Winner and Loser of the Week in Florida politics — Week of 3.1.26

One of the biggest stories of the week was President Donald Trump finally firing Kristi Noem like a dog. And like most big political stories these days, there was of course a Florida connection.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz has spent the better part of the last year hammering Noem as incapable of leading the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). So it’s not hard to guess how he felt when Trump finally showed her the door.

As a former Florida Emergency Management Director, Moskowitz has blasted Noem for what he said was the mishandling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including a historic backlog of disaster-assistance requests.

Her tenure also drew wider scrutiny over self-promotional immigration stunts, a $220 million ad campaign featuring herself, and the fallout from the Minneapolis shootings that became a political nightmare for the administration.

By Thursday, Trump had fired her as DHS Secretary and tapped U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin to replace her.

Moskowitz did not exactly let the moment pass quietly. During Noem’s House testimony this week just ahead of her firing, he went full troll, waving around a “new Coast Guard blankie” in one of the hearing’s more mocking moments, referencing a report that Noem tried to fire a private pilot because he forgot to transfer her blanket between planes.

Moskowitz then followed Noem’s firing by posting an edited “Apprentice” clip to twist the knife.

A figure as loathsome as Noem deserves nothing less than to be ridiculed into oblivion, and Moskowitz proved he was just the Florida Man for the job.

Now, it’s onto our weekly game of winners and losers.

Winners

Honorable mention: Jason Pizzo. After questions have swirled for months over James Fishback’s residency history, Sen. Pizzo is now looking to do something about it.

Pizzo is pushing to disqualify Fishback from the Governor’s race over serious residency questions. Florida’s Constitution requires a Governor to have been a permanent Florida resident for seven years, and Fishback has faced scrutiny over dual voter registrations and a Washington, D.C., homestead claim that identified a Washington property as his primary residence.

That makes Pizzo’s move more than a stunt. It is a clean, ruthless use of election law against a candidate who has spent plenty of time generating outlandish headlines but still has to meet the basic threshold for being on the ballot.

Fishback has pushed against this effort, framing it as a tactic designed to silence him. And to be clear, we agree that banning a candidate from the ballot without cause is an improper use of government authority.

But there are also strict rules for who can qualify for Governor, and an inquiry could decide once and for all whether Fishback even meets them.

And even if Fishback survives the challenge, Pizzo still wins something valuable against a candidate many in The Process feel belongs nowhere near the Governor’s Mansion: he drags the campaign back to credibility, qualifications and whether Fishback is even legally eligible to serve.

Plus, Pizzo was able to make a good Waffle House crack based on our next winner.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest winner: Waffle House. Waffle House this week did what it at times fails to do to unruly customers: It showed Fishback the door.

After Fishback’s stream of offensive rhetoric and wannabe edgelord act kept escalating, Waffle House revoked his campaign’s permission to use its Florida locations and issued a trespass notice, cutting off Fishback’s diner-tour gimmick he had been using as a made-for-social-media organizing stunt.

Fishback himself announced that the company had “abruptly revoked” permission and criminally trespassed his campaign from its Florida restaurants.

Good for them.

A private business is under no obligation to let its brand become set dressing for a campaign built on provocation, grievance and cheap spectacle. Waffle House did not owe Fishback a stage, a backdrop or a bottomless cup of coffee while he tried to turn outrage into political momentum.

Instead, it protected its stores from becoming unwilling props in his roadshow, which is increasingly turning into a shitshow. Good riddance.

The biggest winner: Kat Cammack. As the only Floridian on the House Agriculture Committee, Cammack has spent months arguing that any new farm bill had to stop treating Florida agriculture like an afterthought.

This week’s House markup gave her the payoff: she said Florida “made out like bandits,” with wins for citrus, timber and specialty crop producers baked into the package.

That matters because Florida’s ag economy does not look like the corn-and-soy model that usually dominates Farm Bill politics. Cammack had been holding listening sessions around the state and warning that Florida had unique needs, in addition to pushing for U.S. Department of Agriculture disaster help after freezes hit crops earlier this year.

The broader Farm Bill taking shape also aims to strengthen disaster assistance, crop insurance, research and access to capital — all areas with outsized relevance for Florida growers.

