Florida
Last Call for 1.31.24 — A prime-time read of what’s going down in Florida politics
Last Call — A prime-time read of what’s going down in Florida politics.
First Shot
A bill that would ban alternative cannabinoids and cap the amount of THC in hemp products is headed to the Senate floor.
Sen. Colleen Burton’s bill (SB 1698) targets substances that produce the same “high” as delta-9 THC, the euphoria-inducing compound commodified by the state’s medical marijuana program.
Ahead of a 17-2 vote, more than one lawmaker on the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee shared their experiences with over-the-counter hemp products — Sen. Corey Simon, a Tallahassee Republican, said he took a hemp product with delta-8 to help him sleep but ended up in the emergency room.
In the House, Republican Rep. Ryan Chamberlin pitched a bill (HB 1371) that would examine abolishing property taxes in Florida. He’s not the first lawmaker to float the idea, and similar plans have failed to gain traction over the decades.
The freshman lawmaker from Belleview said now “it’s time” to try again, equating revenue stream to a tax on unrealized gains and even “slavery” since homeowners must fork over cash every year to keep their homes, even if their mortgage is paid free and clear.
“Think about it. If the IRS started charging us a tax not just on your income but what they thought we could have earned, we would have riots in the streets,” he said. “Yet we get a property tax increase every year on most of our properties in Florida not based on any realized gain in our bank account but based on what the gain could be if we decided to sell it.”
Though Democrats expressed concern on how abolishment could impact local governments, Republicans on the panel embraced the idea and intimated it has support from House Speaker Paul Renner and Speaker-designate Daniel Perez.
The House also moved forward with a plan that would boost pay for the Governor and members of the Cabinet.
The plan, which was introduced with unanimous support from the House Appropriations Committee, would increase statewide elected officials’ salaries to match the pay of Florida Supreme Court justices, who make $251,414 a year. That amounts to a $110,014 pay increase, however, it would not go into effect until 2027 — after Gov. Ron DeSantis and current Cabinet officials term out of office.
Bill Day’s Latest
Evening Reads
—“‘Traitor’: After bitter primary, Ron DeSantis may struggle to win over Trump supporters if he runs again” via Jill Colvin of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel
—“Recruited to play sports, and win a culture war” via Susan Dominus of The New York Times
—”Donald Trump to lose 53% of swing-state voters if convicted of a crime” via Jordan Fabian and Gregory Korte of Bloomberg
—”Federal judge dismisses Disney lawsuit against DeSantis” via Skyler Swisher of the Orlando Sentinel
—”The broken promises of the NFL concussion settlement” via Will Hobson of The Washington Post
—“Florida child labor bills: Women farmworkers worry about kids working longer hours in fields” via Jackie Llanos of the Florida Phoenix
—“A trove of ‘lost Basquiats’ led to a splashy exhibition. Then the FBI showed up.” via Bianca Bosker of The Atlantic
—”We can still make a good economy much better” via Oshan Jarow of Vox
Quote of the Day
“When I used to smoke marijuana, one joint maybe had about 10 milligrams (of THC). As I’m listening and been researching this hemp thing, it would be like me smoking 100 joints.”
— Sen. Rosalind Osgood, who would go on to describe herself as a “former professional marijuana smoker” currently in “recovery.”
Put It on the Tab
Look to your left, then look to your right. If you see one of these people at your happy hour haunt, flag down the bartender and put one of these on your tab. Recipes included, just in case the Cocktail Codex fell into the well.
House Budget Chief Tom Leek is warning that the days of state coffers overflowing with pandemic cash are over and that the next budget will be “austere.” Maybe you can shave a few bucks off your bar bill by ordering him something plain, such as a whiskey-water.
Whatever you do, don’t order members of the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee a CBD-infused Hop Water — they’ll stick to regular booze; thank you very much.
Deliver a round of Sidecars to the tiny home down the street; just double-check that it’s under 400 square feet before you hand them off.
Breakthrough Insights
Tune In
The Florida Gators shoot for a fourth straight win when they travel to Rupp Arena to face 10th-ranked Kentucky tonight (8 p.m. ET, ESPN).
