Editorial: As lawmakers cower, DeSantis looms ever larger

A state legislator from North Florida with the unlikely name of Wankard Pooser once filed a bill to abolish Florida’s “figurehead” Legislature. His reasoning: Lawmakers only did what the governor told them to do anyway.

That was in 1945. If Pooser were alive today, he might say: “I told you so.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis singlehandedly exerts an authoritarian control over the state to an extent unparalleled in its history. He’s the first Florida governor who:

-- Asserted “executive privilege” as a legal strategy to defy public records laws.

-- Restricted peaceful protest on the grounds of the state Capitol.

-- Suspended an elected state attorney who did nothing wrong.

-- Fired a state university president and replaced her with an overpaid political crony.

-- Demanded a harsh defamation law that would make it perilous for citizens, not just the media, to criticize the government.

-- Misused the state budget by spending money, without legislative approval, to ship migrants from Texas to Massachusetts.

-- Meddled in local school board races and threatened an elected county superintendent over his political views.

-- Pushed for people to carry concealed weapons without background checks or minimal training required by law.

-- Demanded and got personal medical records of university students to further his political crusade against transgender citizens. Not even the notoriously homophobic Johns Committee of the 1960s was so intrusive.

The DeSantis dog whistle

DeSantis’s demonizing of what he calls “woke” culture is a transparent dog whistle to racist voters — something no Florida governor had indulged since the 1960s. He bends every state agency to his whims.

The recent coup at New College of Florida in Sarasota sent shock waves through the higher education system. DeSantis means to convert New College into a sunbaked, taxpayer-funded replica of right-wing Hillsdale College in Michigan.

No governor can become a dictator in America unless his state’s legislature enables it, as Florida’s is doing for DeSantis.

The harm the Florida Legislature is doing for DeSantis will outlast his term as governor. So will the wreckage of a constitutional government based on the separation of powers. To take one of many examples, DeSantis’ proposal for a permanent ban on public or private vaccination requirements could mean mass deaths in the next pandemic.

The word “oversight” has two contradictory meanings. The Legislature applies the wrong one.

When the Supreme Court called for an unnecessary and wasteful sixth district court of appeal, the Legislature swiftly approved it, creating more judgeships for DeSantis’ fellow Federalist Society ideologues.

To punish the Disney Corp. for its tepid questioning of his gay-bashing legislation, he had the Legislature make a law so fraught with disaster for local taxpayers that it had to be rewritten before its effective date. But DeSantis is now overlord of Disney World.

The College Board objected to his distorted take on its Advanced Placement Black studies course, so he’s threatening to ban AP courses from Florida schools, a tremendous blow to students to whom they give a head start in college. He’s targeting the board’s SAT tests, too.

When DeSantis demanded that the Legislature flout the state Constitution with a blatant political gerrymander of congressional districts, it complied.

When he wanted legislation to bleach the history of racism from Florida’s schoolbooks and school curricula, the Legislature extended the censorship even to sensitivity training in private workplaces.

It wasn’t always this way

Not so long ago, a more assertive Florida Legislature would not have tolerated any of that, even from a governor of the same party.

Republican lawmakers defied the popular Jeb Bush over medical malpractice damage limits. They overrode Charlie Crist’s budget vetoes. They rejected Rick Scott’s poorly executed plan to privatize 27 state prisons.

But rather than challenge how DeSantis illegally spent $1.5 million to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, the Legislature simply forgave him and rewrote the law retroactively in a recent special session.

In the 1960s, reapportionment ordered by the courts finally ended a rural-dominated system that gave control of the Legislature to fewer than 20% of the voters. The new urban and suburban legislators brought good intentions to Tallahassee along with Florida’s first modern two-party system.

In 1971, the Citizens Council on State Legislatures said Florida’s had become the most independent legislature, and the fourth best overall among the 50 states. Most importantly, many legislators of those bygone days prided themselves on being servants of the people rather than puppets of either party or any governor.

As another regular session is about to get underway, Florida’s future as a democracy depends on whether more of its members can be touched by the better angels of our history. But the trend lines are not encouraging.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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