There are some intriguing polls about Florida the past few days. I’m not suggesting that it’s in play. But it’s certainly not as red as it has been.
Vice President Kamala Harris has erased half of former President Donald Trump’s lead in Florida, a statewide poll released Wednesday found.
The Florida Atlantic University poll shows Trump leading Harris 50% to 47% among likely voters in the state. Just 2% said they were undecided and 1% said they’d vote for another candidate.
The 3-point Trump advantage is half the lead he had in June, the last time FAU polled in the state. Trump had a 6-point advantage among likely voters, 49% to 43%, when President Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate two months ago. The execrable Ric Scott is only up by 4 points and Miami
Harris is actually up in Miami. The execrable Ric Scott is only ahead by 4 points.
The terrific Bolts.com has a fascinating story today about one of the prosecutors DeSantis suspended a couple of years ago because he was using prosecutorial discretion that DeSantis didn’t care for:
Andrew Warren is running to win back his old job as Tampa’s top prosecutor. Since the Democrat joined the race in April, he has released campaign videos, basked in endorsements, and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars—all the staples of a typical campaign.
But this campaign is anything but typical. Two years ago, Warren was abruptly suspended from his office by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who said he had neglected his duties because of statements such as a promise to not prosecute abortion cases. DeSantis summarily replaced him with Susan Lopez, a Republican who immediately reversed some of Warren’s signature policies, including his effort to stop the aggressive prosecutions of Black cyclists and pedestrians in Hillsborough County.
Voters will now weigh in for the first time since DeSantis ousted the state attorney they elected. Lopez is running for a full term, but it’s Warren who won the office the last two times it was on the ballot, in 2016 and 2020. If he wins the Democratic nomination next week, he’ll face Lopez, who is running unopposed in the GOP primary, in November.
The circumstances of Warren’s removal loom large over his third run. Hillsborough County has leaned Democratic in the past, but if Warren wins, DeSantis could try suspending him again. Warren filed lawsuits arguing that DeSantis exceeded his authority when he removed him the first time, and a federal appeals court earlier this year kept his case alive. Some experts say it’d be harder for the governor to suspend him again in the future, but these legal questions remain unsettled.
“Every Democratic candidate in Florida has to campaign under the threat of DeSantis removing them solely because they’re a Democrat, solely for political reasons,” Warren told Bolts.
Last year, DeSantis also suspended the elected Democratic prosecutor of Orlando, Monique Worrell, whose sentencing practices he disagreed with. He had already removed Broward County’s Democratic sheriff, replacing him with a new sheriff who backtracked on a local reform.
Lopez, too, rolled back Warren’s reforms within just days of replacing him. On Aug. 8, 2022, just four days after her appointment, she sent a memo to her staff announcing changes to the office’s policies. Among them: She lifted Warren’s restrictions on prosecuting people when their charges stemmed from bike and pedestrian stops conducted by the Tampa police.
“Effective immediately, any policy my predecessor put in place that called for presumptive non-enforcement of the laws of Florida is immediately rescinded. This includes the bike stop and pedestrian stop policy,” Lopez said in her memo. DeSantis had named this reform among his reasons for removing Waren, saying that it demonstrates a “fundamentally flawed and lawless understanding of his duties as a state attorney.”
Warren had set up his policy in the wake of a 2015 Tampa Bay Times investigation that revealed that the majority of cyclists stopped by the Tampa police were Black. The story sparked an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice that reached the same conclusion in 2016: Of 9,121 bicycle stops made by Tampa police over a 20-month period, 73 percent of those involved Black cyclists. Tampa’s population is 26 percent Black.
Read on for more. It’s a good story. I hope he wins. DeSantis’ bully boy tactics need to be repudiated. Hard.