There’s still a long way to go before any farm bill becomes law. But in a Congress where agricultural policy can easily be swallowed by partisan bickering all too common in Washington, Cammack can credibly say she muscled Florida’s concerns into the conversation — and into the bill text.

Losers

Dishonorable mention: Joe Carollo. Carollo’s long, taxpayer-funded legal fantasy finally ran out of road this week.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Carollo’s appeal, leaving intact the $63.5 million verdict against him in the Ball & Chain case and effectively cementing one of the most humiliating legal defeats ever tied to a Miami elected official.

A jury found Carollo violated the First Amendment rights of Ball & Chain owners William Fuller and Martin Pinilla by using city resources for retribution after they backed his 2017 political opponent.

That alone would be bad enough. But Carollo didn’t just lose — he dragged the city of Miami and its taxpayers through years of costly litigation on the public dime. Miami taxpayers have reportedly already spent more than $5 million on Carollo’s legal bills.

Even now, the wreckage is still spreading. The city is tangled in a separate insurance dispute, and another federal lawsuit tied to alleged economic damages remains in play. In other words, Carollo’s vendetta is still generating bills long after the courts made clear the conduct was unconstitutional.

Miami Commissioner Miguel Gabela summed up the aftermath more delicately than most people would: “The residue left right now from that is not a good one.” That’s one way to describe it.

Carollo spent years acting like there might still be some miracle escape hatch. There wasn’t. Now the highest court in the country has left him exactly where lower courts did: stuck with a brutal ruling and a disgraced legacy.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest loser: Ron DeSantis. DeSantis still sees himself as the main character of Florida politics. This Session, he looks more like a guy yelling notes from the cheap seats.

His much-hyped AI bill of rights is dead in the House, despite clearing the Senate and despite DeSantis spending months publicly begging lawmakers to get on board. The House never took it up, leaving one of the Governor’s marquee pushes to expire on the vine.

And while DeSantis has pushed hard to blow open Florida’s vaccine laws, that effort has hardly become the triumphant ideological crusade he wanted. Legislation making it easier for parents to obtain exemptions from Florida’s vaccine requirements, based on simple “conscience” objections, is dead as well. DeSantis and Joseph Ladapo will still do what they can to undercut vaccine requirements, but those changes can be undone just as easily under a new administration.

The Governor keeps trying to project dominance, but the Legislature keeps acting like it has moved on. This is the same power structure that openly defied him on immigration during a Special Session last year, underscoring that the old fear factor is gone and that lawmakers are increasingly willing to treat DeSantis like a lame duck.

This year, DeSantis is already eyeing another Special Session, this time on redistricting, still trying to muscle out policy wins by force of proclamation. But when your Regular Session priorities are stalling and your best weapon is calling lawmakers back into town later, that is not strength. That is a Governor running low on juice and trying desperately to exert influence in the increasingly few ways he can.

DeSantis built his brand on making Tallahassee bend. This year, Tallahassee looks perfectly comfortable letting his policy proposals collapse.

The biggest loser: Alexander Carvajal. Carvajal lit the match on one of the ugliest political stories of the week.

The Miami-Dade GOP Secretary and FIU law student reportedly started a WhatsApp chat that spiraled into a sewer of racist, antisemitic and homophobic messages, including repeated slurs and talk of violence.

The criticism came fast and from every direction, turning the issue into a public relations nightmare for Miami Republicans and Florida International University. A bipartisan push for accountability emerged after the messages surfaced. Miami-Dade GOP leaders moved to remove Carvajal, while FIU President Jeanette Nuñez said the university would not tolerate hate or discrimination.

Carvajal’s defense — essentially that he created the chat but somehow missed the filth filling it up — is the kind of excuse that insults everyone’s intelligence. The person who opens the door to the circus does not get to act shocked when the elephants stampede through it.

And the fallout was brutal. This was not a stray bad joke or one offensive post. Reports described a chat soaked in slurs, Nazi references and violent rhetoric.

This of course follows months after another racist GOP chat scandal run by Young Republican members across the U.S.

For a party always talking about standards, discipline and personal responsibility, Carvajal and the other members of this chat are about to experience a real-life example.