Early polls, tight races, collapsing fraud cases, and Rick Scott’s bad bet

It’s Monday, Sept. 5, and we hope you’re relaxing this Labor Day and honoring the value of hard work and good people.

We’re here to give you your weekly rundown of Florida’s politics and policy and, while we’ve got lots to cover, here’s the lightning-round version of what Florida’s candidates for governor have been up to:

Where was Ron? Gov. Ron DeSantis began the week by canceling a $25,000-a-plate fundraiser for New York Republican gubernatorial nominee Rep. Lee Zeldin to attend services for a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent killed in the line of duty. He announced a lawsuit against the FDA to import cheaper drugs from Canada, and used the moment to blast his challenger, Democrat Charlie Crist’s, choice for running mate.

The governor also asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit from former Hillsborough County state attorney Andrew Warren. He called President Biden’s condemnation of “anti-democratic” Republican extremism “one of the most disgusting speeches an American president has ever given,’’ and he showed up in Amelia Island on Sunday to receive an endorsement from the Florida Transportation Builders’ Association.

Where was Charlie? Crist began the week officially resigning from Congress to focus on campaigning. He announced a plan to increase tax incentives to attract film and television production and he launched a Spanish-language radio ad in Miami pushing back on Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez’s comments that the governor is planning to bus recent Cuban migrants to President Biden’s home state of Delaware.

Crist held a rally at packed Coral Gables church on Friday, spent Saturday with Venezuelan community leaders for a roundtable in Weston, visited a local small business in Pembroke Pines and joined Broward County’s AFL-CIO Labor Ball Dinner. Crist also announced he had raised $3 million in he first nine days since the nomination, and on Sunday, Crist watched as FAMU lost to Jackson State at the Orange Blossom Classic in Miami Gardens.

Early polls, tightening races: The left-leaning Progress Florida and Florida Watch conducted a post-primary poll and found that the race for governor remains close, with incumbent DeSantis receiving 48% of the vote and Crist earning 45%. Their poll showed that the U.S. Senate race is even tighter with incumbent Republican Sen. Marco Rubio drawing 46% to 45% against Democratic challenger, Congresswoman Val Demings.

WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

Voter fraud cases collapsing: Two weeks after the governor announced the arrest of 20 people for voting illegally, the state’s case is starting to fall apart. Under Florida law, the state must prove that those arrested intended to willfully violate the law, but in 2020 when the suspects voted, the state didn’t flag any of the them as ineligible to vote despite their past felony records for sexual offenses or murder. Each of them received a voter ID card from county elections officials authorizing them to vote. Amid the conflicting messages coming from the governor and state elections officials, voting rights advocates now are urging those arrested to fight the charges.

Legal scholars blast suspension: DeSantis’ suspension of Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren also came under fire last week from more than 100 legal scholars and dozens of former judges, prosecutors and police chiefs. They submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in a federal lawsuit arguing the move runs counter to professional standards, sets a dangerous precedent, and violates the constitutional separation of powers.

Rick Scott’s bad bet: In a revealing scoop, the New York Times reported over the weekend that the National Republican Senatorial Committee under the direction of Florida Sen. Rick Scott raised a record $181.5 million entering August, but has spent 95% of it, much of it on a digital investment gone bad. Internal documents show that the texting scheme was so deceptive that the Republican’s party’s main donation-processing platform, WinRed, even cracked down.

Critics accused Scott of using the operation to promote himself, as he eyes a presidential bid in 2024. Reporter Shane Goldmacher, Tweeted a detail he didn’t include in the story: That records show the NRSC spent $225,000 on Google ads promoting videos of Scott in his signature Navy hat on social media. One ad, for example, was shown 3 million times at a cost of $50,000-60,000.

Running on vagueness: Karla Hernández-Mats, Crist’s running mate and president of the United Teachers of Dade, rose through union ranks with Wendell Nibbs, who is now a convicted sexual predator serving an eight-year prison sentence for three counts of sexual battery against minors. Between 2004 and 2016, he faced five sexual misconduct complaints from students and one from a teacher, all of which were deemed unfounded by the district. Hernández-Mats has said in the past that she knew nothing about his behavior, but neither she nor the campaign have addressed it head-on in the face of criticism from the DeSantis camp.

