demings was hopeful that she would be a little bit more of a draw, but it didn't work.

You know, up here, democratic turnout was pitiful.

- That election.

I don't know how that election turns out in an off year.

If that Senate election had not been on the coattails of DeSantis.

'Cause I gotta believe that Rubio benefited enormously from running behind DeSantis on this.

He was vulnerable, you know, for a variety of reasons.

And Val Demings was a very strong candidate.

You know, she doesn't have the typical knocks that the Republicans can say about Democrats, obviously as a former police chief.

You know, very capable, very TV friendly.

I mean all of the things you would want.

And she also just got destroyed in the election largely because of Red State politics and the DeSantis factor.

- Add to it, Jim.

- Yeah, I guess, it's Florida's a completely different universe than it was in 2018, where DeSantis just barely won.

- 30,000, wasn't it?

Something like that?

And a recount.

Crazy.

- And what's it gonna be in 2026 is a real interesting question.

- I talk to a lot of people from around the country, various parts, from California to New York, and I am, well I wouldn't say I'm surprised, but I'm always kind of amazed at how many people are familiar with DeSantis and tell me how much they like him.

We love your governor, we love your governor.

If he doesn't run for president, I would be hugely surprised.

And I mean, you know, sometimes you strike while the iron's hot, right?

And I mean, he's hot right now.

- He's definitely viewed around the country by conservatives as their hope.

You know, they hope he runs.

And even the most ardent Trump supporters, I think a lot of them recognize that Trump has got vulnerabilities, you know, whatever they believe about the past election, they recognize that, you know, the only reason he didn't win or came so close or whatever they believe is because so many people hate him enough to elect Joe Biden, you know?

And so that same vulnerability carrying into the next next election may excite some of the really devoted loyalists.

But a lot of them are looking at DeSantis and saying, oh man, please.

- Well, and the thing, you know that I, you know, being the cynic that I am, you look at it, when someone has so much power, so much influence, how do they use that power?

He has, you know, the legislature, super majority, they can do what they want.

They have taken some steps this past legislative session that they could do because they had the power, but were clearly out of step with what the majority of the state wanted.

How does he use that power?

Does he play to that base?

Does he try to tackle the harder issues that they avoided last year, such as property taxes for, I mean, not property taxes, but property insurance, you know, affordable housing, healthcare, issues that they avoided.

You know, what does he do with this power or does he just try to stay in the, you know, do the, keep repeating the best hits and keep the same emotional issues that played into his base and not reach outside of it.

It'll be interesting to see what he does.

- You know, you mentioned about all the people coming, I mean off camera you were saying that you've got some family that their plan was to retire and move to Florida.

So many people are coming to Florida and we're talking about, particularly down in the southern part of the state, big money coming into Florida.

So you think about, there's a financier investment guy by the name of Ken Griffin.

Some people may know the name.

If you don't, you will.

He'll be, I'm sure quite influential in the upcoming presidential election.

Big guy out of Chicago, moving his headquarters out of Chicago to South Florida.

The name Carl Icahn moving out of New York, big private equity guy out of New York, moving to Florida.

All this big New York, Northeastern, Midwestern money is coming.

It's not just somebody who said, Hey, I retired from X, Y, Z and I'm coming down.

It's big money moving their businesses and their employees down.

So we continue to grow, which opens up another set of challenges for the state.

- Which is where we're at today, right?

All these people coming and we didn't have housing for them.

You know, we can employ them, but finding a place for them to live that they can afford is all of a sudden a catastrophe for not just us in northwest Florida, but you're seeing this around the state, driving up prices of housing and people can't, you know, over the rise of the price of housing, people can't qualify for the houses they could've six months ago.

Rent is out of control and everybody's scrambling to build what DC Reeves calls doors, you know, build doors so there's capacity, and we're way behind on that.

And yet we're still saying, come, come, come, come.

And, do we have the infrastructure?

Do we have the houses?

Do we have the things necessary for all the people that we've been so eager to get to come here for all these years?

- Well, just here in Northwest Florida.

I mean, take any afternoon and go for a drive.

- Not at five o'clock.

- Exactly.

I mean, it's just amazing.

I mean, if you go I 10 northbound in the morning, I'm always amazed at how many people are headed to downtown and then vice versa in the afternoon.

You know, it's just, and I want to throw this in speaking of development and it's gonna be kind of interesting how the landscape changes with that, with Baptist Hospital and their new campus going up, you know, almost kind of creating a midtown type area there and it looks really good rolling down the interstate there.

- Well, and that brings a whole nother challenge too, is when Baptist opens this hospital, that's a pretty big note they're gonna be paying.

Where is there that much new business that they're gonna do?

