Miami-Dade Republican Sen. Bryan Ávila filed a bill Thursday requiring political pollsters to inform people who sponsored the poll before collecting responses.

The bill (SB 528) would punish pollsters who don’t disclose who is paying for the poll with a fine of up to $1,000 or up to a year in jail. Pollsters must include the disclosure at the beginning of polls conducted over text, at the beginning of a phone call, and in bold font of at least 12 points in emails.

Polling operations out Florida Atlantic University and the University of North Florida wouldn’t see much of a change if the bill passed, their directors told the Florida Phoenix.

“(The bill) didn’t faze me too much,” Kevin Wagner, Co-Director of the Florida Atlantic University Political Communication and Public Opinion Research Lab, said in a phone interview. “As a matter of course, in both our intro and our outro, which is when we introduce a poll and when we leave, we always say Main Street research on behalf of Florida Atlantic University, so we do this anyway.”

Michael Binder, who leads UNF’s Public Opinion Research Lab, said the proposal wasn’t likely to increase transparency.

“If you’re trying to root out nefarious actors, I’m not sure how much this is going to help because they’re just going say, ‘This poll is paid for by the Democracy Fund or America Fund,’ or whatever made-up name that given organization sticks on itself, so it’s not gonna necessarily be super transparent about who is actually doing it anyway,” Binder said.

Both polling experts said it could be harder for political parties and some candidates with fewer resources to conduct polls if the bill passed.

“Let’s say you’re polling for a political party and if you say, ‘I’m doing this for the Republicans or the Democrats.’ It may bias the people who are likely to respond to it or they may respond differently, and that could affect the kind of data that you could collect,” Wagner said.

Avila’s office did not respond to the Phoenix’s requests for comment.

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Jackie Llanos reporting. Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: [email protected].

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Gov. Ron DeSantis acknowledges imminent staff changes, with the Lieutenant Governor poised to move to the presidency of Florida International University, and his Chief of Staff expected to become the state’s new Attorney General.

Speaking Friday at the Capitol, the Governor said that timing was everything on both.

Regarding Jeanette Nuñez, Florida’s Lieutenant Governor, DeSantis dispelled reports that her resignation would take effect Friday as erroneous, even as she was selected as interim president of FIU Friday morning.

But he said he expects “that all” to be settled ahead of Legislative Session next month. he does

“And I know she’ll probably want to be making the rounds and speaking with the Legislature about supporting FIU,” the Governor said of his current Lt. Governor.

DeSantis enthused about the job she’s done in his administration.

“She has been involved in all the successes that we’ve had over the last six years. She’s been especially involved in things like the space program. She’s been very supportive of our efforts to bring some sanity to higher education. And so I think in that sense, she’s going to do a really good job there,” he said.

Political watchers are already speculating on who the next pick will be, and when that selection may be made, especially in light of mounting speculation that First Lady Casey DeSantis will run for Governor next year.

Meanwhile, James Uthmeier has already been formally replaced by Jason Weida as Chief of Staff. But there is still work to do before he can become the state Attorney General, a role to which DeSantis named Uthmeier after Ashley Moody was named to the U.S. Senate to replace Marco Rubio. Uthmeier is still working with DeSantis on immigration bill negotiations with the Legislature.

“So we obviously need to land the plane on this immigration stuff. James has been working with the folks in the House and Senate. We want to bring this to a conclusion. I think we’re getting close to that and then at that point, we will transition over. So hopefully that is sooner rather than later,” DeSantis said.

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Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez will take over the operations of her former alma mater, Florida International University (FIU), after a vote by the school’s leadership.

The FIU Board of Trustees voted 11 to 1 to hire Nuñez as Interim President, finalizing plans Gov. Ron DeSantis set in motion weeks ago to install his second-in-command in the public university’s top post.

“I am honored,” Nuñez said in a statement.

“As a two-time alumna and a proud Panther mom, I am deeply committed to the success of FIU. I look forward to working with the Board of Trustees in the coming days.

Nuñez will replace President Kenneth Jessell, who has led FIU since March 2022. Jessell’s contract with FIU runs through the end of 2024, according to CBS Miami. Nuñez will officially become Interim President on Feb. 17, the Miami Herald reported.

