Daniel Perez may not be a household name. The House Speaker has never appeared on a ballot outside of Miami-Dade, and even there serves as one of 16 lawmakers for the populous county.
Yet no politician in Florida changed the trajectory of Sunshine State politics this year like the presiding officer in the Legislature’s lower chamber. After six years of stunning legislative compliance under Gov. Ron DeSantis, Perez proved himself an effective adversary, defying and denying the Governor’s demands on repeated occasions.
That started with once unthinkable overrides of DeSantis’ budget vetoes, continued with the dismantling of a cherished program of First Lady Casey DeSantis, and is still lingering amid a legally sensitive redistricting of Florida’s congressional lines.
For many lawmakers whose careers unfolded in the shadow of DeSantis’ mighty executive power, the change proved refreshing.
“I’ve witnessed firsthand, prior to Danny, fear of hurting DeSantis’ feelings or offending him being prioritized at the expense of good government and oversight,” said Rep. Alex Andrade. “He’s allowed the Legislature to fulfill its constitutional operations again.”
Andrade, of course, proved to be one of the sharpest thorns in DeSantis’ side during the Perez era. As Chair of the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee, the Pensacola Republican led a House investigation that probed $10 million awarded by the Hope Florida Foundation to nonprofits that, in turn, immediately gave that money as political contributions to campaigns fighting constitutional amendments on abortion and marijuana.
The scandal led the Senate to put multiple confirmations of DeSantis appointees on hold and the Legislature to defund more than 450 Hope Florida posts, not to mention an ongoing grand jury investigation in Leon County. It also arguably derailed the First Lady’s ambitions to follow her husband as Governor.
But lawmakers in the House said all that oversight wasn’t so much driven by animus on Perez’s part, but rather on simply empowering the Legislature to act appropriately as watchdogs. If anything, it’s more a byproduct of a restructuring of the House to work bottom-up, instead of top-down. Individual lawmakers had the power to independently pursue both oversight interests and good policy.
Rep. Will Robinson, a Bradenton Republican who ran against Perez for Speaker in 2019, said Perez has empowered individual Representatives like no leader he served under in the last seven years.
“Every Speaker talks about making it more of a member-driven process. But in reality, you have the Speaker’s priorities, the Chairs’ priorities, and they funnel down to members,” Robinson said.
“If you notice, last Session there was no HB 1 or HB 3 — or HB 5, 7 or 9. In my experience, when they have those leadership bills, everyone in the Republican caucus knows those are untouchable, It’s like a consent agenda. But Speaker Perez said this would be a member-driven process in committees and in the engagement with all members. That’s how you make good legislation.”
That obviously wasn’t well received by all. The Governor labeled the Hope Florida investigation a “manufactured fraud.” And that wasn’t even the first time DeSantis leveled intense critiques at the House.
Tensions started just weeks after Perez officially took the gavel as Speaker. After DeSantis called a Special Session so the Legislature could grant him power to enforce President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, Perez balked.
Along with Senate President Ben Albritton, a major voice in agriculture, the Legislature met for Session but then gaveled out and launched their own process. The Legislature passed a bill that would instead have empowered Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson. Predictably, the Governor bristled at the snub.
“How many of these guys ran and asked for your vote and said they were going to kneecap the state’s ability to combat illegal immigration? Not one of them did that, and yet, that’s what they voted on,” DeSantis said of the bill.
Perez withered the worst criticisms coming out of the Governor’s Office and proved more willing to respond in public. After DeSantis urged Republican Party of Florida leaders to blanket lawmakers with demands to pass his bill, Perez held a Q&A hosted by the state party and decried the Governor’s bill as a power grab.
“He wants his own state guard, with his own bureaucrat picking up the illegal aliens and shipping them off to another portion of the world, wherever it is that they originate from,” Perez said.
Ultimately, DeSantis vetoed the Legislature’s bill with as little ceremony as offered to his own proposal. But while that legislation failed to become statute, the episode caused a conversation between the executive branch after years of the Governor witnessing pure acquiescence.
DeSantis in February signed a package of newly signed immigration measures shaped in negotiations with a coequal branch of government, and one that also assigned oversight power to the entire Cabinet and not just the Governor’s Office.
But Perez didn’t only demonstrate pushback against the command of the Governor. Months after locking arms with Albritton on the immigration bill, Perez stood at the Speaker’s dais and issued a stunning rebuke of his Senate counterpart as a budget framework fell apart.