Or are they gonna take business from the other hospitals?

How does our healthcare market, hospital market adjust to a brand new hospital with a huge note that they've gotta make every month?

Is where's that, you know, where's that revenue gonna come come from?

So it it's gonna change the landscape of Brent Lane without a doubt and that exit, but it also changes the landscape, I think, for healthcare.

- And for Baptist particularly, you're seeing this housing crisis creates a staffing crisis because now you've gotta be able to pay your nurses, for example, higher wages so that they can afford the rental houses or the ownership that is higher than it was before.

And can they find that just for their staff?

And we've heard from some people that, you know, that's a challenge not just for them, for HCA Florida West and also for Ascension Sacred Heart.

So that factors into the equation of can you pay the note?

Well, did you factor these costs in as much as they're really gonna be a be a factor?

- And then what happens to the old campus, which we're starting to see some ideas put up and that can be a game changer for that West Marino district over there.

It has to be, because you're taking out a hospital there.

And we've got something on the drawing board, but it's sort of iffy muddy.

- It's a hope.

It's a hope at this point, yeah.

- [Rick] You know, you're throwing the bomb hoping it'll get caught.

- Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

- Oh, just gonna say, yeah, that's a good point.

And the risk there is if nothing comes, that would be the worst possible scenario.

And Baptist Hospital put out requests for proposals and for the whole acreage and only got two responses back and it's just for 10 acres of the whole 50 acres.

So with the downturn in the economy we're facing, it might be bad timing with that.

- It'll be interesting to see because there's no question that, you know, the Federal Reserve is clearly, I mentioned in the open, trying to fight inflationary pressures.

And if they're successful at being able to bring some of that down over time, then hopefully we'll be in a situation where all of a sudden things become more attractive for outside developers to come in.

You know, as inflation comes down and you know, get into a situation of interest rates coming down.

- And yet we're building as, I mean, everywhere you look, we're building as fast as anybody can build in both counties.

It's ridiculous how, you know, forests get cleared, things get built and then hopefully we can make the roads work.

You know, that's just, that's how it's been for the last, what, three years really.

- I think we've got almost 500 units on the drawing board for downtown Pensacola.

You know, we've got 240 right away and then if the East Garden district site gets approved, that's another 240, 32 on Main Street.

- Tan Yard.

- Yeah.

It's just, yeah, it's just, it's amazing.

- I was driving through, 'cause this is the best way to get to where I needed to go, but I was driving through the kind of the back streets.

I think it's St. James by PCC and somebody has built a 10 maybe unit two story apartment L just in the middle of some of these like warehouses.

It's like anywhere you can find to put some lumber down, you're gonna build a house.

Multi-unit sometimes.

- And you were talking about Santa Rosa County.

Yeah.

I mean a lot happening over there.

You know, awful lot of building big neighborhoods being proposed and.

- And you know, do they have like the wastewater treatment plant has been this huge issue of trying to, you know, satisfy the requirements to get out of the old site which discharges into Blackwater River and they gotta build the new one.

And where do you discharge that effluent?

Whiting said no because of the stuff underneath their soil.

This huge fight with the location of the ribs that they're wanting to put in.

And if that doesn't happen on time, you have environmental requirements that are gonna be violated.

You lose your ability to do septic to sewer and all the economic development where Santa Rosa is clearly beating Escambia County in that game.

Well that all depends on the ability to process all of that wastewater.

I mean Santa Rosa's even, you know, floating the idea that they might build their own treatment plant for one of the industrial parks.

Is that real?

Is that a ploy?

Will that work?

I don't know.

But you know, the development still needs the infrastructure, whether it's roads or wastewater, sewer, anything.

- And we were talking about building and Rick, talk a little bit about this, we were talking about it off camera, but kind of the issues with the predatory contractors has been in the news recently.

- I think that has been an issue that popped up.

It's been out there below the surface.

But this summer it became a big issue with two contractors in particularly, but where people have paid huge deposits for work done on their house coming outta Hurricane Sally.

They take the check, cash the check the work doesn't get done.

Some instances they'll go in and gut the house and then walk away from the project, don't return phone calls.

And it seems to be, I know the state attorney's looking at it, whether or not it has the semblance of being a pyramid scheme where they were taking well some deposits here and doing work over here that they already spent that money.

And then at the same time we found out that our contractor competency boards were leaning more towards the contractors then towards the complaints.

And the county, Escambia county commission has stepped in and rearranged the board, got some different people on them, looking at it.

But it really showed, here we are desperate for housing and people have lost their homes, and not have anywhere to live.

So this was of all the big injustice stories of the year this was one of the ones that really, I think it, a lot of people felt that story and understood what it was like.

