‘I was not involved at all in that race’: DeSantis distances himself from GOP’s Hillsborough special election loss

In the aftermath of last Tuesday’s Democratic upset victory in the Florida Senate District 14 special election in Hillsborough County, Gov. Ron DeSantis has drawn some shade for his refusal to help Josie Tomkow, the Republican who lost to Democratic union organizer Brian Nathan.

He won despite her 10-1 advantage in fundraising and a nearly double-digit registered Republican advantage in the district.

When asked by a Phoenix reporter on Tuesday about the perception he should have helped more, the governor interjected quickly, saying, “I was not involved at all in that race.”

He went on to blast Tomkow as a Republican who didn’t share his values or goals for Florida.

“You have a candidate that does not do that, I am not going to be supporting them,” he said while fielding questions from reporters during a press conference at the Tampa office of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. “And that’s what happened you know, in that race.”

He continued:

“People can do what they want, but when you run on one way, and then you do things and take really bad votes, that’s just something that I’m not going to sign up for.

“And so I was very clear from the beginning that I was not going to be involved in that, and that’s just kind of the way that the cookie crumbles. But we as Republicans have shown how you win and win big. And it’s substance-driven. It’s leadership-driven and it’s results-driven. When you steer away from that, and you can play some of the games, you’re not going to have as good a result. That’s just the reality.

“So, I look forward to helping folks that I have confidence are going to pursue the agenda that made us successful, and I’m happy to do it, but I was not involved in any way, shape, or form in that, and that was a decision I made based on the available choices in that race.”

It been considered conventional wisdom that the Republican candidate DeSantis preferred to run in the seat representing western Hillsborough County in the Senate was Melanie Griffin, who has served as secretary of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation since 2022 and before that was a long-time attorney in Tampa.

Griffin filed to run in SD 14 on Nov. 7 last year and immediately put $100,000 of her own money into the campaign. But then, surprisingly, she withdrew a week later, paving the way for Tomkow to run without a primary opponent.

Tomkow is not originally from Tampa. She was born and raised in Polk County, and for the past eight years represented a part of that county in the Florida House of Representatives. Earlier in the campaign, Nathan questioned her residency, asking whether she still lived in Polk County or was already living in South Tampa with her husband, political consultant Tom Piccolo, who owns a home in that area.

omkow is a close ally of Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, with whom the governor has been quarreling for more than a year. After negotiations between the House and Senate leadership over the state budget broke down last year, the Republican Party of Florida attempted to intervene, proposing a summit between Perez, DeSantis, and Senate President Ben Albritton. But DeSantis said at the time he wanted no part in that “dog and pony show.”

DeSantis has also been critical of the Florida House on issues such as immigration, tax cuts, and, most significantly, a House committee’s investigation last year into the Hope Florida Foundation, the initiative led by First Lady Casey DeSantis.

That controversy evolved after it was discovered the state had steered $10 million to the foundation from a $67 million settlement with health care giant Centene to resolve allegations of Medicaid overbilling; some of that money got filtered into opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize adult recreational pot that DeSantis opposed.

The governor and his wife have denied wrongdoing. The Florida Trident reported last month that a grand jury investigation into the issue has produced a “presentment” that remains confidential.

The governor noted Tuesday that Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (recruited by DeSantis in 2022 to run against then-Democratic Sen. Janet Cruz in the seat) had won by nearly 10 points four years ago, and that the GOP had a 10-point turnout advantage in last Tuesday’s race and still lost.

“I don’t know what goes on there, but I know if you have a 10-point advantage in your party registration, you should be able to win that election,” he said, adding simply that that’s “just how the cookie crumbles in some of this stuff.”

Tomkow has vowed to run again and oppose Nathan for the seat in the regular election in November.

Special sessions

Meanwhile, a bevy of potential special legislative sessions looms in the weeks (and possibly months) ahead in Tallahassee.

First and foremost should be the state budget, as once again the House and Senate were not able to agree on spending before the regular 60-day session ended earlier this month. The only date set in stone at the moment is a special session designed for congressional redistricting, a controversial idea spurred originally by Donald Trump’s request last year for red states to begin mid-decade redistricting in hopes of preserving the Republican Party’s narrow voting advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives. (Democratic-led states have joined in on the efforts as well.)

Cognizant that Florida’s Constitution prohibits gerrymandering, the governor has said in the past that the state would “be forced to” redistrict based upon an expected ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). That provision has been implemented by creating majority-minority districts, which are almost entirely represented by Democrats. Republicans have contended for years that gives them an unfair advantage.

Were that portion of the VRA to be weakened or entirely invalidated by the court, it could open up the floodgates for redistricting, if not in time for 2026 then certainly for 2028.

The problem with citing that expected ruling as the predicate for redistricting is that the high court has yet to rule, and the special session on redistricting is slated to begin April 20, now just 20 days away.

DeSantis did say Tuesday that he believes the special session on the budget needs “to be done sooner than” April 20, meaning sometime presumably in the next couple of weeks. And he said there will also be a special session to propose a constitutional amendment on property taxes that also needs to take place “probably [in] the next four to six weeks.”

This article appears in Mar. 26 – Apr. 1.