Florida lawmakers voted unanimously in both chambers last year to create a statewide system under the Department of Health (DOH) to send warnings and issue beach, canal and pool closures within 24 hours of a safety issue.

The bipartisan measure known as the “Safe Waterways Act” then went to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who vetoed it. He said the bill suffered from “a fatal infirmity” because it granted DOH authority to supersede local jurisdictions on beach operations.

So, two of the legislation’s three sponsors, Doral Republican Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez and Highland Beach Republican Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman, considered the Governor’s feedback when crafting a more modest proposal for the 2025 Session.

The result was twin bills (SB 156, HB 73), which would have transferred water sampling duties from DOH to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), created new reporting requirements and a publicly accessible interagency database, and established a process to close public bathing areas where contaminations occur.

Gossett-Seidman said this year’s version wasn’t as costly as its predecessor and placed closure authority with a more appropriate agency. But despite those changes, SB 156 and HB 73 were ignored in their respective chambers.

With just over two weeks remaining before Sine Die, both are on track to die unheard. Meanwhile, complaints of rampant water pollution and Florida’s lax water quality regulations continue to mount.

“This year, the focus has not been on water, which is OK,” Gossett-Seidman told Florida Politics this week.

“The Everglades is going well. There’s a term for when people become engaged on an issue just because someone files a bill, and it seems as if that’s already happening in my county and others. I’ve heard back. People are paying better attention to their water management and water emergency issues.”

That’s not to say she’s given up on her legislation. Gossett-Seidman said she’s been talking with DeSantis’ Office to further fine-tune the bill’s language so it’s more palatable.

“We’ve all been in discussion and decided we’re going to need another year and through the Summer to work on it. I’m fine with the extra time. I’ve got a lot of organizations assisting outside of the government agencies, and everyone wants the same results. They’re just not sure which way to channel the responsibility,” she said.

“It’s been acknowledged that the agencies are working harder on addressing contaminations locally and through their counties. So, I’m fine with hanging on to it another year. The fact it’s out there has been a blessing; it’s had some excellent effects so far.”

SB 156 was to first be heard in the Senate Health Policy Committee, chaired by Winter Haven Republican Sen. Colleen Burton. HB 73 was first referred to the House Natural Resources and Disasters Subcommittee, chaired by Bonita Springs Republican Rep. Adam Botana.

On a somewhat related note, the Senate this month passed a bill (SB 56) by Miami Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia to set steep penalties for weather manipulation and geoengineering, require DEP to investigate complaints and compel airport operators to report suspicious activities.

DeSantis released a video backing the legislation while complaining that the House “gutted” its lower-chamber analog (HB 477) by Tallahassee Republican Rep. Kevin Steele so that it “would actually codify the practice of geoengineering and weather modification.”

“People got a lot of kooky ideas that they can get in and put things in the atmosphere to block the sun and save us from climate change,” DeSantis said. “We’re not playing that game in Florida.”

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Gov. Ron DeSantis is channeling a Donald Trump phrase to attack the House for “weaponizing (its supermajority) to try to attack our administration.”

The current Governor and potential future Gov. Casey DeSantis have been sharpening their attacks on a frequent critic. They brought the road show to Pensacola, home of Republican Reps. Alex Andrade. and Michelle Salzman.

“When they’re attacking me, they’re attacking you,” the Governor said, before contending later that Republican legislators were “stabbing (voters) in the back.”

He even labeled the body “the least productive Florida House of Representatives in the modern history of the Florida Republican Party.”

The goal: to overshadow in his own district a local elected official and his narrative of money laundering and corruption related to the First Lady’s Hope Florida charity.

The official subject of the presser was eclipsed by the heated rhetoric. The Governor announced 28 Hope Florida on-campus liaisons at state colleges, which he said are intended to offer support services to “single moms” and the like when “misfortune strikes.”

He said “churches” are going to “swoop in” and help “people trying to make something of themselves” but who have “curve balls get in the way.”

Timing was everything. The press conference started as Andrade held a subcommittee meeting asking people associated with Hope Florida how $10 million got steered to it, with much of it ending up after strategic pass throughs in a political committee controlled by current Attorney General James Uthmeier. Meanwhile, a Senate committee had just postponed consideration of a bill that would codify Hope Florida.

DeSantis suggested such inquiries were a “farce” and a “manufactured hoax,” arguing that the conservative House had gone rogue on the voters, with a leadership “cabal” working “with the liberal media” to “manufacture smears” against him and the First Lady.

He also suggested that political operatives were scared of a Casey DeSantis political move in 2026.

“Some people feel threatened by the First Lady. Let’s just be clear about that. They know this, you saw her up here. You know, if you’re looking at 2026 and you’ve got some horse you don’t want her anywhere near that. You’re very worried because she runs circles around their people. Everybody knows that,” DeSantis said.

That was just one of many condemnations of the House made in a press conference that ran as long as a major motion picture.

“You wouldn’t think we’d even be in this situation. But we have this almost 3-to-1 supermajority of Republicans in the Florida House of Representatives and it is rotten,” DeSantis said.

“They are behaving more like Democrats. They are colluding with the Left. They’re colluding with the media to try to sabotage all the great success that Florida has had over these last six years. And that is wrong. That is not what they told you they would do when they asked you for your vote.”

Casey DeSantis seemed to diminish her predecessor, Ann Scott, who would read to school groups, saying she didn’t want “to be a potted plant in the side of the room and watch the world go by and take the path of least resistance.”

“People were saying, you know, what are you going to do? Like, what’s your one initiative? You know, are you just going to read to children? Which is great. Like, I do that. I read to my kids every night. I go around schools, so I do that. But what are you ultimately going to do?” Casey DeSantis said.

