Winner and Loser of the Week in Florida politics — Week of 5.31.26

Lauren Book walked 1,500 miles this year for her annual Walk in My Shoes event, but her road back to the Senate is shaping up to be an easy trek.

Book, who served in the chamber from 2016 to 2024 before term limits forced her out, announced her campaign for Senate District 30 after outgoing Sen. Tina Polsky confirmed she would not seek re-election.

Now, it appears the Democratic Primary field has cleared for the former Senate Democratic Leader. Coral Springs Rep. Dan Daley, who had been weighing the race seriously for weeks, announced Tuesday he would not run, effectively handing Book an uncontested path to the nomination.

Qualifying begins this week and closes June 12 and Republican Jerusa Zitta remains the only other active candidate in the race.

It appears unlikely any surprises will upend this contest, but if past cycles are any indication, the final stretch will produce at least one genuine jolt nobody saw coming. Candidates who spent months circling a race will make it official. Others who appeared locked in will quietly pass. Or someone will come out of nowhere to file.

With Florida’s third Special Session of the year now wrapped, we are turning to election season in earnest. And this week is yet another milestone on the road to November.

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

Winners

Honorable mention: Moez Limayem. Limayem became the University of South Florida’s ninth President on Feb. 17, and he has spent his first 3.5 months navigating a catalog of institutional crises that would test any leader.

The fact that he has handled virtually every one of them with visible personal engagement and concrete action rather than institutional language and hiding behind communications staff, warrants some recognition.

The list started relatively small. A suspicious package at Fowler Fields triggered a bomb scare in early April, drawing law enforcement and briefly rattling the Tampa campus before investigators cleared it as a non-threat.

Then in mid-April, doctoral students Nahida Bristy and Zamil Limon, both 27-year-old Bangladeshi students, disappeared from the Tampa area. Limon’s roommate, Hisham Abugharbieh, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

What Limayem did next mattered. He spoke at a public vigil, was visibly emotional and told the community he understood this loss — as a former international student himself, and as a father. He also promised a comprehensive review of off-campus housing safety and said USF would stop recommending complexes that did not meet standards. This week, the university announced a new off-campus housing provider program, a direct institutional response to the murders.

Just days after Bristy’s remains were identified, the Marine Science Laboratory at USF’s St. Petersburg campus went up in flames. More than 200 firefighters responded. The 80-year-old building, which housed the College of Marine Science’s chemistry, biology and oceanography research operations, was declared a total loss — a devastating blow.

Limayem acknowledged the compounding weight of it publicly. He promised to prioritize research continuity while the community was still processing grief.

He ran his first commencement ceremonies in early May under all of it. Two empty chairs sat on the arena floor during the doctoral ceremony, representing Bristy and Limon. Both received their degrees posthumously.

On May 17, 21-year-old USF honors student Lauryn Akey was killed on Interstate 75 in Charlotte County when an alleged drunk driver with a prior conviction made a wrong-way turn and struck her vehicle while she was returning from a wedding.

Then just this week, a USF student identified as 21-year-old Hansel Pearson stabbed his roommate and another person at the Halo 46 Apartments near campus, then was found dead hours later at a nearby student housing complex.

Limayem has been in this job for 108 days. He has held vigils. He has shown up personally at every crisis rather than letting administrators speak for him. He has been honest about grief and clear about action.

There is no way to make any of what USF has experienced in these months a good story. But how a leader handles the worst of times tells you more about what they are made of than anything else. Limayem has spent his honeymoon period being tested at a level few university Presidents ever face, and he has met the moment.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest winner: Senate leaders. When the property tax Special Session wrapped Tuesday, Florida’s public schools emerged with something Gov. Ron DeSantis did not originally intend to give them: a guarantee that the proposed homestead exemption increases won’t touch their funding.

That outcome didn’t happen by accident. A small group of legislators went to the mat against a Governor who wanted maximum tax relief numbers to put before voters, and they didn’t move.

