Welcome to The Dean's List -- an Ed Dean-style look at who Florida's political achievers were (and weren't) in the last seven days. What you see here is strictly my opinion, not necessarily the editor's or the rest of the staff at Sunshine State News.
THOSE WHO MADE THE LIST
State Rep. Richard Corcoran. The Land O’ Lakes Republican who will become speaker after the 2016 election says lobbying reform is big on his plate and he means it.
One of his ideas is to prohibit state legislators from accepting non-elected government jobs for at least six years once they leave office. Corcoran also wants to ban elected officials from taking a job with a company or agency that receives state dollars while they serve in office. This long-overdue reform can't get here soon enough.
State Rep. Marlene O’Toole. The “opt-out” movement is a grassroots organization that has stemmed from frustrated parents who are unhappy with Florida’s standardized testing in public schools. So Rep. Marlene O’Toole, the Republican House education chair, told reporters that if parents want their kids to opt out of state testing, they should be able to send them to private schools where the state rules don’t apply. And she’s right. By law, public school students must be tested. But the answer for both the “opt-out” crowd and dissatisfied parents is not to have their children sit out on "test day," but instead have the law changed. Make it more affordable for school choice without all the implementation of Common Core standards.
State Rep. Dennis Baxley. The man behind Florida's "Stand Your Ground" says, when it comes to that law, the courts are using misinterpretations and not legislative intent, putting the burden of proof on the defendant, not the state. Baxley wants to fix this. The Ocala Republican has filed HB 169, a proposal to force prosecutors in the evidentiary hearings, to bear the burden of proof in establishing beyond a reasonable doubt whether a defendant is entitled to claim self-defense.
THOSE WHO DIDN'T MAKE THE LIST
The Florida Immigrant Coalition. The group that aligns itself with MoveOn.org wants Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to drop Florida’s name from the class action lawsuit (along with other states) suing the Obama administration over the president's executive amnesty. According to the group’s website, because the Republican Congress failed to pass immigration reform, President Obama was forced to act on his own. And AG Bondi is determined to get in the way of “undocumented families” to have their chance to be part of the American dream.
U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy. Progressive Democrats in Florida have accused Congressman Patrick Murphy of not being liberal enough. So, at the annual Hillsborough County Democratic Kennedy-King Dinner, the Florida Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate -- to show he is liberal enough for the Democratic base -- said, “the Senate is full of Allen Wests.” West is the Republican whom Murphy beat back in 2012. Murphy’s comment was to emphasize that all the Republicans in the U.S. Senate are right-wingers, which he claims West was. But according to the the Club For Growth, a conservative-pro-growth, limited government group, Allen West wasn’t all that conservative.
In 2011, the group gave West a 64 percent score while the average House Republican got a 70 percent score. That same year Florida Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio received a 97 percent score from Club For Growth and failed 2012 Florida Senate candidate, U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, score a 98 percent Club for Growth rating for 2011 votes.
Jeb Bush. Despite having plenty of time in last week's debate to talk about his success in Florida and also going after Donald Trump, the former governor still can’t seem to rise in the polls. And there's still the after-debate debate: Did Jeb Bush put a stop to Trump having casino gambling in Florida? Trump says that was false.
Trump did lobby to have casino gambling in Florida, but that was when Lawton Chiles was governor, not Jeb. But Bush said that when he would be governor, he would not sign off on casino gambling, so Trump pulled out. Jeb may have some credibility issues when it came to “no new gambling” under his tenure. The Seminole Tribe of Florida was approved for opening casinos in 2004 while Bush was governor, and the Florida State Lottery expanded on his watch.
Ed Dean, a senior editor with SSN whose talk-show can be heard on radio stations across Florida, can be reached at ed@sunshinestatenews.com. Follow him on Twitter: @eddeanradio.
