Florida GOP’s culture war platform ignores state’s needs, analysts say

The Republican Party of Florida’s new platform that promotes culture wars and staunchly opposes giving the voters a say on abortion rights ignores the issues most important to Floridians and could hurt the party’s fortunes, political analysts say.

Some parts are even too much for Republican Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, who said they wouldn’t happen on her watch this legislative session.

The GOP’s preferred agenda comes even as Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “anti-woke” message fell flat in the Republican presidential primary, prompting him to quit the race last month.

“It’s just shocking how much it doesn’t deal with bread-and-butter issues that are facing Floridians on a daily basis,” said Gregory Koger, a professor of political science at the University of Miami. “… I’m just not sure these are issues of resonance to the average Floridian. But they are consistent with the long-term proposals of the Republican Party.”

Floridians have seen property insurance premiums soar in recent years to the highest in the nation at $4,000 a year. Rental rates have skyrocketed as well. Solutions for those problems aren’t in the platform.

The party did commit to fighting a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights and vowed to campaign against the initiative if the Supreme Court approves it for the ballot this fall.

According to Politico, other top items on the party’s legislative agenda, approved by GOP leaders at its annual meeting on Feb. 10 at a Pasco County golf resort, include:

• Preventing employers and employees from having to use someone’s preferred pronouns

• Banning LGBTQ or other “ideology” flags from government buildings

• Banning the removal of historic monuments, including Confederate memorials

• Lowering the minimum age for buying a rifle back to 18

• Requiring IDs to state a transgender person’s sex at birth and not their gender

Many of the bills on such issues are already in legislative limbo, but Passidomo was even more blunt about their fate.

“Our bill process is not the Republican Party of Florida. We are the Legislature. We make the laws,” Passidomo told reporters Wednesday. “None of those bills are moving in the Senate anymore. … I’m not going to, because the Republican Party of Florida has a platform, take it out of a committee or violate our rules.”

The new chair of the state GOP, Evan Power, who oversaw the annual meeting, appeared to accept the situation.

“President Passidomo is right, the Legislature passes laws and our Legislature has delivered for our voters,” he told the Orlando Sentinel via text. “The RPOF’s job is to let the Legislature know how our grassroots feel about issues.”

David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from St. Petersburg who co-founded the Forward Party, said the GOP needs to move on from culture wars.

“I think the Florida GOP has failed to learn the lessons of the past year, and that includes DeSantis’ failed presidential run,” he said.

“The Republicans have been good at starting cultural wars that people haven’t asked for,” Jolly said. “And it electrifies certain people because they believe the agenda that the GOP puts in front of them. But it’s a failed agenda nationally. And I think the state has caught onto it now.”

Koger said the GOP’s grip on power for more than 20 years in Florida has given Republicans “the impression … they’re free to do whatever they want to do. It’s possible they’re misinterpreting past structural advantages for actual voter appetite for this set of issues.”

Nikki Fried, the state Democratic chair, said the state GOP “is completely out of touch with the reality of everyday Floridians in our state. … And they continue every single legislative session to prove that point.”

Fried asked how the Republicans’ legislative priorities “are going to help a single mother pay her rent, or a family that is having to move out of Florida because they can’t afford their property insurance, or families that are seeing mounting hospital bills, while they’re fighting over removing rainbow flags from government buildings?”

On the abortion issue, Koger said he was surprised the GOP decided to outright oppose the referendum.

“Florida Republicans could have responded to his ballot measure by saying, ‘Well, let’s let the voters make up their minds,’ and just left it at that,” Koger said. “So to come out in opposition is surprising and more than they needed to do.”

Abortion rights resolutions across the country have passed, with Republican voter support in red states such as Ohio, since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Anti-abortion measures have similarly been voted down.

Jolly said while taking such a strong position is probably not going to help state Republicans, “I think they had to. The pro-life demographic … is so wedded and embedded into the Florida GOP, that there simply was no other outcome on this. They have always been constructed as a party to oppose the current ballot initiative.”

Since Roe was overturned, the GOP-led Florida Legislature passed first a 15-week abortion ban and then a six-week ban. A proposal filed Monday by state Rep. David Borrero, R-Miami-Dade, would ban abortion in all cases “except to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency.”

In the end, however, Jolly said the increasing gap between registered Republicans and Democrats could prove to be too much for Democrats to overcome, even with GOP missteps.

The November election could be the last chance the party gets for years to argue to donors Florida is still winnable, he said.

“The best foot forward for Democrats is to focus on affordability issues and mainstream family issues,” he said. “But we just don’t know how big of a hill they have to climb.”

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