Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, started the last half of his two-year tenure as leader of the Senate when the 2026 legislative session began on Tuesday.
The citrus grower was elected to the Senate in 2018 after serving in the Florida House for eight years and became Senate president after the 2024 elections.
Albritton and House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, head into the 2026 session after a bitter end to the 2025 legislative session, which ran into six weeks of overtime after the duo clashed over a tax package and a framework for the state budget.
The News Service of Florida has five questions for Ben Albritton, edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: Were there any lessons learned from the last session that you’re bringing with you to the podium this year?
ALBRITTON: This might sound a little goofy. OK, I'm going to own that right upfront. Sure there was lots of disagreement last year as we were working through the process. Instead of learning really, it's almost encouraging, in a way.
As I reflected during the holidays on these things, it was almost like a confirmation for me instead of more of a learning.
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But it means a lot, even as I'm leading into this next session, that even as challenging as the system and the process and personalities and policy and all those things can be in the moment — they can seem really frustrating — but at the end of the day, what happened last year yielded great products for Floridians.
And it's not lost on me that we got to the place we needed to be. And there were hurdles and challenges and everywhere, kind of all at once, right? Everything all at once. But in the end, we had good products. We had a great budget. It was great for Floridians. It reaffirmed, for me … that the process is the process. The challenges will be the challenges.
But as long as we all — the Senate, the House, the governor, and we did last year — as long as we stay focused on what the end game is, and that is to do good for Floridians, we can get that result.
Q: Do you think people are kind of exhausted about the partisan infighting that we've seen over the past couple of years, especially in Washington, or intraparty skirmishes here in Tallahassee?
ALBRITTON: Well, I'm not going to run the risk of speaking for Floridians as a whole, but I certainly can say this. I can say that I do know that skirmishes are natural in the process, because you've got the executive branch, you have the Cabinet, of course, you have 40 senators, and you have 120 House members … and we all come from different backgrounds. We've experienced different things in our lives.
So having disagreements is completely natural. It's a natural part of the process. And quite frankly, I think the way that my estimation is the way that Floridians view this is that they want each individual senator, each individual House member, and, of course, the statewide folks, to be able to to take their own perspective about this, which is the perspective of their constituency. And sometimes, you know, that didn't always line up with everybody else. … Talking about the challenges, my whole life, and I've shared with you before on your podcast, my faith is what drives me every single day. And when I read through my word, my Bible … Here's an example. Ephesians 4:29. Everything we say should be uplifting and encouraging to others. And that gets very difficult sometimes in this process, but it's all part of being a bridge builder.
And my hope is that as we go forward and we identify those places and those challenges of differential that'll happen between not just the House and the Senate or the governor and the Senate, or the governor and the House, but even right here in the Senate, which is my specific responsibility, that we work hard to build bridges and get to a place where – you've heard me say this, right? — we're listening to each other. We're being respectful of each other here in the Senate, and we're looking for a way to get to yes.
And many times, what I've found, just step away from partisanship for a second. … The Senate has been in lockstep, not with me as Senate president, but with each other, as we're trying to … provide these solutions. That's what I think Floridians expect, and it's the right thing to do scripturally.
Q: You mentioned disagreements last year. Speaker Perez was very vocal in his criticism of you, accusing you of reneging on a deal on the budget after Gov. Ron DeSantis said a tax package linked to the plan was “DOA.” Are there still hard feelings between you and the speaker? What is the relationship like and have you all moved on?
ALBRITTON: I have respect for the speaker. I walked over and just caught up with him one day, and it was a great conversation. And, I will tell you, Danny Perez is going to be a friend of mine for the rest of my life. I respect him. He's a strong leader. He is very principled in his policy and in their budgeting process. And he's going to be a friend the rest of my life. I will never veer away from that.
This is 2026 and I am ready for this session coming up. I believe the speaker is as well. I look forward to working with him. We're going to work through whatever it is that pops up. I'm committed, and I believe that he is as well, because he's a good leader. Good leaders look at these things, and we may have frustrations, or we may have challenges, but again, it goes back to staying on task and making sure that we're using our principles and getting to a place to where we're doing good for Floridians.
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I will say and reiterate with you again that I have zero hard feelings with the speaker, and look forward to working with him. Once we get into session and the interaction starts to happen, and we’re just coming off the holidays … Everybody, not just the speaker and I, but everybody in the Florida Legislature and the Cabinet included needed holidays to remember what's really important and spend time with family. I know Danny's family is super important to him. … So, once we get started in session, I look forward to spending more time with him and working closely with him.
Q: Is there a legislative issue you think is under the radar for Floridians that we might be seeing more focus on over the next 60 days?
ALBRITTON: I don't know that it's something that's on the minds of, you know, everyday Floridians, but certainly up here, one of the one of the challenges we have is, a couple of years ago, we instituted — the governor and President Passidomo (former Senate President Kathleen Passidomo) and Speaker Renner (former House Speaker Paul Renner) — essentially got done universal vouchers for education.
So, there's the financing system for education in Florida. It's called the FEFP, the Florida Education Financing Program. And what we have found is, and this is fascinating to me, it really is, what we found is that, philosophically, the Legislature and the governor are supportive of universal vouchers.
What we found is that the system that they call, forgive me, they call it butts in seats, but the system that produces the funding through the funding model and how those funds are distributed has some shortcomings. … We've learned this. There has been time since we instituted this. There are folks that provide education, whether it be public or charter or private. There are folks that provide education that are educating a child.
This is because of the mobility of children now and parental choices, but that there are schools that are educating a child that aren’t getting paid. There are others that the students are not there, but they're getting paid for it … because they may have left a charter school and gone back to the public school system, or vice versa, or whatever. So this is a prime example, by the way, that we know that that's a challenge.
We're working through this and I'm hopeful that we can find a good solution this year. … We haven't been able to yet figure out exactly how we're going to solve that problem with the House. It's about different perspectives, about whether you break them out and you put them below the line, or whether or not you separate the vouchers in a separate category somehow. Or, there's 67 school districts. Do you add a 68th school district … for the voucher program itself so it gets segregated and isolated, so it's more accountable? We haven't quite been able to figure it out. We're getting much closer, which is good news for Florida.
Q: If the cafeteria served one Ben Albritton special every day, what would be on the plate?
ALBRITTON: My grandmother's recipe of chicken and rice. I have a recipe. I can remember, as a child being we were very close to my mother's grandparents.
My dad's parents passed away years and years ago. … I was essentially raised, from a grandparents’ perspective, with Nana and Papa, my mother's parents. She had this old pressure cooker with a jiggler on the top. She had done it so many times, there was no measuring. It was all by eye but it’s perfect every time. I have experimented over and over and over, and I don't use the pressure cooker that has a jiggler on top.
I use the Instant Pot and … maybe three or four years ago, I finally nailed it. I know what chicken to look for. I know what kind of rice to use. I know the ratio to use. I know the season to use. Every single day in the cafeteria, my grandmother's chicken and rice.