The internet never forgets. Both DeSantis and Crist have modified their positions on many issues over the years, and scrubbed their web sites of much of that nuance today. So we took a look at their former web sites to see how their positions have changed.

Rubio stokes culture wars: U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio hammered cultural issues during a speech with faith leaders in Davie last week, warning about what he said was encroaching Marxist teachings and a “cultural purge” of Christian values by Democrats.

Demings clarifies abortion stance: A day after Rubio attacked Demings for supporting “abortion on demand,” she said she supports women or girls having the right to an abortion “up to the time of viability of the fetus.” Demings told the Miami Herald that while she knows fetus viability is widely considered to be at 24 weeks, she believes that every woman or girl should have the right to consult with a doctor to make a decision to end a pregnancy.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

One gubernatorial debate: It looks like there will only be one debate between DeSantis and Crist. Early reports indicate it will be Oct. 12 on the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s CBS 12 in West Palm Beach. No word on whether it will be widely broadcast. The DeSantis’ campaign has rejected the one debate that was scheduled to be broadcast statewide.

DeSantis participated in the “Before You Vote” debate four years ago, but has backed out this year. It was sponsored by The James Madison Institute, AARP Florida, Florida Trend, the LeRoy Collins Institute, the Florida Press Association, the Florida League of Cities and the Everglades Foundation, and was scheduled to be televised statewide on Oct. 20

Parent-less Cuban kids keep coming: Hundreds of unaccompanied Cuban children have shown up at the U.S.-Mexico border this past year, as more parents appear to be sending their kids away amid deteriorating conditions in Cuba that have already brought a record number of people from the island to the United States. Since October, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has had 662 encounters with unaccompanied Cuban children at the southern border, compared to 32 encounters in the fiscal year 2021 and 57 encounters in 2020. That’s a 1,969% increase between the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years alone.

Turmoil at Truth Social: Donald Trump removed himself from the board of his Sarasota-based social media company which owns Truth Social, just weeks before the company was issued federal subpoenas by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and a grand jury in Manhattan, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reported last week. Trump, the chairman of Trump Media and Technology Group, was one of six board members removed on June 8 and on June 27, the company was served a subpoena by the SEC.

Guilty verdict in ghost candidate case: In what is the first conviction for violating the state’s straw donor ban against making campaign contributions in someone else’s name, Seminole County GOP Chairman Ben Paris was found guilty last week of funding a “ghost” candidate in the 2020 state Senate District 9 race, in violation of state campaign finance law. It was the second conviction and first jury verdict in the probe over two of the three state Senate races where spoiler candidates were recruited and used to siphon votes away from Democrats to benefit Republicans. Will there be more?

NextEra shares ‘impacted’: The lawsuit between Florida Power & Light’s former political consultant, Matrix LLC, and the former Matrix executives who left the company was settled last week, and at least one securities analyst took note. A Bank of America’s stock analyst predicted the “noise” over the scandals involving ghost candidates, tracking journalists and buying a “news” outlet “should quiet.” The analyst also indicated that the scandals had an impact on FPL’s parent company, NextEra: “Shares of (NextEra) in particular have been impacted by the allegations despite the company’s consistent denial of any wrongdoing.”

Cabinet decision could cost pension fund: A week after the governor and Cabinet banned the state’s pension fund managers from considering “social, political, or ideological interests” when making investment decisions, the director of the trade group that promotes sustainable investment proclaimed that the decision will result in increased costs to the state’s pensioners. Bryan McGannon, director of policy and programs at the trade group US SIF told Bloomberg.com that Florida’s decision is to say that climate change isn’t a financial issue in a state whose 8,000 miles of coastline make it highly vulnerable to flooding “just doesn’t make sense” and is “clearly tied to politics.”

