Florida’s Special Elections, Florida’s Property Taxes & European Lawfare – Top 3 Takeaways – April 1st, 2025
Takeaway #1: Florida’s especially special elections
What happens in Florida’s special elections doesn’t stay in Florida...or at least it won’t today. Normally you’d have a losing political party look at two seats recently won by over 30-points each and look the other way...thinking it probably isn’t worth the time of day. But even though that is the lay of the land in Florida’s special congressional elections today, Democrats, who just last November lost Florida’s 1st and 6th congressional seats by 32 & 33 points respectively, have thrown a ton of time, energy and most of all money seeking to do the previously unthinkable today. Democrats have outspent Republicans 5-1 seeking to pick off at least one of these two seats. How likely are they to succeed? Not very based on the odds currently shown on the betting market Polymarket. Florida’s CFO Jimmy Patronis is currently being given a 99% chance to keep Florida’s 1st district seat, last held by Matt Gaetz, with the GOP. As for the candidate seen as being more vulnerable, Polymarket agrees – but only marginally. Former State Senator Randy Fine is currently being given a 92% chance of making the move from Tallahassee to Washington D.C. replacing Mike Waltz who’s currently serving as President Trump’s National Security Advisor. But the reason Democrats have gone all in on these two ordinarily bright red seats, is due to how tight the Republican’s House majority is in Washington, D.C. The Republican advantage in the House currently stands at only five seats and that’s only due to the deaths of two House Democrats recently. What that means is that no matter what happens in Florida’s special elections today, Republicans will still hold the House majority, but as we’ve recently seen with Elise Stefanik's decision to stay in the House, rather than to ascend into the Trump administration as U.N. ambassador, every vote in the House counts. Plus, Democrats, though they’d never admit it, are also playing the odds. Trivia time, on average how many members of the House die while in office in each congress (every two years)? The answer is seven. We’ve only had two and we’re not even three full months into the current congress. Morbid as it may be, history suggests there will probably be more in store for congress during this term. If Democrats were to gain ground in Florida today, and win the special elections for the two seats vacated by the recent deaths, it would be possible for the House to only be a Republican death or two away from control going the other way prior to the next congress in 2027. It’s all unlikely, but that’s the full picture of what's at stake in Florida's special elections today.
Takeaway #2: DeSantis is taking a stand on property taxes
In Friday’s top 3 takeaways I had this to say about the tension in Tallahassee between new House Speaker Daniel Perez and Governor DeSantis: First, you had Perez propose his bold sales tax cut plan that did two things that flew in DeSantis’s face. It wasn’t part of DeSantis’s Budget blueprint and doesn’t fit with his agenda. Also, Perez added this when he announced it, seemingly for added effect: This will not be a temporary measure, a stunt, or a tax holiday. This would be a recurring tax reduction… this will be the largest tax cut in the history of Florida. That’s a direct jab at DeSantis’s various proposed sales tax holidays. DeSantis, who’d previously advocated for ending property taxes altogether in Florida said this on Monday: Of all the taxes that are impacting Floridians right now, property taxes are the most significant. DeSantis also went on to say that a focus on reducing sales taxes, as opposed to property taxes, would primarily benefit non-residents visiting the state over residents who’re struggling to afford to continue to live in it. As DeSantis noted, if you applied the size of Perez’s sales tax cut to a reduction in property tax assessments, it’d equal about $1,000 in annual savings for every homesteaded property in the state. The governor then said that he’d still pursue a constitutional amendment aimed at ending property taxes with the intent to get it on the 2026 midterm election ballot. From that we may be able to infer two things. 1) The proposed constitutional amendment to end property taxes may not pass in this session and DeSantis is hedging. A quick look at the bill proposed in the senate to get the process started shows that it’s still sitting in its first committee with no hearing that’s yet been scheduled. What’s more is that there still isn’t a House companion. With the session halfway over it’s getting to be late in the game for a proposal to be this far away from passing and still make it. 2) That appears to be why DeSantis has proposed a “plan B”, that aims to reduce the cost of property taxes using the same numbers Perez was using for his sales tax proposal. The tension in Tallahassee between DeSantis and Perez is real and DeSantis’s rebuttal to Perez’s sales tax plan is the latest indication as to how far apart the two sides currently stand. The good news here is that the argument is over lowering taxes which one way or another should be good for us in the end.
Takeaway #3: Keep an eye on what’s happening overseas
Lawfare isn’t only a tactic used by left in the United States. It’s being prolifically used in other places. On Monday the leading presidential candidate for France’s 2027 presidential election, National Rally’s Marine Le Pen was barred from running for an election for 5 years by a Paris court. Without getting into the nitty gritty details of the case, the verdict was so absurd that even Le Pen’s political enemies stepped up for her afterwards saying that she was too important of a political figure to be disqualified by the stroke of a pen in a judge’s court. And this comes after conservatives recently won Germany’s elections but somehow aren’t really getting to govern and good ‘ole Zelenskyy simply cancelled Ukrainian elections. European politics are different. They’re complicated. But human nature and political objectives are similar. The will of the people and the political and judicial establishment are at odds around the world. And as we know what happens in Europe doesn’t always stay in Europe so it’s important with these inflection points to keep our eye on what’s happening overseas.