PIP is soooo last week

Thank you, Judge Francis, for giving us more Florida political drama. I had expected the excitement this week to be about the PIP deal and whether there would be a tiny special session on Thursday or Friday to pass the compromise before PIP expired. But, no, instead, out of nowhere, Judge Francis drops a tactical nuke on Florida politics.

Where to start? How about with timing? If this decision had been made a week earlier, Democrats may have pounced on it as a way to delay the primary vote until Feb 5th. Doing it would be easy: foul up, or threaten to, any compromise in the legislature over re-wording the ballot language until October 31st passes, at which point the 90 day deadline on language changes is reached. The legislature, if it wanted to keep an early vote on this amendment (and they do! Otherwise it'll compete with whatever the independent tax and budget commission comes up with for the general election), would have to reschedule the primary + referendum election to February or later. I dunno if Democrats would actually do that - it would take a lot of political capital that the Democrats haven't been very good at accumulating - but it would resolve the early primary problem.

If the decision had been made after October 12th, when the special session is scheduled to end, the legislature would have had to schedule another special session to change the wording, which would have been ridiculous. So the legislature is fortunate that the decision has come down now, and they can decide between rewording it or appealing the decision.

Before getting to that dilemma, lets talk about smear politics. The lawsuit that's caused all this was started by Westin Mayor Eric Hersh. You may remember the news about him starting the lawsuit a few months back - he was slammed by state Republican leaders, especially, if I remember correctly, Pruitt. Well, he's been hammered since then by waves of tv commercials, mailers, and telephone calls to his constituents over this lawsuit. By who? Good question; apparently no one is quite sure who's behind it. However, the trail of political stooges leads us right back to Pruitt and Rubio. So it's clear that the Republican leadership has been doing some very underhanded things to prevent this decision from happening. But now it has. So what next?

The leadership has two options available, and it's basically an either/or situation. On the one hand, they can crack open the amendment and revise the wording. That opens the flood gates though, and big business is eager to get some cuts for businesses in there. So if the special session also reworks the amendment, who knows what will happen. But maybe that's a good thing! The other option is to appeal the decision and take it to the Supreme Court. If they can't get a decision by the Supreme Court before the special session is over, and the Court then rules against them, thats it; there's no referendum short of some drastic maneuvers (like changing the primary date). Not surprisingly, in my mind, Pruitt is pushing for an appeal rather than rewording. Why is that not surprising? Of the three main actors, Crist, Rubio, and Pruitt, Pruitt has the least to lose, as this post on The Buzz details. He's not tied up in this like Crist, who came out swinging for it last week (bet he regrets that now), or Rubio, who has put a lot of his political capital into getting this thing through. Plus, Pruitt (and maybe Rubio, given his recent comments to business leaders) might realize how terrible the tax amendment really is, and actually be for the amendment failing.

They wouldn't be the only Republicans. As I wrote about before, a number of Republicans, including Sen. Lisa Carlton, #2 in the Senate, have publicly come out against the amendment, even though they voted for it in session. They didn't really get the public lambasting they deserve for voting for a crappy amendment they knew, or figured out quickly, was bad, but they probably will if they proceed to vote for a ballot rewording that doesn't change the basics of the amendment. The Republican leadership might not be able to get the votes it needs for a simple rewording! All it takes is about 20 Republicans in the House or 6 or 7 Republicans in the Senate to vote against it to kill the amendment. Carlton and other Republicans who have since spoken out against the amendment will have to choose between keeping to their word or doing a serious flipflop - again.

That's only if the ballot language is merely reworded. More likely, opening up the process to reword it will result in actual changes to the amendment. In as much as I'm for good public policy, I see this as a good thing. They ought to throw in a change to how properties are assessed, for example. However, that's a whole bag of worms. I doubt the Leadership can get major compromises on both budget cuts and the tax amendment in the same week and a half special session. Oh, and fix PIP.