Posted on 05/05/2007 11:19:23 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- It didn't get harder to sue businesses. Lawmakers didn't whack public schools or loosen gun laws. Nothing they did made it more difficult to have an abortion.
And when was the last time a Florida Legislature with two Republicans for every one Democrat couldn't figure out how to cut taxes?
After eight years when Democrats still the majority of voters in Florida but vastly outnumbered in the Legislature have felt steamrolled by a conservative agenda that included school vouchers, restrictions on abortions, laws aimed at reducing lawsuits and a record amount of tax cuts that critics said mostly benefited the rich, the 2007 legislative session was different.
Among those who may be considered losers this year were the National Rifle Association and the insurance industry two core Republican constituencies.
``Some of the more conservative aspects of their agenda didn't really go anywhere,'' House Democratic Leader Dan Gelber said Saturday, a day after the Legislature ended its regular 60-day session.
What was different?
Gov. Charlie Crist.
Crist pursued a far more moderate agenda than his predecessor, Gov. Jeb Bush, and bent over backward to listen to ideas from the more centrist wing of his own Republican party and from Democrats.
When it came to some Republican sacred cows, Crist didn't seem to get the party's memo. He's led a move to deal with high insurance rates by putting the state more on the hook for coverage something more fiscally conservative lawmakers in the House have likened to a ``socialist solution.''
But the Legislature reasserted that approach this past week by expanding state-backed Citizens Property Insurance. Crist punctuated the session with a jab at the insurance industry, praising lawmakers for putting a ``nail in the coffin of an industry that is hurting people.''
That sentiment isn't in the Republican Party platform for sure.
``I think that the Legislature has been out of a step for a long time, and Gov. Crist's election was almost a market correction,'' Gelber said. ``He clearly is much more of a centrist than Gov. Bush and I think the Legislature clearly followed that suit.''
Crist said the centrist approach is simply pragmatic he professes to be ``the people's governor'' and the people are split. Working with Democrats, rather than against them, is important, he said Saturday.
``It's important because I'm still in the minority party in this state,'' Crist said, noting that Democrats lead in voter registration.
Tax cuts were perhaps one of the biggest hallmarks of the previous eight years, with a Republican-dominated Legislature and conservative GOP Gov. Bush pushing through more than $16 billion in tax cuts during his two terms.
Lawmakers this year re-enacted two perennial tax breaks on hurricane supplies and back-to-school items. But both of those benefit a broad segment of the population. Of course, the budget was tight this year, and many of the taxes Republicans have railed most against were already cut during the Bush years.
Property taxes was one tax they targeted this year and Republicans couldn't get that done. They'll return in June for a special session on that.
Cutting property taxes, however, isn't just a Republican issue. Property owners of all stripes are complaining about rising homeownership costs. Crist said it's important to solve that issue with bipartisan consensus, too.
``If it's not something that has a good bipartisan agreement to it, then maybe it's disappointing an awful lot of the people we work for,'' he said.
Those groups who have felt like whipping boys during the last several years said this year was a relief. Among those were advocates for the public schools, who were happy that the Legislature was unable to restore elements of Bush's prized school voucher program thrown out by the courts.
It was also a different world for lawyers.
``In the last eight years, it was a little too easy for the industry lobbyists,'' said Jacqui Sisto, a spokeswoman for the Florida Justice Association. ``You can be pro-consumer and pro-business, it just has to be balanced and in the last eight years it wasn't balanced.''
Bills aimed at making it harder to sue business usually called tort reform didn't even get through committees this year, for the most part. That's a far cry from when Bush took office, blaming several of the state's problems on lawsuits.
``Remember the first couple years when Gov. Bush said he was going to whack the trial lawyers?'' Sisto said. ``We were definitely in a different position this year.''
The NRA this year couldn't get lawmakers to guarantee employees the right to keep guns in their cars at work, although that was an unusual fight because it pitted the gun rights group against another key Republican constituency, the big business lobby.
Moderates in the Legislature also kept efforts that could have restricted abortion from passing, including measures to require a waiting period and one that some saw as changing the statutory definition of when life begins.
