Mediaboss Marketing

Four billion dollars separate the House and Senate budget proposals. The Speaker said the House has three concerns with the Senate spending proposal James Call

House Speaker Richard Corcoran finishes his address to legislators as they gather for the first day of session at the Capitol on Tuesday, March 7, 2017.(Photo: Joe Rondone/Democrat)Buy Photo

This is an extraordinary time for the Republican Party. The November election maintained its gripon all branches of state government. Voters also delivered Washington to the GOP as well, increasing the influence of Floridas Congressional Republican delegation and installing a kindred spirit of Gov. Rick Scott in the White House.

But once the celebration quieted, the pressure of governing opened a rift in the coalition. Scott and Speaker Richard Corcoran, oddly representing different corners of President Donald J. Trumps appeal, staged a Tallahassee version of WrestleMania. This week the drama is sure to increase when the House and Senate are scheduled to pass dramatically different budgets for next year.

Scott and Corcoran are on opposite sides regarding whether a fiscally-conservative government provides business incentives. How the Scott v. Corcoran debate will influencethe budget battle remains an open question.

You would think after being at the helm for 20 years they would be good at steering the ship of state, remarked former Florida House Democratic Leader Mark Pafford. Near super majorities in both chambers, a governor and president, you would think you would take advantage of that and start passing laws and implementing philosophies. No one is doing any of that.

The split in Tallahassee became public and vicious two weeks before the start of the 2017 Legislative Session. Corcoran rallied the House Republican Caucus at the trendy Edison Restaurant to go forth and eliminate Scotts pet project Enterprise Florida. He called the economic development agency, which hands out tax credits and other incentives to businesses, an example of corporate welfare.

Scott was said to be livid. He responded with a video depicting Corcoran as a job-killing Tallahassee politician.

The House is an equal opportunity fighter

By the end of this week, $4 billion will separate the House and Senate budget proposals. While the two chambers position themselves for negotiations, Sen. President Joe Negron scaled-back his number one funding request. He wants money and land to handle Lake Okeechobee discharges that occasionally foul the east and west coasts with neon-green poisonous water. Last week he floated a proposal chopping about $900 million from the original plan and reducing the land request by nearly half.

But the plan still involves borrowing money. That's aline Corcoran said the House wont cross.

We are not bonding, Corcoran said Thursday. He's positioned himself as the public watchdog on spending. Meeting with reporters he said the House has concerns about how the Senate proposes handling property taxes, membersprojects and health care spending.

RELATED STORIES

Three GOP leaders, three divergent visions

2017 Florida Legislative Session

The Pasco County Republican frets about the Senate plan to spend $600 million in federal health care dollars that Congress has yet to appropriate. The Speaker explained that means the money does not exist.

Thats not an acceptable accounting principle, Corcoran said. You do not put money in an account and spend it when it doesnt exist.

Pafford wonders if the inability to agree on fundamental principles foreshadows deeper rifts between the two chambers.

Ive never lived in California but I think what we are seeing are like the rumbling that signals a coming earthquake, said Pafford, who spent eight years being steamrolled by Republican majorities. They are literally all over the place. I think they are trying to define Trumpism in Florida.

Trumpism, Florida-style

What is unique this year is the party infighting played out in public. The fight is among the same party because Florida is mostly a one-party state.

Its textbook, said Susan MacManus, a University of South Florida political scientist. Given the diversity across the state, factions emerge and the battle is within the party (that has control)."

MacManus said Florida is following the typical curve of one-party rule, but there are a couple of unusual dynamics in play. Both Scott and Trump weakened the party establishment by winning without party support. Then factor in term limits; three Cabinet seats and the governors office are up in 2018. When so many people are about to lose their seats and are in the market for a new one,personal ambition can trump party goals.

But more importantly, said MacManus, Florida is changing.

Seniors are no longer the electoral key to winning the state. Millennials and Generation Xers people younger than 50 make up more than half of the Florida vote. Its not Gramps' Sunshine State anymore.

What we saw in 2016 is the political maturation of a new generation and now we are watching it play out as a generational fissure within the Republican Party, said MacManus. A lot of the younger Republicans have very different views about what the party should empathize.

MacManus spoke on the phone while attending a conference in Chicago where some of the papers presented addressed effective messaging to the emerging cohort of voters.

It is a party in transition, she said of Florida Republicans. A lot of what we are seeing reflects the changing age composition of the people in the Legislature and the electorate at large.

Some have been shocked about how this plays out in committee debates, public comments and in the competing attack videos Scott and Corcoran produced. Pafford said it has been as ugly as anything he saw when the House transferred from Democratic to Republican control in 1996.

Others recall when Senate President Bob Crawford brought boxing gloves to a meeting with Gov. Bob Martinez and Speaker Tom Gustafson. Those disputes involved members of different parties, not players supposedly on the same team displaying aggression towards one another.

During a recent visit to the capital city, former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential contenderMike Huckabee calledthe fighting politics as usual.

Like NFL football, politics is a rough game, said Huckabee, now an Emerald Coast resident. People out on the field, they hit hard. That is part of the process.

Huckabee is a political commentator for FOX news. He said at the state level, unlike Congress, the fighting ends because budgets must be balanced, schools have to be funded and roads need to be built.

You can be ideological up to a point, but, ultimately, there are things that need to get done, said Huckabee.

While the House and Senate begin blending their very different visions of the state into a budget that Gov. Scott will sign, MacManus warns there remain potential pitfalls for a party in transition.

The thing Republicans have to concern themselves about is increasingly the Florida Legislature is looking like Washington where nothing gets done, said MacManus.

Lawmakers are scheduled to remain in session until May 5, but the specter of overtime looms large. The current state budget ends June 30.

Reporter James Call can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on Twitter @CallTallahassee

Read or Share this story: http://on.tdo.com/2nW3UKY

See more here:
Tensions reflect a Republican 'party in transition' - Tallahassee.com