- And that might hopefully be like a self-correcting situation because I think people were so desperate to get the work done in a situation where people had some money, but also there were not enough contractors and so they were willing to take bad deals for too much with too much upfront and they weren't asking enough questions.

Well, you got the sort of the double benefit now if you can call it that, of they've seen what happens when they don't do due diligence and they're scared, which might be helpful.

And because you have some of this slow down, you might not have as much of that scarcity to get the contractors to do the work and people might be more willing to take a little bit of time and do the research.

And as you say, I think I'm optimistic that the county commission can bring a little bit more responsibility to the contractor competency board.

- Transparency, putting stuff up there so people can see what's happening with contractors and check and the Home Builders association has stepped up too.

- Yep.

- And that's what was needed.

But these are horror stories of the people that I've talked to on this.

- Yeah.

And if there's a system to look at back, 'cause people do, they look up the license of contractors and they see everything's clean when, you know, a contractor really has all these pending complaints again.

And there's no way to get any visual insight into that.

And so somebody will sign another contract and then the contractor goes and uses that money to pay off the fees that he's facing in the other team.

So it's kind of a reform of the system is definitely probably on the table for the next year.

- And then the other big issue I see in that area that's going to be a challenge moving forward, is insurance.

You know, and I mean that's something the legislature's definitely gonna have to take a hard look at in the upcoming session.

But I mean, what do we do about that?

I mean, everybody's talking about their property insurance going through the roof.

- Well, of course, the first answer of the chamber is we gotta go after the attorney, suing.

Which has nothing to do with the property tax.

The property, but we'll, yeah, property insurance.

I mean, bills people are getting shocked now.

You know, our bill went up $8,000.

We've seen, I've had friends say they've got bills $20, $10,000 more than they were before.

The people looking at, you know, citizens to be able to do the insurance.

It's not working.

This is an issue that the legislature should have taken care of last spring.

They did not.

They did a special session and it really didn't do anything.

Hopefully, you know, by the time this show airs, they'll come back with some things that'll make a difference.

But I'm a little disappointed that one of the first on the list is we had to deal with attorneys.

Because that's the only salvation people have when the insurance companies don't do what they say they're gonna do.

- Yeah.

I don't know what successful plans are gonna come out of that special session.

I would like to think that Senator Broxson with his experience in the field could, you know, really be pivotal in making something happen that'll make a difference.

But, you know, I hate to have this kind of a perception, but what we've discovered in Covid is that systems we never knew were so intricate and balanced that worked for forever, all of a sudden just didn't work anymore.

Whether it's supplying employees or whether it's, you know, getting pork from the, you know, the pork distribution facility.

Or property insurance.

You know, it's the kind of thing that, I mean, how can it get so bad so quickly?

And I mean, there are factors obviously with hurricanes and companies pulling out of the state and all that, but you just think, oh my God, how did it get to this point?

And then what do you do to solve it?

I mean, if it were easily fixed, it'd be easily fixed.

- It's a tough riddle to solve.

There's no question about that.

- It's something the legislature's gonna have to come and voters can come a year from now and see what the results are when they're get their next property insurance bills.

Has it gone up or down?

And that will be the measure of success about whatever reforms they institute.

- Talk about measuring.

- Right.

Exactly.

- That's gonna be real easy to see.

What about economic growth here in northwest Florida?

We are seeing a lot of people come in, in here.

What do you think is the main driver from that perspective, other than just the fact that the state of Florida is the place to be right now, but what do you think is our strength right now, if you will, besides just the state of Florida, but Pensacola and Northwest Florida in particular?

- Well, it's gotta be the weather, right?

(everyone laughing) - I think had a lot of reports of people coming here after Covid because a lot of white collar jobs have gone remote and people can have the choice to live wherever they want.

So you, you saw, you've seen Pensacola ranked on list of like best places to have a remote working job and that type of thing.

You see growth coming in that way.

- I think, you know, Florida West during the Covid really worked on the cyber coast concept.

I think the airport is a huge advantage for us now with all the direct flights that we have that they can just as easily fly from here to Atlanta for a meeting, then drive in Atlanta to go to somewhere.

I think that's been a huge plus for us.

And I think that that, you know, we've just sort of been discovered, which is the other piece.

I think that that because of the airport and the attitude, Santa Rosa has available land that's really close to the interstate more than Escambia County does.

That gives them a huge advantage.

Their school system is better.

That helps.

But Escambia County's holding its own there too.

- Yeah.

Agreed.

The economic environment, clearly.

I'm kind of partial to thinking that it's, you know, political ideology, but I think the reality is people love the fact that they don't have to pay the income tax.

You know, that's great.

Clearly it's a thriving place if you're a business person.

