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Session a feel for post-Jeb Florida

Don’t call him a lame duck, but a look back at the legislative session shows Gov. Jeb Bush is already leaving a vacuum. Just wait till the primaries.

By By ADAM C. SMITH
Published May 6, 2006

Jeb Bush, after nearly eight years in office, is too popular and too ambitious to be written off yet as a lame duck.

But lawmakers have started treating him like one.

A once-compliant Legislature this year sharply reduced his proposed tax cuts. Lawmakers rejected his two proposals to send rebate checks straight to property owners. They derailed the latest effort to scale back the class size amendment.Most stunningly, lawmakers killed his top priority of enshrining vouchers in the state Constitution.

“That’s what has everybody sort of stunned,” said state Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville. “Everybody I think when we came in thought, ‘This is the governor’s initiative, this is something that he staked a whole lot on for years.’ It was just kind of a given that it was a Republican initiative and it was going to pass.”

Florida is entering a period of profound transition: the post-Jeb era.

“He’s been the most powerful force in state government by a long shot. He’s almost always had an obedient Legislature that’s refused to second guess him,” said state Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach. “The fact that he’s leaving is going to leave a huge vacuum, and that’s probably a healthy thing for Floridians.”

Bush is still the most popular politician in Florida. He had significant victories this year, including a long-sought repeal of the “joint and several liability” legal doctrine and his prized “A++” bill that will let high school students select majors and minors.

But as Florida’s revolutionary-in-chief prepares to exit the stage, it’s no longer certain that core Jeb Bush priorities will continue to be embraced as core Republican priorities.

So much so in fact that this Legislature bucked Republican orthodoxy and approved a new tax that local voters can add to rental cars. The governor is mulling a veto.

“Sometimes we don’t want stuff shoved down our throats. Maybe there are some Republicans who are independent thinking,” said state Sen. Nancy Argenziano, R-Dunnellon, one of four Republicans who joined with Democrats to block the voucher bill.

By keeping the voucher constitutional amendment off the ballot this year, Democrats eliminated an issue that could have mobilized the Republican base in November. And at the same time, they may have limited the time the GOP’s best weapon, Bush, spends on the campaign trail.
Thanks to a nearly $5-billion budget surplus, Republicans head into campaign season with a lot to talk about for the general election, including tax breaks, environmental preservation and especially school spending.

“This is 63 percent larger than the biggest increase in state history. I think it is going to be the crowning achievement in this budget,” said Senate President Tom Lee, R-Valrico, who is running for chief financial officer.

With homeowners everywhere seeing their insurance bills jump by thousands of dollars, however, the Legislature’s efforts to mend Florida’s property insurance market is unlikely to mollify many voters.

“How do you go back and say, ‘Hey, we had a great session, I passed six bills, I got a ton of money in the budget and, oh, by the way, I raised your insurance 100 percent’? ” said state Rep. Ron Greenstein, D-Coconut Creek. “Did we bail out an industry or did we help people?”
Bush said he knows that complaint is coming.

“The question will be what do people want: Do they want leadership taking on the tough challenges or do they want demagoguery?” he said. “When I go campaigning for Republican candidates this year I will say, ‘Republicans took on the tough challenges in this state and did a good job.’ Democrats will have to go to the demagoging side.”

By accident or design, Bush’s grip on state politics started loosening well before his final legislative session.

A few years ago party leaders could clear the field for a chosen candidate and spare him or her a nasty primary, but this year the gubernatorial primary between Attorney General Charlie Crist and Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher is shaping up to be brutal. Bush has embraced neither, since his preferred candidate, Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings, took a pass on the race.

Republican Senate candidate Katherine Harris looks to many party leaders like a train wreck in the making, but nobody has been able to push her out. They’re hoping state House Speaker Allan Bense jumps into the race next week to take on Harris in a potentially divisive primary.

Meanwhile the governor known for having his fingers in every aspect of state government stayed on the sidelines while a bitter internal fight between Republican factions over the 2008 senate presidency helped kill Bush’s prized voucher amendment.

The fight between state Sens. Jeff Atwater of North Palm Beach and Alex Villalobos of Miami left lingering strife that may spill over into this year’s Republican primaries and next year’s legislative session.

Republican former House Speaker John Thrasher lamented that 10 years after the GOP took control of the Legislature, leaders are starting to make some of the missteps Democrats did as the majority party.

“There’s a tendency to get a little bit jealous of each other in terms of leadership races,” Thrasher said. “And maybe you forget what got you here. I think what got us here were basically conservative Republican principles, not moderate Republican principles.”

Other lawmakers from both parties are convinced the GOP will move more to the middle as Bush exits.

State Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua, a Democratic candidate for governor, suggested the defeats of some of Gov. Bush’s top educational priorities this year signaled the trend.

“It says that he is popular, and his policies are not,” said Smith.

Smith was among the big political winners in the session, earning widespread credit for his key role in keeping together the coalition that killed the vouchers and class size initiatives. He faces U.S. Rep. Jim Davis in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

The biggest winner of the session? Bense, the soft-spoken Panama City millionaire, who finished out the session as one of the most revered legislative leaders Florida has seen in years. Despite daily questions about whether he would jump into the Senate race, Bense managed to retain his reputation for even-handed leadership.

Even some Democrats sported “Allan Bense for U.S. Senate” stickers for the ceremony after the close of session. When someone planted one on his lapel, Bense sheepishly and immediately ripped it off.

Bense must decide by Friday if he wants to risk tarnishing his reputation with a bruising primary. Party leaders worried about Harris are united behind him. Bush chuckled Friday when asked yet again if he backed Bense’s candidacy.

“Oh yeah! You want me to slobber on him again?”

Letitia Stein and Steve Bousquet contributed to this report. Adam C. Smith can be reached at (727) 893-8241 or adam@sptimes.com.

[Last modified May 6, 2006, 22:45:21]