Newsletter: Peaceful protests, legislative elections launch and judge has Epstein conflicts

It’s Monday, June 8, and we are now on our third week of protests against police brutality, the 15th week of Florida’s public acknowledgment of the coronavirus, and the official start of the election season for state political candidates.

Demonstrators flooded city streets from Miami to Tallahassee again last weekend but kept their action mostly peaceful in near-daily rallies. The message of the movement expanded from “justice for George,’’ to one that now includes demands for “defunding the police” and reforming policing and the criminal justice system.

Also today, candidate qualifying begins through noon on Friday for all 120 seats in the state House of Representatives and 21 of the 40 state Senate offices, as well as for many local elections.

WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

Here’s why the confluence of these two events matter: The longer these protests continue, the more organized the Black Lives Matter movement becomes. The broader its reach and the more new energy activists bring to the election cycle, the stronger the influence it will have on both candidates and debates in November.

Remember, the shooting at Parkland happened in an election year. Parkland protesters activated young people, women, and gun-control advocates, enrolling thousands of new and often young voters. While the student-led March for Our Lives movement had mixed success defeating pro-gun candidates in 2018, “the traumatized generation” became the “energized generation,’’ said John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. The Harvard analysis found voters between the ages of 18 and 29 turned out in greater numbers on election day for down-ballot races across the country.

Breaking his silence: Also last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis broke his silence over the protests. It happened two days after President Trump urged governors to get tough on demonstrators and after the president used federal law enforcement to disperse a crowd of protesters in a D.C. park so he could walk to a church for a photo.

Speaking at a news conference in Orlando last Wednesday, DeSantis made no reference to Trump, his close ally, but announced that he sent 500 Florida National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., to help manage the demonstrators. He also said he was “absolutely appalled” by the death of George Floyd, the man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes. (The Washington Post reported that troops started withdrawing from D.C. on Sunday.)

DeSantis said he asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which he oversees, whether police in Florida are allowed to use such a tactic. They’re not, he said.

Less social distancing: The governor made his comments while announcing that most businesses in Florida — with the exception of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach — would be expanding to a Phase 2 reopening. That means bars and movie theaters and other businesses are allowed to open at half capacity. Questions remain as to what enforcement, if any, state officials have employed to enforce the remaining social distancing rules. Palm Beach has asked to go to Phase 2, and Miami-Dade and Broward are reopening some businesses this week.

Relentless and restrained: The images from the protests this week were a study in contrasts. Protesters knelt in the streets of Historic Overtown, a brass band played in Wynwood, protesters blocked highways without incident, and police assembled in riot gear, armed with tear gas and prepared for battle.

Police throughout Miami-Dade managed to show restraint with few exceptions, but tensions mounted in Fort Lauderdale. On Monday, Fort Lauderdale patrol officer Steven Pohorence was suspended for knocking over a protester, an incident caught on video. Records show Pohorence had been investigated 79 times over three-and-a-half years for use of force.

Good news: The move by states to loosen coronavirus lockdowns has led more businesses to recall workers than economists expected, sending a surge of optimism into America’s economic recovery despite ongoing concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic. On Friday, the U.S. unemployment rate fell in May to 13.3% — still on par with what the nation witnessed during the Great Depression but better than estimates.

Florida’s employment situation also continues to defy easy analysis. The state counts nearly 2 million individuals who have applied for unemployment since March 15, and is still seeing thousands of new jobless claims filed each week. But it is also seeing wild swings in the numbers of people who remain on unemployment after initially claiming it.

Convention business: One attempt to bring some more business to Florida is an election year pitch by the governor and others to steal the Republican National Convention from Charlotte. Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry last week said he wants his city to host the convention, which Republican leaders want to relocate from Charlotte because North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper won’t give assurances that coronavirus physical-distancing rules will be lifted for the late August event.

Bad news: As the governor loosened social-distancing rules, however, the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 continued to increase at an alarming rate. For the last five days, the state’s daily total of newly confirmed cases surpassed 1,000. Less than half of the new cases and new deaths were in South Florida, a sign that the presence of the virus is not declining in the rest of the state.

Because the state is testing more, the percentage of people reporting positive COVID-19 tests is declining, but the fact that more people are getting infected has some health experts worried it’s a sign that too many in Florida have their guard down. It’s also worth noting that there is a lag between the tests being done and the results being reported to the state. So, the true impact of the reopening probably hasn’t been measured yet.

Unprotected nursing homes: New data released Friday by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid shows that nearly one in five Florida nursing homes say they do not have a one-week supply of protective gowns or the N95 masks recommended for care of patients with COVID-19. It’s a window into the conditions at Florida’s nursing homes, which continue to be ravaged by the novel coronavirus even as much of the state reopens. As of Thursday, 1,332 people at long-term care facilities had died from COVID-19, more than half of all the deaths since the state started tracking deaths in March.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

Epstein’s judge: Will there will be any push back against Krista Marx, the Palm Beach chief judge who also heads a panel that polices judicial conduct? She has refused to release grand jury records in the Jeffrey Epstein case, and she also has both professional and family ties to three of the politicians who have a stake in keeping records in the sex-trafficking case secret.

State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who has been sued by the Palm Beach Post to release the grand jury records, employs Marx’s daughter as an assistant state attorney. Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, whose department’s favored treatment of Epstein while he was in the Palm Beach County jail and is part of an ongoing state criminal investigation, employs Marx’s son. And ex-State Attorney Barry Krischer, who decided not to prosecute Epstein on child-sex charges, is Marx’s former boss.

Hot contests: This is a rare election cycle with the only race on the statewide ballot being that of president. The next most-watched contests will be two open seats in swing districts being vacated by Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, and Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, who are leaving because of term limits.

Rep. Javier Fernandez, D-South Miami, and Rep. Ana Maria Rodriguez, R-Doral, are expected to qualify to compete to replace Flores in Senate District 39, which is made up of Monroe County and part of Miami-Dade County. In Senate District 9, which is made up of Seminole County and part of Volusia County, Democrat Patricia Sigman is expected to face former Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, to replace Simmons.

No weapons ban: What won’t be on the ballot is a ban on assault weapons. The citizen initiative fell short of the required number of signatures for 2020 but the Florida Supreme Court, which now has a majority appointed by DeSantis, rejected the language of the citizen-led proposal as well. A majority of justices focused on words they considered misleading.

G-bye Tom Lee: One surprise came last week when veteran Sen. Tom Lee, a Thonotosassa Republican and former Senate president, announced he will step down in November, two years before the scheduled end of his term. The move has created an open District 20, which includes parts of Hillsborough, Pasco and Polk counties.

Lee’s departure will mark the end of an era. A home builder by trade, Lee was an iconoclast who was never afraid to publicly defend his position, no matter how controversial. When he took votes that were contrary to the lock-step of his Republican colleagues, he usually offered a full-throated explanation. With experience that spanned 25 years of legislative history, Lee increasingly bristled at what he called “the transactional” politics that had consumed Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature. That kind of candor won Lee few friends in the Senate, but it elevated the debate, and let the public into a legislative process that has become increasingly closed.

Republican leaders quickly lined up to find a candidate to replace Lee: former Rep. Danny Burgess of Zephyrhills who left the House last year to become executive director of the Florida Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

Stay safe all and remember, the Miami Herald and McClatchy news sites have lifted the paywall for many stories related to the coronavirus but we very much need your help. To support vital reporting such as this, please consider a subscription for unlimited digital access.

Know someone who’d like to get this? Send this to a friend to receive our weekly newsletter on politics and policy.