Florida GOP losing on ideas, so party is changing rules
Gov. Ron DeSantis opined last week that Florida should hold a separate election for constitutional amendments. Why stop there?
Allow amendment voting from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m., reversing the normal schedule. Forbid early voting. Allow Democrats and independents to vote only if they can show current payments on all debt.
That sounds absurd, but it sounds less absurd when you consider the barriers DeSantis and fellow Republicans created for amendment petition drives with House Bill 5. And DeSantis sounded absurd last week when he tried to defend the idea of a separate election.
“Maybe it would cost a little more for the state,” the governor said. Well, yeah. It would be another statewide election. DeSantis also complained that general election ballots are too long. But House Bill 5 also requires that all local tax surcharge proposals be on the general election ballot, thus making the ballot longer.
Finally, DeSantis whined about the difficulty of voting on changes to the Florida Constitution. Some proposals can befuddle voters, especially those who don’t read newspapers that regularly publish coherent explanations of the amendments.
But come on. DeSantis was just continuing the Republican assault on the right of Floridians to petition their government — especially when Republicans oppose the idea. The governor’s idea would be comical if it didn’t reveal the arrogance his party has developed after two decades of unchecked power.
Republicans built that power through redistricting, by drawing legislative maps that diluted the influence of Democratic voters. GOP leaders cut deals with African-American legislators, guaranteeing them safe seats at the expense of their party. Republicans then could advertise the maps as bipartisan.
Meanwhile, statewide Democrats with crossover appeal — former governors Lawton Chiles and Bob Graham — hit term limits or retired and the party had no bench. It’s been a quarter-century since a Democrat became governor. It’s been nearly 30 years since the party controlled the Florida House or Senate.
Except for rare moments in the Senate, the Republicans have made no attempt at bipartisanship. Neither DeSantis nor Rick Scott won a majority. Yet GOP-run Tallahassee passes far-right policy — from privatization of public education to a ban on “sanctuary cities” that don’t exist — and coddles corporate interests — from agriculture to insurance to utilities.
Shut out legislatively, Floridians with opposing viewpoints must try to change the constitution. That can be awkward. Protection for pregnant pigs comes to mind. Yet the approach has succeeded on major issues.
The resistance began in 2002, when voters approved amendments lowering class size and creating a statewide pre-kindergarten program. Another big victory came in 2010, with approval of amendments against gerrymandering. Voters allowed medical marijuana in 2016. Last year, they overturned Jim Crow-era rules on restoration of ex-felons’ civil rights that Gov. Rick Scott and the all-Republican Cabinet had imposed in 2011.
Tallahassee’s response has been the political equivalent of a raised middle finger. Republicans have slow-walked implementation of every change they opposed. They continued to draw partisan districts until a court ruled against them. They persuaded voters to raise the threshold for amendment approval from a simple majority to 60 percent.
Yet amendments still passed. In the pipeline for 2020 are proposals that would expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, raise the minimum wage, allow independents to vote in primaries, ban the sort of weapon used in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting and deregulate electric power.
So Republicans passed House Bill 5. It makes petition drives more expensive and imposes new rules on petition campaigns. The staff analysis cited no problem this legislation supposedly sought to correct. That’s because the problem is one of politics, not policy.
Democrats suffered their own rot from years of controlling Tallahassee. In the early 1990s, then-House Speaker Bo Johnson used his office to secure money for an unneeded bridge in his Panhandle district. Johnson happened to own land in the path of construction. In 1999, he went to prison for tax evasion. He had taken $500,000 from interests with business before the Legislature.
Arrogance leads to political blindness in all forms. Several amendments that Republicans fiercely opposed did better than the four GOP governors, including Jeb Bush. Rather than broaden its appeal, the party wants to silence all dissent. Absurd doesn’t begin to describe it.