Do you want to be in New York at twice the taxes or do you want to be in Florida and, you know, do things well.

The flip side of that is then do we have, back to the issues, do we have the housing for people?

Do we have the schools that are adequate to teach the kids of the people that we say we want to have a move here.

You know, we've heard how this is an issue for the military.

It's clearly an issue for other sectors of the community.

I mean, how many people that work at Navy Federal live in Escambia County?

I mean some for sure.

But an awful lot commute, right?

Why?

Well schools quality.

So do we have that to, you know, continue to give the things that they basically need or not?

And I read a really fascinating piece in, I think it was USA Today.

It was basically somebody from New York arguing, you know, hey, if y'all are gonna go to Florida, that's fine, but just 'cause you're going there for the economic benefits, can we please do something about the politics too?

I'm like, no.

You know, stop trying to mess with what we've got going so well, and you know, I think that's a draw is people like the package of what they see in Florida.

Like you say what they, we've been discovered.

- About three minutes left here.

So I'll ask each one of you, what's the biggest thing you see on the horizon for 2023?

Rick, what are we going to talk about next year?

- We'll be talking about the children's trust, they have got $16,000,000.

They're starting to, they're going to have to give some of it out and they're gonna have to figure out what their metrics are and how they measure it.

It is a huge trough and we've got a lot of hogs at it.

So at the end of the day, can they make the difference that they promised the community that we were gonna be able to make?

So for us, the children's trust is, it could be this huge difference maker and hopefully they'll get their act together.

But I think that's where I'm looking for next year.

- Jim?

- You know, I think we're going to enter the new year, kind of the same way we did this last year with people upset about power rates increases that we got two more coming on the horizon in January and potentially April.

So we may see that whole drama play out again going into next year.

- Andrew?

- Yeah, no, I think that's fair.

And that could become the albatross for DeSantis, right?

If there are enough people in Northwest Florida suffering with outrageous power bills that they can't understand that they feel they've got no relief from, you know, how much does that blunt his ability to run towards the presidency, if he decides to do that?

I, frankly, am really interested to see if DC can manage to break the log jam at Community Maritime Park.

I mean that just has been, Not yet.

Not yet.

Not yet.

And now with the price of construction, you know, we heard the, what the parking spaces were, I think it was like 12,000 a piece and then it's now it's 30,000 a piece.

And it kind of could be kind of, well, did we miss our window to do something there?

Again, Santa Rosa is really thriving with economic development, all kinds of businesses coming.

Can Escambia attract, you know, we're still trying to figure out the Bella interchange and we're still, what are we doing doing on OLFA?

Will that be a thing?

So it's, I see Escambia with lots of potential, but can we really bring any of that into land?

- It's gonna be interesting.

As we've done these programs over the past, whatever it's been, eight, nine years or something like that, probably.

It's just amazing how much the area has changed just over that short period of time.

- [Rick] It is.

- And for the most part, I would say in a positive way.

Wouldn't you?

- Very, very.

- Yeah.

Would you agree, Andrew?

'Cause you've been with us most of the show.

- Yeah, I mean, I see lots of growth, you know, lots and lots of growth.

There's certainly more to do all the time.

If there's any one thing that I see going in the other direction, it's the base access.

That is a huge loss for the community and you know, everybody's trying their best to figure it out and nobody seems to have a great plan yet that Navy's willing to sign off for, but generally good.

Yeah.

- Jim, thanks for being with us this time around.

- Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

- And, of course, you are publishing in the Pensacola News Journal and pnj.com.

- Yes sir.

Every day.

- [Jeff] Alright.

- Jim does outstanding work at the PNJ.

- He really does, he really does.

And we really appreciate you taking some time to come join us this time around.

And of course you guys.

- Good to be back.

- Great to have you.

We have been looking back on some of the big stories of 2022 and doing a little prognosticating on 2023.

Our guests have been Rick Elson.

He is the owner and publisher of the Inweekly Newspaper and also Rick's Blog.

He's also a host on the radio of Real News weekday mornings on WCOA AM 1370.

Jim Little, first time on the program, but we were greatly pleasured to have him with us.

He is a reporter for the Pensacola News Journal and he covers local government and politics.

And of course, he's back with us this year after missing last year.

From News Radio 92.3 FM and AM 1620.

He's the host of Pensacola Morning News, Andrew McKay.

Thank you all.

I wish you all the very best.

And thank you all for watching our program.

By the way, I'll let you know you can find this program, along with many more of our local programs on the PBS video app as well as at wsre.org.

I'm Jeff Weeks wishing all of you the very best this holiday season and in the new year.

Thank you for watching.

Take wonderful care of yourself and we'll see you in 2023.

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