MIXED BAG SESSION LAUNCHES CRIST INTO SENATE RACE
Posted by klaing on May 11, 2009
By KEITH LAING
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, May 11, 2009……….Gov. Charlie Crist appears poised to announce Tuesday his plans to run for the U.S. Senate in 2010, a race he is expected to have a good shot at winning.
But the session the current occupant of the Governor’s Manson waited to complete before deciding to pursue higher office saw few victories for the would-be senator. Crist got a few big things he wanted from lawmakers before they left town last Friday in the form of a Seminole gaming compact and a plan that would allow universities to raise tuition an additional 7 percent on top of the 8 percent base increase also approved.
Additionally, lawmakers used about $3 billion in federal stimulus money, a victory for Crist because he campaigned for the plan with President Barack Obama and used the funding in his budget proposal to avoid deep cuts.
Crist also got a sympathetic ear from lawmakers on property taxes, with both the GOP-controlled Legislature and the governor agreeing that more needs to be done to reduce them – and that call for lower taxes, a Republican standard, is something that has played well in the Legislature throughout his term.
And of course it plays well with most voters.
However, in the session that just was, lawmakers in Tallahassee just as frequently ignored the governor’s wishes as they crafted policy. Perhaps most prominently, in addition to using stimulus money, the $66.5 billion spending plan approved by the Legislature included a $1 billion tobacco tax increase that Crist said he was not “warm and fuzzy” about.
That wasn’t the only example of the Legislature cozying up to a plan Crist would have rather kept at arms-length this year. Crist got behind the proposed Orlando commuter rail known as SunRail, but the plan was voted down on the floor of the Senate after two days of intense debate.
Similarly, the two biggest pieces of Crist’s ambitious energy agenda are still where they were when session began: waiting on legislative action. The proposed renewable energy standard for power companies was approved by the Senate, but never taken up by the House. Worse for the governor, the plan to make Florida’s auto emission standards among the nation’s toughest by adopting rules already in place in California only made it out of one Senate committee.
Crist’s session scorecard shows that if anything, he seems to be in tune with what plays well with voters, but often can’t figure out what will play well among policymakers in his own party. And that’s often the case with executives – who can work in sound bites while the lawmakers writing the bills have to deal in the details of how to carry out the policy.
Crist’s populism also doesn’t always play well in the business community that often otherwise supports Republicans. Standing up for the little guy often means standing against the big guy, whether it’s a utility, a phone company, the oil companies (Crist threatened to investigate them early in his term over high gas prices), or insurance companies, leading further to some disagreements between Crist and other Republicans.
Crist sailed into office in 2007 as a populist, running against high property insurance rates and high property taxes more than anything else.
What has happened since to the property insurance debate in the state is perhaps most telling of Crist’s dwindled influence.
In 2007, lawmakers went along with Crist’s populist approach – taking on the insurance companies and moving to force rates lower. Like Crist, some Republican lawmakers were openly hostile to the insurance industry. Rates for the largest insurer in the state, government-backed Citizens Property Insurance, were frozen at well below what actuaries said was needed to keep the company able to pay claims. Crist made no effort to hide his contempt for the insurers, and repeatedly said that his policy on insurance was based on making it affordable and available to “the boss,” the voters of Florida.
But this session, the Legislature backed away from putting the rate-paying consumer ahead of the claim-making consumer. The Legislature voted to raise Citizens rates, and make other changes that could result in higher premiums – risking the possibility that premiums could be close to where they were when Crist took office promising to lower them.
University of South Florida political science professor Susan MacManus added that the possibility of a Senate run likely played a role in Crist’s mixed bag session.
“Certainly I think Republicans were thinking about that, no question,” MacManus said. “The party already knows that it is facing discussion of an ideological schism, so the need to come together was obviously affected by the Senate race.”
MacManus said that several state leaders eyeing Crist’s current post, and legislators considering the positions they might vacate to do so, also played a role in stalling some of Crist’s agenda.
“There’s always a nagging thought in the back of their minds of who wants to run for what,” she said.
Crist himself hailed the session’s victories for his agenda on its last day, though he did not acknowledge any of its defeats.
“In this tight budget year, we are continuing to invest in economic development and workforce training to strengthen our economy,” Crist said in his weekly video address last Friday. “We have been able to avoid deep cuts in services for our most vulnerable – and our children, the elderly and persons with disabilities. And we are maintaining Florida’s commitment to restore America’s Everglades and conserve public lands through Florida Forever. “
Former Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, agreed that the tough economy played a big role in the inaction of the most ambitious parts of the governor’s agenda.
“It’s far easier to have really meaningful legislation when you have money to spend on it,” King said during the last week of session. “It becomes a whole lot more difficult when you don’t have the money to implement the programs that you might want to do. So that had a negative effect, if you’re looking at it as no big bills were passed.”
Current Senate President Jeff Atwater also cited the budget woes in his assessment of session as his chamber was debating many of Crist’s proposals in the final days.
“When all of these members were elected about 7 or 8 months ago now, unemployment was about 6.8 percent,” Atwater said on the second to last day of non-budget business. “Now it’s near 10. Foreclosures are up. The bottom continues to drop on revenues coming into the state, which the reflection is that Floridians incomes are dropping.”
But King also said earlier this year that the speculation that Crist would run for Senate was hurting the governor’s agenda, pointing out that if lawmakers believed Crist was leaving, he forfeited his leverage.
University of Central Florida political scientist Aubrey Jewett agreed the economy and the Senate speculation were twin daggers for most of Crist’s agenda this year.
“It was probably one of the worse kept secrets in Florida that he was likely going to declare he was running for Senate,” Jewett said. “He didn’t announce before session was over, because then he would have had zero influence. Who would listen to him then?
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5/11/2009