The Gators (14-6;4-3 in SEC) and Wildcats opened SEC play on Jan. 6 in Gainesville with a two-point Kentucky win. Florida has lost five straight games in the series and has won just one of the last 10 against the Wildcats (15-4; 5-2).
A Florida win could pull the Gators to within a game of the top spot in the SEC standings.
Florida’s leading scorer, Walter Clayton Jr. scored 23 points against Kentucky in the first meeting between the two teams. He has played well on the road, averaging nearly 18 points per game as a visitor.
Florida has been one of the top-scoring teams in the nation, averaging 85.4 points per game. Only 10 Division I teams are scoring more per contest than the Gators. One of those teams is Kentucky (88.5 points per game). One statistical area the Gators could exploit is rebounding. Kentucky ranks 102nd in the nation in rebounding. Florida is the fifth-best rebounding team.
Getting over the hurdle and beating Kentucky has been a challenge for Florida for most of the last decade. A win in Lexington would be a huge emotional boost in addition to being a substantial win in the standings.
Also tonight:
6:30 p.m. — NCAAW: Florida Gulf Coast Eagles @ Bellarmine Knights
7 p.m. — NCAAW: Florida Atlantic Owls @ UAB Blazers
7 p.m. — NCAAW: Stetson Hatters @ Eastern Kentucky Colonels
7 p.m. — NCAAM: South Florida Bulls @ East Carolina Pirates
7 p.m. — NCAAM: Lipscomb Bisons @ North Florida Ospreys
7 p.m. — NCAAM: Austin Peay Governors @ JU Dolphins
7 p.m. — NCAAM: Baylor Bears @ UCF Knights
7:30 p.m. — Sacramento Kings @ Miami Heat
8 p.m. — Orlando Magic @ San Antonio Spurs
___
Last Call is published by Peter Schorsch, assembled and edited by Phil Ammann and Drew Wilson, with contributions from the staff of Florida Politics.
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Florida
3 most underrated signees in Florida State football's 2025 class
Florida State football had an embarrassing 2024 campaign where it finished with a 2-10 record. This is not the expectation of what the Seminoles are all about.
Head football coach Mike Norvell understood the urgency as he could not allow the program to snowball into a laughing stock after a productive 13-1 season in 2023. Norvell was heading into a pivotal sixth season with his job on the line.
As a result, he went out and hired a ton of new coaches on his staff, including Gus Malzahn, Tim Harris Jr., Herb Hand, Tony White, Terrance Knighton, and Evan Cooper. This was uncharted territory for Norvell since he had never had to fire multiple coaches like that.
Nonetheless, we were wondering how the Seminoles’ 2025 recruiting class would play out with new coaches as well as the struggling year in 2024.
The recruiting class did well, and it finished with the 20th-best in the 247Sports Composite rankings (prospects can still sign in February). In this article, I want to highlight three of the most underrated signees from Florida State’s 2025 recruiting class.
Florida
U.S. Amateur runner-up Noah Kent is transferring to Florida
Noah Kent is heading home.
The 2024 U.S. Amateur runner-up is transferring to Florida, he announced Saturday. The sophomore at Iowa, whose hometown is Naples, Florida, entered the transfer portal earlier this month, and he made his decision to join coach J.C. Deacon and the 2023 national champions come next fall.
Because of NCAA rules, Kent won’t be eligible to compete for Florida until the 2025-26 season, but he can finish his sophomore year with the Hawkeyes. This fall, he placed in the top 13 all four tournaments, his best finish being a T-5 at the Fighting Irish Classic.
And, of course, he has a tee time at Augusta National Golf Club in the spring.
Kent will essentially be the fourth member of Florida’s 2025 signing class, which ranked second in the country on signing day. He’ll join a talented roster that includes Parker Bell, Mathew Kress and Jack Turner, though with new NCAA roster limits coming, there’s bound to be some unprecedented roster turnover in college golf before the start of the 2025-26 season.
Florida
State Your Case: Do Panthers or Lightning own state of Florida? | NHL.com
There are two NHL teams in Florida: the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
They are separated by about 250 miles and have been fierce rivals since the Panthers joined the NHL for the 1993-94 season. The Lightning joined the League a season earlier.