Jessell said after Friday’s vote that he has “complete confidence” in her and looks “forward to supporting her.”

Nuñez, a 52-year-old Republican, will be the first woman and the first FIU graduate to lead the university. She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations in 1994 and a master’s degree in public administration in 1998, both from FIU.

Today, she lives a 15-minute drive from the school’s main campus in West Miami-Dade, state records show.

FIU Chair Rogelio Tovar confirmed that DeSantis had “contacted (him) and suggested (that the Board) consider … Nuñez as the next leader of FIU.”

Board member Nöel Barengo, an associate professor at FIU and Chair of the FIU Faculty Senate, was alone in voting “no,” according to NBC 6.

Nuñez’s pending departure from the Governor’s Office comes after GOP state lawmakers voted to undo one of her signature legislative achievements from which many FIU alums have benefitted.

In 2014, Nuñez successfully carried legislation to allow undocumented students brought to the country as children to pay in-state tuition rates at state universities. She said at the time that the measure was “about upward mobility” for young adults on whom the state had already spent “tens of thousands of dollars” to educate in public schools, adding, “it doesn’t make sense to hold these children back.”

DeSantis tried, but failed, to repeal that provision in a sweeping anti-illegal immigration bill he signed in 2023. The Legislature voted along party lines last month for a package that would remove the allowance, though the Governor has indicated he may veto the bill, which lawmakers substituted for a proposal from his office.

Nuñez’s arrival at FIU’s top office will also coincide with the school’s efforts to increase its state funding apportionment and be the location of President Donald Trump’s future presidential library.

Post-election polling in November found that among five Republicans that won or hold statewide offices — including Trump, DeSantis, Nuñez, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, who left the Senate to serve as Trump’s Secretary of State — Nuñez was alone in having a positive approval rating.

But the survey also revealed she has a relatively low name ID, with 47% of voters saying they didn’t know who she was and 26% having no opinion about her job performance.

Nuñez got into politics in the mid-1990s, as an aide to then-state Sen. Alex Díaz le al Portilla, whose most recent elected job was as a Miami City Commissioner.

In 2004, she began working as Director for Statewide Government Relations at Jackson Health System, Miami-Dade County’s public hospital network. Six years later, she took a Vice President of Community Affairs job with for-profit hospital company HCA Healthcare, overseeing outreach for the Kendall Regional Medical Center and Aventura Hospital and Medical Center.

She started a consulting firm called OnPoint Strategies LLC in 2013 that did business with Jackson Health System. State records show the firm became inactive in 2020.

Nuñez ran for the Florida House in 2010 and won by a landslide, taking 63% of the vote in a three-way race for a district that spanned a western swath of unincorporated Miami-Dade, including the Kendall area.

She served for eight straight years, including as Speaker Pro Tempore and Deputy Whip.

As a lawmaker, Nuñez leveraged her knowledge of the health care industry to successfully sponsor several notable bills, including legislation to extend Florida’s sovereign immunity protections to university doctors working at public hospitals, improve umbilical cord blood banking provisions, add more guardrails to optometric practices and establish equitable insurance standards for patients seeking cancer treatment.

She also passed bills to improve Florida’s programming for diabetes management and treatment and address opioid addiction in health insurance.

Other bills she saw through to passage included multiple measures aimed at better serving and housing sexually exploited children, removing the statute of limitations for victims of child sex abuse, banning marriage for underage couples and heightening programming requirements for domestic abusers seeking probation.

As Lieutenant Governor, Nuñez has been tasked with managing the Florida Department of Health and chairing Space Florida and Florida’s Cybersecurity Task force. She’s also an active member of the Statewide Council on Human Trafficking, leading discussions on an issue about which she’s been vocally passionate.

When DeSantis ran for President last year, Nuñez endorsed him, describing him as a “great Governor and an even better man” who “does not waiver in the face of adversity.”

Nuñez was among those rumored last year to be on DeSantis’ shortlist to replace Rubio after Trump tapped the Senator for Secretary of State. The Governor ultimately chose Ashley Moody, whom voters re-elected as Attorney General in 2022.

Nuñez has also been discussed as a potential candidate for Governor and Miami-Dade Mayor.

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