The core of that coalition on the Senate side was Senate President-designate Jim Boyd, along with Sens. Jennifer Bradley, Erin Grall and Jay Trumbull, who drove the amendment protecting school revenue through the negotiation process alongside House Speaker-designate Sam Garrison.

The stakes were real for large School Districts were sounding the alarm of the huge hits they would have taken had these dollars not been protected. Sources with knowledge of the negotiations told Florida Politics that DeSantis pushed against the school protection through the final moments of the Special Session, working to strip it out of the resolution before both chambers voted.

And the stakes were also real for these lawmakers. DeSantis has threatened using his veto pen as a blunt instrument for eight years, and legislators have generally calculated that the personal cost of crossing him is too steep. These Senators made a different calculation — that protecting the foundational revenue stream for Florida’s public schools was worth the friction — and they were right to make it.

The ballot measure still faces a 60% approval threshold in November, and the broader fight over what the proposed exemption increases mean for local governments is far from settled. But Florida’s schoolchildren won’t be caught in the crossfire. Credit the Senate.

The biggest winner: David Jolly. Jerry Demings announced Friday morning that he is suspending his campaign for Governor after receiving a prostate cancer diagnosis earlier in the week.

The Orange County Mayor, a 45-year veteran of public service who served as Orlando Police Chief and Orange County Sheriff before leading the county since 2018, said he cannot simultaneously do his job, receive treatment, and run for higher office — and faced with that choice, he chose his health and his family.

It was a difficult moment handled with dignity, and it deserves to be seen as exactly that.

But, of course, there is political fallout here as well: Jolly now appears to be the uncontested front-runner in the Democratic Primary for Governor.

He responded to Demings’ announcement with exactly the right tone, expressing genuine warmth for a competitor who ran an honorable race and wishing him a full recovery. “Jerry has dedicated his life to public service, fighting with passion, mettle, and faith,” Jolly said. “I know he’ll bring that same spirit to this new chapter.”

The Democratic Primary is now Jolly’s to lose. He entered the race with strong name recognition, a crossover appeal built on his time as a Republican Congressman, and a fundraising operation that has consistently outpaced the field.

He has spent months building a campaign infrastructure and positioning himself as the kind of candidate who can win back the persuadable voters Florida Democrats need in a state that has trended Republican in every major statewide race since 2018.

Of course, he did not earn this advantage the way any candidate would choose to earn it. He would almost certainly say the same. The focus in the near term belongs on Jerry Demings and his recovery.

When that chapter settles, the Democratic nomination for Governor will likely belong to Jolly to make of it what he can.

Losers

Dishonorable mention: Matt The Welder. After the Republican Party of Florida endorsed incumbent Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson for re-election, supporters of Matt The Welder — who is challenging Simpson in the GOP Primary — fired off angry emails to party officials about the perceived favoritism.

Political consultant and Manatee County GOP State Committeeman Jennings DePriest replied to one of those emails by attaching a digitally censored but still graphic screenshot of the image. DePriest’s message was pointed: “Are you talking about the Matt The Welder who admitted to making and posting pornographic videos of himself?”

The pornographic image of Matt The Welder, whose real name is Matthew Taylor, appears to show him in an act of self-gratification. The response from Matt The Welder’s camp was to threaten legal action — a move that has ensured this story got significantly more coverage than it would have otherwise.

Matt The Welder’s most serious allegation is that DePriest sent the image to a 17-year-old member of a Turning Point USA chapter who supports his campaign. Rep. Alex Andrade, working as an attorney representing DePriest, flatly denied that anyone sent the content to a minor.

The issue first surfaced last year through a website with ties to political consultant Roger Stone. It did not gain wide traction until this week’s email chain, which Matt The Welder’s own supporters started.

Now, he’s in the position of arguing that political enemies are unfairly weaponizing material that he created, uploaded to the internet, and made publicly accessible more than a decade ago.

Matt The Welder believes voters will be forgiving of past mistakes. But he also might have considered that the best way to keep decade-old self-published pornography from becoming a campaign issue is not to run for statewide office.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest loser: Anthony Sabatini. The Lake County Commissioner and disgraced former state lawmaker entered the race for Florida’s 11th Congressional District in April, looking to claim the seat of retiring U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster.