“As presiding officers, as elected officials, our word is our bond. Breaking our word, breaking a deal, is breaking faith not only with one another, but with our institutions,” Perez said.
Whomever deserved blame for the budget talk collapse, the friction resulted in an extended Session that ran until June, when lawmakers finally produced a $115 billion budget. That total came in around $500 million under DeSantis’ proposal at the start of Session, though the Governor would later find another $600 million to veto himself. Ultimately, the lengthy process reduced a budget lower than the prior fiscal year, a move toward austerity unseen in years.
But the stage already appeared set for the next war between lawmakers and DeSantis as well. While the Governor wanted lawmakers to eliminate property taxes in the state, Perez favored a more deliberative approach and appointed a select committee to develop multiple proposals. One of those could end up on the ballot in 2026, but it will be crafted by the Legislature and not rubber-stamped.
Where all this leaves Perez heading into 2026 remains unclear. While a property tax proposal has already advanced in the House and will likely come up for a vote in the 2026 Session, Albritton said the Senate wants to take things slow. Meanwhile, DeSantis believes none of the proposals to emerge so far goes far enough toward eliminating property taxes altogether.
Meanwhile, the House emerged as a leader in starting the conversation on redrawing Florida’s congressional lines. Perez in August announced he would appoint a Select Committee on Redistricting. He later named Rep. Mike Redondo — whom Perez endorsed in a 2023 Special Election and who is now in line to be Speaker in 2030 — to lead it.
On the mapmaking front, other states already kicked off a cartography war in 2025, either at Trump’s urging in Republican-controlled states or in direct response to it by Democrat-led ones. California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Utah already implemented new maps ahead of the Midterms. The White House has made clear it wants Tallahassee to maximize GOP opportunity in 2026.
But while other states moved quickly and with brazen partisanship, Perez treaded more carefully, promising a detailed review of legal ramifications in a July ruling from the Florida Supreme Court case upholding the current map. In this instance, DeSantis and Albritton both want to move even slower, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court could issue a ruling in the spring that offers new guidance on use of race in crafting political boundaries.
Perez believes waiting too long will create more problems.
“It’s inconsiderate of our members to say that in May, when hopefully we’re home, you’re going to have to come back to Tallahassee and take a week off or whatever you have going on with your family because certain parties didn’t want to address an issue that was before us right now in the immediate moment. I think that’s irresponsible,” he told POLITICO.
It’s unclear how much political capital Perez may bring with him into the 2026 Session. With relationships fractured with the Senate and Governor’s Office, he may become isolated. But he’s shown there to be a strong foundation under the House, and an ability to get results against long odds in the past.
Moreover, he’s not working alone. Andrade said the true strength in Perez’s agenda is that he doesn’t bring his own list of scores to settle but rather advocates for the lawmakers within his caucus. Budget talks didn’t center around the Speaker’s personal priorities, and he didn’t bet his reputation on any single policy achievement so much as on the respect afforded to the Fourth Floor.
“While obviously don’t want sessions year in and out where it’s always contentious between the legislative and executive, the pendulum swung back to a more stable position under Danny,” Andrade said. “Getting along without sniping at each other is not the same as kowtowing to the Governor.”
The high drama in Tallahassee garnered attention and may even have made Perez some friends in Washington. When Trump visited Florida to tour Alligator Alcatraz, an immigrant detention center set up in the Everglades, the President reportedly insisted Perez be invited to the event and given a prominent seat at public events.
Months later, Trump’s political team urged Perez during a visit to Washington to run for Florida Attorney General against appointed incumbent James Uthmeier in a GOP Primary. Perez ultimately passed on that, and Trump later endorsed Uthmeier.
But that leaves Perez in a familiar position: heading into Session with nothing to lose.
Despite cries online from an army of pro-DeSantis accounts, constitutional checks prevent the Governor from forcing Perez from his leadership position, and term limits mean he isn’t eligible for re-election in 2026. DeSantis also cannot seek another term as Governor.
That all means DeSantis will spend his last year in power with Perez as Speaker. And while DeSantis appears to still harbor presidential ambitions and a legacy to protect, Perez’s goals seem largely focused on strengthening his institution after he’s gone. His members still love him for that, as much as the online trolls hate him.
