Jim DeFede analysis: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis backs down on immigration
MIAMI - As this year's third Florida special legislative session on immigration gets underway this week in Tallahassee, there is one unmistakable conclusion: Gov. Ron DeSantis lost.
The man whose failed presidential campaign was based on the slogan: Never Back Down, did indeed back down.
For weeks, DeSantis publicly attacked House Speaker Danny Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton, accusing them of being soft on immigration because they refused to support his proposal and instead passed their own immigration bill.
DeSantis held multiple press conferences across the state attacking Perez and Albritton (but especially Perez). He unleashed his taxpayer-funded staff and his army of social media trolls to eviscerate Perez, calling him a RINO, a traitor, and much worse.
DeSantis went on Fox News and other right-wing outlets to try and bully the Legislature into submission.
DeSantis used his control of the Republican Party of Florida to send out mass texts to Republican voters, telling them their local legislators were betraying them because they didn't vote for the governor's bill.
Any legislator who defied him was warned they could expect DeSantis to mount campaigns against them when they were up for re-election.
The personal cell phone numbers of legislators were blasted out via text, prompting death threats against lawmakers and their families.
It was an ugly campaign of intimidation by the governor and his cronies. And it was never really about immigration. It was about power.
And it failed.
DeSantis huffed and he puffed, but he couldn't blow the House or the Senate down.
As DeSantis bellowed and blustered against lawmakers, he kept waiting for Donald Trump to publicly back him and force the Legislature to cave. Trump, however, stayed silent. He wasn't going to ride in and save DeSantis.
So instead, DeSantis did something he never does – he surrendered. He met with Perez and Albritton and produced a new bill.
But in this new bill, DeSantis will not get his own personal immigration czar.
He will not get $350 million to run his own deportation program so he can snatch undocumented migrants off the street and fly them "on the spot," as he bragged, to a third country.
He will not get a new law blocking undocumented migrants from sending money to their families in their home country.
And after insulting the state's elected agriculture commissioner, Wilton Simpson, as running a "lower-level cabinet agency" who could not be trusted to enforce state law – "the fox guarding the hen house," is how the governor described Simpson – DeSantis is being forced to accept Simpson as an equal partner in a new State Immigration Enforcement Council.
Dig deeper into the new bill introduced this week and you will see that on numerous other issues, DeSantis has been forced to accept changes to his proposal. To be fair, the Legislature also modified its original proposal, giving DeSantis some of the things he wanted.
Under normal circumstances this would be known as compromise—which used to be considered a good thing in politics. DeSantis, however, has always viewed that word as tantamount to weakness.
For the past six years, DeSantis has treated the Legislature with contempt and for most of that time, the Legislature has allowed him to get away with whatever he wanted. Some legislators did so because they supported his ideas and ambitions, but many did so out of fear.
That ended this week.
So, to put it in terms DeSantis understands, the unmistakable conclusion is DeSantis lost.
Perez and Albritton won.
"We asserted our right as the elected representatives of the people to have an equal seat at the table," Perez said Tuesday afternoon as he opened the latest special session. "To be a participant in a conversation rather than a recipient of instructions."
The specifics of the latest immigration bill are secondary to the larger issue of returning balance between the governor and the legislature.
DeSantis is now praising Albritton and Perez saying they "have been great partners and we have produced an aggressive bill that we can stand fully behind." DeSantis even thanked Simpson "for his support."
On Tuesday, Perez praised DeSantis but then added: "Governor, we've gotten to know each other better in the last three weeks than in the last six years. I'm looking forward to the next two."
In other words, welcome to the lame duck era of Ron DeSantis.