The Governor struck an imperial tone on other issues, including universities and his own role in keeping them from becoming “indoctrination camps.”

Ron DeSantis decried a Salzman bill (HB 1321) “cosponsored by the most flamboyantly left-wing Democrat” in the House, which would remove the Governor’s Office from searches for university Presidents.

“In order to do this, it requires that the guy that you elected to be Governor by a record margin, 4.6 million votes, that I take what you want to see in these universities and I use my authority to ensure that these universities don’t run off the rail,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis said Salzman sold out the base to accommodate House leadership, using language that Salzman used to highlight her own ethnic background’s Native American lineage.

“She had been a very good, good ally for many years. She had a good conservative record. And I think what happens is these people go to Tallahassee and they go native,” DeSantis said.

“She’s doing the bidding of the leadership and the staff. She’s not doing what you sent them there to do. You did not elect her to undo our conservative reforms in higher education, because I’m confident if she ran on that, you wouldn’t have elected her in the first place.”

The Governor objects to the move to “neuter” his office in the bill, which stipulates “that the Governor and the Governor’s Office can have no communications involving who gets selected to be university presidents.”

Without that, he says a radical could take over.

“Imagine that they bring some communist in to be the President of a university and I’m just supposed to sit there and twiddle my thumbs. That’s not how I roll. I’m not going to let that happen to you. I’m not going to let that happen to this state,” he promised.

Ray Rodrigues, Chancellor of the State University System of Florida, also spoke against Salzman’s bill.

He said it “removes the Board of Governors from the personnel management of the universities in the selection of the President” and ensures they no longer “play a role in the selection of the President through the role of confirmation working with the Boards of Trustees.”

The Governor noted that he simply could veto legislation that did this “and keep doing what works,” and urged legislators to be willing to stand up against leadership, no matter the consequences.

DeSantis also slammed “an asinine proposal” designed to get agency heads, such as Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, to live in Tallahassee.

“Ladapo has a job at University of Florida as well. He doesn’t live in the Tallahassee swamp, and they’re saying that all of these agency heads must live in the swamp. I want to drain the swamp. I don’t want to refill the swamp. Where are they getting this? It’s an asinine proposal, but it is motivated to try to take out people like Ladapo who’ve stood by you, who’ve done a good job,” DeSantis said.

“Why the hell are they doing this?” he wondered, given the “success” the state has had under DeSantis’ watch.

“They’re simply trying to undermine me and attack me and undermine our policies that have proven to be successful and that you voted for,” he added, urging “rank-and-file” members to stand up and help “stop the nonsense.”

A former rank-and-file member revealed how that made him feel “very unwelcome” in “a very different Florida House,” calling it a “runaway House.”

Former Rep. Joel Rudman again aired his complaints about a “learning session on how to be a better legislator,” but to his chagrin the meeting was merely intended “to tell us that we’re not going to be Ron DeSantis’ dog, only they didn’t use the word dog, they used a vulgar term instead.”

Rudman chided Andrade, who he said “had a history of fighting conservative Republicans.” He lauded DeSantis as “by far the best Governor Florida has ever seen,” even better than former President Andrew Jackson, who also lived in Pensacola.

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U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody has raised upward $1.6 million in contributions in her first six weeks in the Senate. And the Moody-related “Stronger Safer Nation” super PAC has also raised $7 million year-to-date.

Perhaps just as importantly, her campaign also announced a key hire of a pollster closely tied to President Donald Trump.

“Together, we will make Florida safer and stronger, and I will continue my fight for the conservative principles that make this country great,” Moody said in a statement announcing the funding haul.

“From launching the campaign, to receiving the endorsements of respected leaders throughout the state, and building out my team, this quarter was a massive success. I am looking forward to continuing this fight on behalf of the millions of people who call Florida home.”

That team now includes Tony Fabrizio, a prominent Republican pollster who worked for Trump’s presidential campaigns.

“As a Floridian, I’m honored to work for Ashley Moody — a tough as nails conservative — who is deeply committed to advancing President Trump’s agenda to Make America Great Again.”

Moody, a Plant City Republican, was appointed to the Senate by Gov. Ron DeSantis. She served as Florida Attorney General alongside the Governor since both of their elections to statewide office in 2018.

That makes the Fabrizio hire all the more notable. Amid rumblings of potential Primary battles next year between Florida candidates tied to Trump and to DeSantis, including a Trump-allied Congressman pondering a challenge to Moody, bringing a pollster closely tied with the President shows the Senator has rapidly made inroads with Trump and his team.

Fabrizio is also working for U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds’ campaign for Governor in 2026, even as Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis ponders a run for the same job.

Details about contributions to Moody’s campaign were not immediately available. The Senator said she has worked to meet with voters statewide in her new role as she concurrently verses herself on business in Washington.

“Since taking office, I have been traveling around the state to share my Florida First message and continue earning support for my campaign to return to the U.S. Senate,” Moody said. “We are just getting started, and I am so grateful for the overwhelming support we have received in just a short amount of time.”

And she’ll have plenty of support from the Stronger Safer Nation super PAC, which looks set to add plenty of cash to support the Senator this cycle.

Of course, statewide runs are nothing new to Moody either. She won election as Florida Attorney General in 2018 and 2022 and was the top vote-getter of any candidate seeking statewide office in either election cycle.

Moody filled a seat vacated this year by former U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio following his appointment by Trump as Secretary of State. But she will have to stand for election next year in a race to determine who holds the job for the last two years of Rubio’s term. The seat then goes up for re-election again in 2028 with a full six-year term up for grabs.

The incumbent is one of eight candidates filed so far for the race, most of them lesser-known candidates. None has filed official reports to date yet with the Federal Election Commission.

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