Speculation over the next triumvirate

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© St. Petersburg Times,
published December 2, 2001

TALLAHASSEE -- Goliath had his David, so yes, a Democrat could take down Jeb Bush next year. Improbable, yes. Impossible, no. For now, however, the more urgent question is who will be the next Senate president. In some ways, that race is more important, especially if Bush's re-election is to be assumed.

To appreciate why, consider how things would have turned out if the Senate under presidents Toni Jennings and John McKay had lurched as far to the right as the governor and the House. Civil service would have been effectively repealed. The intangibles tax would be all but gone, and the Legislature would not now be saving part of it for the deficit. The teachers' unions would have been busted. Bush would have been able to sign the great land grab bill, forfeiting hundreds of miles of publicly owned shorelines. The Legislature would have completely taken over the courts. Tax reform, the issue on which McKay is staking his legacy, would be the answer to a trivia question, "What do Florida politicians never, never talk about?"

And the Senate's Republicans would be as robotic as most of those in the House. Citizens may fancy that all their legislators are equal, but the truth, to borrow from George Orwell, is that some are more equal than others. The Senate president and House speaker control which are which. They are nearly as instrumental as the governor, but of this triumvirate, the voters are permitted to choose only one. The House and Senate elect the others, but it is only the votes of the majority party that count.

The House Republicans have already chosen Johnnie Byrd of Plant City as their next Caesar. The Senate, however, has a fascinating three-way standoff that could last until the next Legislature is actually elected and sworn in a year from now. Then it could be the Democrats who break the deadlock. "I think we will," says the minority leader, Tom Rossin, savoring the thought. Or they might at least seal the victory of one of the Republicans, as Democrats did for Jennings' second term in 1996 when right-wing Republicans were threatening a coup.

Daniel Webster of Winter Garden, who hopes to become only the second former House speaker to preside over the Senate, has commitments from 9 of the 25 Republicans. They, like him, are the most conservative. He'd be the governor's choice, too. Sen. Tom Lee of Brandon has eight, mainly from west coast senators who share his moderate philosophy. Sen. Jim King of Jacksonville has seven, a mixture of conservatives and moderates. Instinctively, he's the least conservative. The business lobbyists would have it King first, Webster second, and Lee never.

It's a clash of titans because Webster chairs the reapportionment committee, which controls every member's future; Lee chairs the rules committee, which decides which bills get to the floor; and King is majority leader. The reapportionment subcommittees, however, are chaired by senators thought to favor Lee.

But after that nothing is as usual. For Webster and King, it's a rematch -- a grudge match, some other senators say -- of the fight for the 1996-1998 House speakership, which Webster won. Fourteen other GOP senators were in the House when that was going on, so this isn't the first time that they've had to choose between Webster and King.

That's a disadvantage for Lee, who never served in the House, in that he has no prior history of loyalties or friendships that were formed there, but it also makes him a logical compromise between Webster and King. On the other hand, it means that this is his last chance at the presidency. With a four-year term in the redistricting, Lee could try again for president in 2004, but by that time most of the Senate are likely to be former House members, another dubious outcome of term limits.

With the Senate presidency still unsettled, the three will have an abnormal interest in the outcome of Republican Senate primaries. (Word has it that two are already meddling.) The strongest taboo is against lobbyists intruding into leadership disputes -- "a sin of the highest order," says lobbyist Pete Dunbar, a former House minority leader -- and yet that's starting to happen, too.

Meanwhile, the fact that King and Webster haven't cut a deal -- in which one would preside first and the other in 2004 -- suggests that maybe Webster hopes to serve two terms as president, just as Jennings did. (He's been telling people that's not the case; that it would simply be wrong for the two of them to deny senators an open choice in 2004. But it could also mean that he does want two terms or that he just doesn't like King.)

No one from Hillsborough or Pinellas has presided over a Senate session since John S. Taylor of Largo in 1925 and Patrick C. Whitaker of Tampa in 1931. That makes for a keen regional interest in Lee, all the more so because another Hillsborough legislator will head the House.

The larger significance is that Byrd is even more conservative than the current speaker, Tom Feeney, if not as outspoken. The prospect of Webster, Byrd and Bush as the next triumvirate terrifies not only the Democrats, but Republican moderates too. As it should.

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