Florida (21-11-2) and Tampa Bay (18-10-2) meet for the first time this season at Amalie Arena in Tampa on Sunday (5 p.m. ET; FDSNSUN, CRIPPS, SN, TVAS).
The teams have played each other 157 times in the regular season; the Panthers have gone 77-51-19, and the Lightning are 70-64-13. There have been 10 ties.
For years, the rivalry was a parochial affair, deeply important to hockey fans in the state but under the radar nationally. Lately, though, Florida supremacy has often meant NHL supremacy.
The Panthers are the reigning Stanley Cup champions and defeated the Lightning in five games in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference First Round last season to start that title march. They reached the Stanley Cup Final two seasons ago, going on a miracle run before losing to the Vegas Golden Knights. The season before that, they won the Presidents’ Trophy with an NHL-best 122 points but lost to the Lightning in a second-round sweep, marking the second straight time that their noisy neighbors ended their season.
The Lightning won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 2020 and 2021 before reaching a third straight Final in 2022, losing to the Colorado Avalanche. Tampa Bay won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2018-19.
This season, each team is on course for another appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and has a point percentage of better than .600.
So which team has the merits to claim bragging rights in this all-Florida showdown as the rivals face off for the first time this season? That’s the question debated by NHL.com senior writers Amalie Benjamin and Dan Rosen in the latest installment of State Your Case.
Benjamin: Let’s lay out what the Lightning have accomplished in their 32-season history: They’ve won the Stanley Cup three times, becoming the first team from Florida to win it when they took the championship in 2004. But that doesn’t come close to what they’ve accomplished during the past 11 seasons, starting in 2013-14, when they became a powerhouse. They’ve been to the Stanley Cup Playoffs 10 times in those 11 seasons, making the Stanley Cup Final in a whopping four of them. Let me repeat that: Four trips to the Cup Final in the past 11 seasons, winning twice, in 2020 and 2021. And if that’s not enough, they made two more trips to the Eastern Conference Final, in 2016 and 2018. Forget Florida’s team. They’re the team of the past decade in the entire NHL.
Rosen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what have you done for me lately? Florida’s team fluctuates. It was the Lightning. It is the Panthers. They’ve got the Stanley Cup. They went to the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row. Sure, a few years ago, this wasn’t even a debate. Florida’s team, the Panthers? Please. No shot. Even the top executives with the Panthers would tell you that. But things change. With success come the riches. Just think about the past three seasons for the Panthers: Presidents’ Trophy winners in 2021-22, Stanley Cup Final in 2022-23, Stanley Cup champions in 2023-24. The Lightning lost in the 2022 Cup Final, lost in the first round in six games the next season and lost in the first round in five games to the Panthers last season. Florida’s team is Florida.
Benjamin: OK, sure, you have a point. Florida has done pretty darn well lately. But let’s see how history will judge the state of Florida and its hockey teams. Hall of Famers? The Lightning have got ’em. Though Steven Stamkos has moved on to the Nashville Predators, the Hall of Fame is going to come calling, and the forward will go in as a member of the Lightning. Add in coach Jon Cooper, forward Nikita Kucherov, defenseman Victor Hedman and goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, and you’re talking at least five future Hall of Famers on a single team. That’s not just good, that’s historically good. It’s a group whose names are synonymous with winning, with the Stanley Cup, with the state of Florida. That’s powerful. That says the Lightning win this debate, no question.
Rosen: I have a question. Is Aleksander Barkov not paving his way to the Hall of Fame? Is Sergei Bobrovsky, with a Stanley Cup ring, 400-plus wins and two Vezina Trophy wins as the NHL’s best goalie, not a lock for the Hall of Fame? Is Paul Maurice, who could finish his career with at least the second-most coaching wins of all time, along with his Stanley Cup ring, not also a lock for the Hall of Fame? In the way-too-early department, could Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart be future Hall of Famers? I lied. That’s four questions. But you get the point. You brought up the Hall of Fame and I countered. That’s why the Lightning do not win this debate without question. Could they win it? Yes, certainly, if we were having this debate in 2023. It’s almost 2025. It’s a different world. It’s the Panthers’ world, at least in Florida. The Lightning are just living in it. At least the sun is still shining on them too.
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