Judicial temperament?

Hours after delivering his broadside Farmer declared that he wanted to run for a different kind of elective office. He filed paperwork Thursday afternoon to run for Broward circuit court judge — a position that requires a completely different kind of temperament than the one he displayed Wednesday night.

In an interview Wednesday night Farmer said he hadn’t made up his mind what he was going to run for and said he was still considering running for another term in the Senate, in a crowded Democratic primary for Congress, or even for a statewide office of attorney general or agriculture commissioner.

He said he was confident he could win whatever office would decide to seek.

“I’ve shown I’m a pretty strong fundraiser and I think I’ll be able to compete in whatever seat,” Farmer said.

Democrats

The senator said there is a “growing trend of other Democrats enabling Republicans” to advance their agenda.

“Why? Because my colleagues have Stockholm Syndrome … where the captive identifies with their captor,” he said.

In Farmer’s view Democrats have been in the minority for so long that they sacrifice their principles in order to pass “some stupid little bill” or land an appropriation to brag about to constituents.

“Listen, I want to build sidewalks and widen roads and build parks —I really do,” he said. “But I’m not gonna compromise these other issues to get my budget item passed.”

He offered three examples in which he said Democrats could have stalled Republicans or made them pay a political price. One involved the legislation prohibiting abortions in Florida after the 15th week of pregnancy with no exemptions for cases in which the pregnancy resulted from rape, incest or human trafficking — something Farmer called “horrific, heartless, torture and cruel.”

Farmer said he pushed for lengthy debates on aspects of the legislation, and attempted to filibuster to “drag this out, embarrass them.” But, he lamented, other Democrats wouldn’t go along, likening it to charging up a hill and looking back to “see no one there. It’s a disheartening terrible feeling.”

He also said Democrats made a strategic failure when Book presented an amendment that would add an exemption for rape, incest and human trafficking. Based on his conversations with a dozen Republicans, Farmer said eight would have voted for the amendment — enough to get it added to the bill.

But, he said, the Democratic Senate caucus didn’t demand a roll-call vote to officially vote “yes” or “no,” a move he said would have shamed some Republicans, and instead allowed the presiding Republican to declare the amendment had failed on a voice vote with no record.

Farmer faulted Book — using her title, “minority leader,” instead of her name — for alerting Republicans during the debate that they were off the hook and wouldn’t have to record their votes.

“We gave the Republicans a pass,” he said.

The two other examples were technical, involving exemptions to the state’s powerful requirements for open government and public records.

One allowed much of the selection process for state university presidents to be conducted outside of public view. The other imposed secrecy on the so-called “cocktail” for administering the lethal injections used to execute condemned prisoners.

Both could have been blocked if all Democrats refused to go along because passage requires a two-thirds vote, one of the few areas in which the minority party has enough power to stop something. In both cases, enough Democrats voted for the measures to allow them to pass.