State wants answers from Miami-Dade schools: The grand jury report that recommended the suspension of four Broward School Board members for safety and other concerns has also criticized of Miami-Dade and three other school boards. Following the critique, the Miami-Dade School District received a letter from the Florida Department of Education last week, asking district leaders to meet with officials from the state education department to discuss safety issues identified in the 122-page Florida grand jury report released last month. Superintendents in Broward, Duval, Orange, and Palm Beach counties were notified of similar concerns.

New school board: The four new Broward School Board members appointed by DeSantis to replace those suspended as a result of the grand jury report were sworn in last week. They all vowed to bring change to the school district, despite three of their terms ending in just a few months.

Joe Martinez accused of accepting bribe: Miami-Dade Commissioner Joe Martinez surrendered and was briefly jailed last week as he faces criminal charges for allegedly accepting $15,000 in exchange for sponsoring a law more than five years ago to help a shopping plaza that had been repeatedly slapped with fines for code violations. Martinez, 64, went from providing oversight to the county’s jail system as a Miami-Dade commissioner for nearly 18 years to being an inmate for five hours after surrendering to authorities to face criminal charges.

He faces a possible suspension from office by the governor and has proclaimed his innocence, lashing out at prosecutors and calling the case “politically motivated.”

Teacher assignment sparks probe: A substitute teacher at Nolan Middle School near Bradenton came under fire last week for handing out an assignment promoting former President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud.

The assignment read: “’The media is often biased and will add words that persuade you to think one way over another. Read these two statements made by reporters after the 2020 election: ‘President Trump made claims that the 2020 election was stolen.’ ‘President Trump made false claims that the 2020 election was stolen’.” The district launched an investigation after officials concluded the assignment “does not meet” the district’s expectations.

Global rebuke for anti-riot law: A United Nations committee tasked with monitoring human rights across the globe has released a new report condemning the 2021 Combating Public Disorder law passed by Florida Republican legislators and signed by DeSantis that attempts to limit assembly in reaction to the protests that erupted across the U.S. in the summer of 2020.

Foundation lawsuit settled: The Everglades Foundation settled its lawsuit accusing its former lead scientist Thomas Van Lent of stealing or destroying numerous undisclosed trade secrets when he quit in February, according to court documents, the Florida Bulldog reported. The terms of the confidential agreement were not made public, although Van Lent agreed to accept a permanent injunction prohibiting him from “directly or indirectly” disclosing any of the Everglades Foundation’s “confidential information” to anyone. Earlier, Van Lent’s lawyers had told the court “no trade secrets exist.”

New marijuana rule: The Florida Department of Health released a highly anticipated rule setting THC dosage amounts and supply limits on products doctors can order for medical-marijuana patients. The emergency rule sets a 70-day total supply limit of 24,500 mg of THC for non-smokable marijuana and establishes dosage caps for different routes of administration such as edibles, inhalation and tinctures.

A book recommendation: If you want a good read this holiday, historian Nicole Hemmer’s latest book, Partisans, is a fascinating analysis of how the post-Reagan era set in motion today’s Republican Party. She chronicles how the GOP’s steady shift towards the politics of fear and resentment did not begin with Trump but was the result of a quarter century of structural issues at the end of the Cold War that moved the party away from free trade, immigration, and towards “more overt racism” and nativism (beginning with the “Buchanan fence” in the 1990s which morphed into Trump’s border wall).

The causes, she argues, range from the shifting media ecosystem to the way populism and resentment work. Hemmer warns that the movement questions “whether everyone in the United States is ‘fit’ for democracy” and whether democracy is “the best form of government.” Whether Trump is re-elected or not, she concludes, “the foundations of democracy” will continue to be shaken “unless we address the root causes of the change.”

Thank you for reading. Now WE HAVE SOME QUESTIONS! The Miami Herald is conducting a short survey of readers to help us better gauge interest in our politics coverage. We’d be grateful if you’d give it a look here.

Miami Herald Capitol Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Klas curates the Politics and Policy in the Sunshine State newsletter. We appreciate our readers and if you have any ideas or suggestions, please drop me a note at meklas@miamiherald.com.

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