State Senate President Joe Negron, R-Palm City, announced on Wednesday that he will resign his seat instead of serving two more years.
Negron, who is ending his two-year stint as president of the Florida Senate after the November elections, sent a letter to Gov. Rick Scott announcing his impending resignation. Earlier in the week, Negron backed Ashley Moody to be Florida's next attorney general. There had been speculation that he would run for attorney general.
As he bowed out, Negron insisted to Scott that he has “always been a strong supporter of term limits” and that it was time for someone else to take his place in Tallahassee.
“I believe in a citizen Legislature where women and men from all walks of life serve for a reasonable period of time and then return to the private sector,” Negron said. “I have done my very best to fight for my community in Tallahassee, and November is the right time to retire from my service in the Legislature.”
Negron has been a fixture in Florida politics for the better part of two decades. After losing a special election for the Florida House in 1999, Negron bounced back in 2000 to win a House seat. He served three terms and had looked at running for attorney general in 2006 but decided instead to answer a GOP call to run for the seat Mark Foley vacated when he resigned in scandal. It was too late to get Foley's name off the printed ballots, and with some voters thinking they were voting for Foley, Negron suffered a narrow loss to Democrat Tim Mahoney, 48 percent to 50 percent. Negron rebounded in 2009 when he won a special election for a state Senate seat. After the 2016 elections, he rose to become Senate president. Pointing to his special election win, Negron said on Wednesday that he felt he filled his term and noted that the last two years he could have served were only the result of redistricting.
With Negron headed to the sidelines, state Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, is expected to run for his Senate seat.
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