Dems say GOP legislative blitz aims for complete control in Tallahassee
TALLAHASSEE — Despite Florida’s national reputation as the ultimate swing state, Republicans have held a tight grip on power in the Capitol, winning election after election and controlling the Legislature and the governor’s mansion for 20 years.
Democrats and liberal activist groups fear that grip is about to get tighter.
Republicans in the Legislature are advancing bills this year that would make it harder for citizens to push ballot measures or for liberal groups to challenge GOP-inspired laws in court.
“It’s called consolidation of power. I think that’s what the emperor in Star Wars called it,” said Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens.
One bill would make it harder for felons to vote after they get out of prison. Another would move court challenges to laws away from Leon County, long seen as a left-leaning judicial bench by Republican legislative leaders. A bill to rework mail-in ballot laws is in the works as well.
Republicans, though, say they’re following the will of the voters, responding to the hiccups of the last election and recount and giving flexibility to the courts.
Rep. Blaise Ingoglia defended the GOP’s efforts, saying his elections bill (HB 7101), which would move vote-by-mail deadlines up to give supervisors of elections more time to process and impose on county supervisors of elections rules for handling ballots, is intended to streamline Florida’s vote counting process in light of the recounts after last year’s election.
“It is very hard to argue voter suppression in a state where you have now 40 days with this bill, currently 35 days of voting, with three real main ways to vote – in person on election day, vote by mail and in person early voting,” Ingoglia said. Orlando attorney John Morgan says proposed legislation could make it tough to gather signatures for petition drives. Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill,defended GOP efforts to place restrictions on petition gathering and other actions.
But the measures (HB 7111/SB 7096) that have received the most pushback from Democrats and advocacy groups would place more hurdles in the way of groups trying to gather petitions to place amendments on the ballot.
It would require groups to register with the Secretary of State; mandate that petition gatherers reside in Florida for at least 29 days; and place the economic impact and costs associated with the measure in bold print next to the ballot summary.
During the era of Republican control, ballot amendments have been the only avenue for liberal groups to make policy gains in Tallahassee. Amendments calling for class size requirements in schools (2002), banning gerrymandering (2010) and requiring more spending on land conservation (2014) were all approved by voters despite opposition from GOP leaders.
Of the recent successful citizen initiatives, including medical marijuana in 2016 and restricting casino expansion to citizens’ votes last year, third-party groups pushing the measures hired out of state firms to collect petitions.
John Morgan, the Orlando attorney who bankrolled the medical marijuana measure, is in the middle of another petition drive for the 2020 ballot, this time to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2026.
The bill could seriously dent those efforts. Morgan said he has about 350,000 of the 766,200 signatures required. Through February, state campaign finance records show he’s spent
more than $513,000 on two California-based petition gathering companies.
Morgan said he believes the bill will make petition drives more expensive and is being pushed by Republican lawmakers to prevent initiatives like his medical marijuana amendment. He pledged to ramp up his efforts for the $15 minimum wage campaign in anticipation of the bill, “unless they make it impossible.”
“I’m willing to swim, but you can’t swim with a ball and chain around your leg,” Morgan said.
In addition to the petition bill, there is a push to eliminate or restrict the Constitution Revision Commission, a panel that meets every 20 years to propose constitutional amendments to voters.
The CRC placed seven amendments on the 2018 ballot, but bundled several provisions, forcing voters to ban offshore oil drilling and workplace vaping in the same measure. Another five amendments were placed on the ballot by citizens’ initiatives or by the Legislature.
After voters approved 11 out of 12 proposed amendments, even with the 60 percent threshold needed to make it into law, GOP lawmakers blanched, and have pushed bills to eliminate the CRC or ban it from bundling different subjects in the future.
Republicans deny their aim is to close off the amendment process entirely. Instead, they say they want an orderly ballot process, while making it harder for wealthy, out-of-state interests to change the state constitution.
“If it is going to go to the voters, the voters ought to have full transparency over what’s behind it, what are the challenges [and] what are the things [they] need to think through if they’re going to make a vote as significant as amending the constitution,” said Rep. James Grant, R-Tampa, sponsor of HB 7111.
Grant has also been the target of Democrats’ ire for sponsoring another bill to set standards defining when felons who’ve served their sentence can get their right to vote back. Amendment 4 allowing for voting rights restitution was passed by voters last year, and Grant’s bill would require felons to pay all restitution and court costs imposed by a judge before voting again.
Democrats have likened the bill (HB 7089) to a poll tax, a Jim Crow-era mechanism used to prevent African-Americans from voting. Grant denies that, saying he’s only following the intent of the groups that put the measure on the ballot, who argued in court the fines would have to be paid.
The potential cumulative effect of the bills, though, is angering Democrats who, heavily outnumbered by Republicans in the state House 71-46 and 23-17 in the Senate, see ballot measures as the only way to push their causes.
“They want to make it that much more difficult so that they have the only say,” said Rep. Evan Jenne, DDania Beach. “To me, it’s pretty cut and dry.”
But he also admitted if Democrats want to prevent Republicans from acting on these measures, they need to win some elections.
“Oh, it’s long past been our responsibility to do that,” Jenne said. “Look, I’m not one that will shy away from the truth. The truth is, we failed in a lot of fronts cycle after cycle, year after year.”