Lawmakers also expanded gambling, allowing more slot machines and longer hours in Broward County racetracks. That likely wouldn't have happened a few years ago under more conservative Legislatures.
To cap it all off, the Legislature got rid of touch-screen voting machines something Democrats fought for unsuccessfully for a long time.
On that issue, ``we've become the choir when before we were voices in the wilderness,'' Gelber said.
BUMP
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
It is this sort of thing that give credence to my view that I’d rather have a democrat than a RINO. Nothing is more insidious and harmful than a traitor from within your ranks.
Crist is a putz. But he’s the better ninny of the two we were presented with.
Crist is a girlie man if ever there were one.
He is also a RINO.
Don’t look for him the advance ANY conservative causes.
Mitt, Arnold, and Rudy had somewhat plausible excuses for being big RINOs. But Crist? He has a GOP legislature to work with for Crist sake! I have never seem anyone so tone deaf.
I heard a “rumor” that Crist is gay, from a voter in that state, if so, that explains a lot...
Things like this are why I dislike the Florida GOP.
“Mitt, Arnold, and Rudy had somewhat plausible excuses for being big RINOs. But Crist? He has a GOP legislature to work with for Crist sake!”
Very well-put. And to think, in 2006, the Democrats thought they had lost the Governor race in Florida.
Post #7 LOLOL
Crist is making everyone throw out their practically brand new touch screen machines for optical scanners. The supers of elections are not happy. This is going to cost Floridians millions of dollars: new equipment,all new training, Crist is a big spender and he’s barely gotten started. He’s no conservative. He’s not even really a republican. He is not a property owner but he has a Jag and a bachelor pad and now of course, the mansion.
by the way, I read today in the paper that Personal Injury Insurance will no longer be required? That sounds kind of strange. Who’s going to pay when people get in auto accidents? Surely they will go to appointments, may be hospitalized and there are always tests. This doesn’t make any sense to me. Who will pay when these people with no PIP show up at ERs? The paper did not provide enough information.
Well said. It's very discouraging that Crist doesn't seize the initiative and continue Jeb Bush's legacy. Kathleen Harris should have ran for Governor, IMO.
Katherine Harris couldn’t win another statewide office if she tried, she would’ve lost an open race for Governor by the same margin she lost the Senate race. Her campaign for the Senate was a fiasco of the highest order. Only Jeb could’ve won that race against the Space Cadet. We should’ve run Toni Jennings for Governor, as she would’ve carried on with the Jeb agenda.
Now as for this trash that is now Governor, we’d have been better off with a rodent. Electing RINO trash is precisely how supreme GOP majority states begin to turn rodent in short order. Gelber and crew ought to be dancing a jig in the streets. They elected one of theirs with an “R.”
I think it’s for the best that we not bring that up (KH). What’s done is done.
Toni Jennings would have been the better choice, no doubt about that. Charlie Crist so far has been a disaster for a Govenror. He has time to improve (Pete Wilson of California did, marginally).
It’s Wilson that Crist is copying. By the time Wilson was done working his magic in California, he’d blown our opportunity to have parity or a narrow majority in the Assembly and Congressional delegation, and handed the Governorship on a silver platter to Grey Davis (along with eviscerating our ability to make the state competitive in the Presidential elections). And with Ah-nold, he’s already bequeathed the keys to the office to Aztlan Tony Villar, and it ain’t January 2011, yet.
I think the ‘90s will be known as the decade of the super-RINO Governors, where so many states that were competitive clear up until the 1992 elections were placed permanently out of reach of GOP Presidential candidates. Those include CA, CT, IL, MA, NJ, NY, PA & RI.
Incorrect statement. It is not 'muted' it is NONEXISTENT!
For my money the whole no-fault idea is a liberal cop out. They have spent 40 years trying to arrange it so that no one is to blame for anything, not an auto accident, a divorce or a pregnancy. When I see the term ‘no-fault’ I immediately deploy my anti-BS-force-field at full strength. I skip right past the get-their-attention and stun phases and go straight for KILL.
I don’t think Florida is going to fare well with Crist as governor. I could be wrong, but nothing I’ve seen or heard so far has changed my mind.
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