Sabatini has tried this before: In 2024, he challenged Webster in a Republican Primary, then dropped out after Trump endorsed the incumbent.

This time around, with Webster exiting on his own, Sabatini saw an opening. But so far, it’s led to multiple stumbles.

The most comical stems from a political committee called Advance Liberty PAC sending out a mailer plastering photos of Sabatini and Trump across both sides of a campaign flyer while declaring Sabatini “The Trump Choice for Congress.”

The biggest reason that’s notable is that Trump has never endorsed Sabatini in any of the multiple congressional races he has entered.

Attorneys for Trump and his Never Surrender Inc. leadership PAC sent Advance Liberty PAC a formal cease and desist letter demanding the misrepresentation stop. Trump attorney Domenic Aulisi wrote that the mailer “grossly mischaracterizes” the President’s position and that it “strains credulity” that Sabatini could ever be Trump’s choice given his recent public record.

And about that record: Sabatini has spent this cycle slamming Trump from the right. He has called current deportation rates “a failure,” demanded an end to the Iran war, and aligned himself with U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, who just lost a Trump-backed Primary challenge in Kentucky. Sabatini also posted that Trump was inviting “a migrant invasion from Venezuela” and declared that the President had become “very out of touch.” The cease and desist letter cited some of those X posts.

Now, of course, this is an outside PAC, and the law prohibits Sabatini from coordinating it. So while he may not deserve blame for this laughable strategy, it nevertheless snowballed into a news cycle reminding voters of the distance between Sabatini and Trump as he runs in a GOP Primary cycle where Trump endorsements have carried the day so far.

But that wasn’t the only hit Sabatini took this week. Sabatini filed a federal lawsuit in May arguing Florida’s resign-to-run law was unconstitutional as applied to congressional candidates. He argued that the U.S. Constitution sets the exclusive qualifications for House membership — age, citizenship, inhabitancy — and Florida’s requirement that he resign his Lake County Commission seat before qualifying amounts to an unlawful additional barrier.

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker was unpersuaded. Walker ruled that courts have consistently found resign-to-run laws constitutional as long as they were not enacted with the “sole purpose of creating additional qualifications” for federal office, and Florida’s law does not meet that standard for invalidation.

That creates a problem for Sabatini. The deadline to submit a resignation under the law’s timing provision — the one that would have allowed Sabatini to set a future effective date while keeping his Commission seat as a fallback — passed on May 29. He missed it.

If he now qualifies for Congress, the resignation takes effect immediately. Congressional qualifying closes June 12 at noon.

The choice he faces now — give up a seat he just won to chase one he has failed to reach before, or walk away from a congressional run already defined by a Trump cease and desist and a lost court case — could very well end up being a lose-lose.

The biggest loser: ChatGPT. Attorney General James Uthmeier filed an 83-page complaint against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in Florida’s 10th Judicial Circuit this week, making Florida the first state in the country to take the company to court over how ChatGPT handles its users — with particular focus on children.

The lawsuit alleges OpenAI marketed the product as safe while internally knowing about risks tied to self-harm, violence and the collection of minors’ data. OpenAI’s position is that ChatGPT is a general-purpose tool used responsibly by millions of people, and that the company has added safeguards including parental tools and age-specific protections.

Florida voters are not buying it, and the numbers are striking enough to warrant attention beyond the litigation itself. A Sachs Media survey found 65% supporting the lawsuit, with 37% describing themselves as strongly in favor. Only 27% are opposed. Republican support sits at 72%, but the breadth of the coalition is what stands out: nonpartisans back it at 65%, Democrats at 58%, and both men and women clear 60%.

OpenAI has faced regulatory scrutiny in Europe and congressional hearings in Washington, but this is different. A state Attorney General filing suit, backed by this depth of public support, could represent a new front in AI accountability fights.

Florida has the infrastructure to make this expensive. The question is whether the litigation produces accountability or settles quietly.