Lori Berman, the new Democratic Florida Senate Minority Leader, insists that despite the criticisms made in recent days by now-former Democratic Senate Leader Jason Pizzo, the Democratic Party in Florida is actually "alive and kicking."
"I take issue with what was said last week," she told her Democratic colleagues at the beginning of the Senate's business earlier this week. "We may not hold the majority, but we have something just as powerful — a vision, rooted in fairness, in justice, in equality, and in care."
Her caucus elected Berman shortly after Pizzo stunningly announced on the floor of the Senate that he was leaving the Florida Democratic Party and would instead become a non-party-affiliated (NPA) voter.
"I am very disappointed about the way things unfolded last week," Berman acknowledged in a conference call with reporters earlier in the day.
"I can't believe with one week left in session we had this huge disruption. But I am moving on, and I think that's what we in the Democratic Party need to do. I feel that our Democratic Caucus here in the Senate — 'The Tenacious Ten' — we are more unified than ever. We are ready to finish this session strong. We are ready to make sure our Democratic values get heard in the bills that we pass. We will be fighting bad bills. We will be making sure that we get appropriations that are impactful for our districts at home."
She added that she considers herself a unifier.
"I want all my members to shine, and that is going to be my goal, to make sure that each member of our caucus has the opportunity to move forward and do the job that we were are all elected to do, to represent the people of our districts."
Pizzo's resignation was the latest in a series of devastating blows that the Florida Democratic Party has suffered in recent years. The party fell into superminority status in both the state House and Senate after the 2022 elections — in which its candidates for governor lost by 19 points and for U.S. Senate by 16 points.
A year earlier, the Republican Party for the first time took the lead in voter registrations in Florida, a lead that has since increased to more than 1.2 million voters. Then, after the Democrats failed to win back any new seats in the Legislature last fall, they saw their numbers in the Florida House dwindle by two more last December to just 33 in the 120-member body after Hillsborough County Rep. Susan Valdés, and then South Florida's Hillary Cassel, announced that they were ditching the Democrats to go Republican.
Criticism
With Pizzo's departure and the death of Orange County Sen. Geraldine Thompson before the session began in March, there are now just 10 Democrats in the 40-member Senate.
In announcing his resignation, Pizzo said that the "Florida Democratic Party is dead," adding that "there are good people that can resuscitate it, but they don't want it to be me."
Pizzo added more criticism of his now-former party over the weekend.
"I've spent thousands of hours trying to resuscitate something that's just not there, and we just got so consumed with taking the bait and the opportunity cost lost with going ahead and going down a rabbit hole of socially divisive issues that — there was no plan. If you go on whether it's the state [web] site or a local site as it relates to party, there's no policies. There's no plan," Pizzo said in an interview aired Sunday on WPLG television in Miami. "There's just a lot of anger and a lot of hate — which I understand, because it's been a generation of Republican control."
Berman and House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell disputed that assessment.
"Unfortunately, we had to be reactive in past years because there were so many bad bills that came through and so much policy that you had to react to, but I think we clearly have an agenda," Berman said. "Our agenda is to help the working people here in the state of Florida. To make sure that people can get access to health care. To support public education. To make sure that we have a clean environment for everyone to flourish."
Driskell said that in fact what she calls the party's "platform bills" have been focused on making life better for everyday Floridians, not on culture war issues.
"They focused on making housing more affordable, expanding Medicaid so we can help health care be more affordable for all of us, protecting our drinking water and our natural resources. Focusing on commonsense gun solutions, gun reform. … We focus on protecting workers, we focus on investing in our kids in terms of public education, so those are the issues that we center on, but please understand that, as a party of opposition, where we have to stand up and fight for the Constitution and fight for the least among us, we will do it at every time."
Hope Florida
Berman and Driskell later focused on developments in the saga revolving around Hope Florida, the welfare program started by First Lady Casey DeSantis, which has dominated the second half of the legislative session in terms of news coverage.
A House committee announced last week that it was ending its investigation into reports of $10 million going to the Hope Florida Foundation from a state Medicaid overpayment settlement. Much of that $10 million was later sent to a political committee run by James Uthmeier, Gov. Ron DeSantis' former chief-of-staff (now state attorney general), that was working to combat last year's referendum on recreational cannabis.
"I don't think this issue will fade," Berman said, "because when everybody goes home to their districts over the summer, they are going to hear about this issue and I really believe that … we need to continue to investigate this issue. It should not be allowed to go without a response, whether it's a legal response or whether it's a political response, but we should never allow this kind of graft to happen in our state of Florida."
Boca Raton Democratic Rep. Kelly Skidmore said that Gov. DeSantis certainly hopes that the controversy over Hope Florida will fade.
"That is why he is going so hard after his own Republican colleagues, because he wants them to be afraid and not focused on this fraud that was perpetrated on taxpayers."
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
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