Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's aggressive assertion of his authority to remove elected officials has Democrats wondering whether he was targeting their party and who might be next.
DeSantis Friday suspended Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher, after his decision to remove Broward Sheriff Scott Israel. The ouster of the two Democrats followed the decision by the previous governor, Rick Scott, to remove another Democrat, Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes.
Republicans defended Bucher's suspension as the necessary removal of a bungling administrator, while Democrats expressed concern that the Republican governor was abusing his authority to override the choices of voters.
"I'm deeply concerned," said Cynthia Busch, the Broward County Democratic chairwoman. "They're testing the limits of their power. I've never seen elected officials removed just because somebody didn't like the way they did something. It was always because they were indicted or under investigation."
Incompetent elected officials have been known to enjoy long careers in Florida, free of interference from the governor's office. And even criminal charges don't necessarily cost public officials their positions, as demonstrated by Scott's refusal to suspend five leaders of Broward Health, despite their 2017 indictment on charges of violating the state's open-meetings law.
But in the past two weeks, as the new governor started his term with a whirl of plane trips, news conferences and executive orders, that may have changed. He ousted Bucher and Israel, removed the school superintendent of Okaloosa County and requested the resignations of the South Florida Water Management District board.
The school superintendent and most, if not all, of the water district board members are Republicans, making it difficult to establish a strictly anti-Democratic pattern in the removals. Republican supporters say the governor appears to be stepping in to deal swiftly with egregious, festering problems _ mishandled elections, the botched law enforcement response to the Parkland school shooting and the algae blooms that fouled coasts last summer.
"I think this governor is asserting control," said George Moraitis, the Broward County Republican chairman. "He feels a mandate to hold our elected officials accountable regardless of the political party, and he's going to take action, whether it's on the environment, the conduct of elections, school safety. He's just going to take action where he sees failures."
One prominent matter yet to be addressed is the Broward County school district. DeSantis has made no secret of his interest in removing school Superintendent Robert Runcie, who has been severely criticized for failures in school security, personnel management and disciplinary policy that came to light after the Parkland shootings.
"There were obviously security failures," DeSantis said at a news conference at which he announced the sheriff's removal. "There were some really egregious failures with the school district."
But there are questions about whether the governor has the authority to remove Runcie, who was appointed by the school board, not elected by voters. There's been talk he may remove school board members instead, an action that would probably lead to a legal fight over the right of elected officials to keep their jobs.
"We had elections last summer for some of the school board members," said Busch, the Broward Democratic chairwoman. "And that was after Parkland. If the voters felt these people were not qualified, they would not have re-elected them."
At stake, in addition to Runcie's job and the rights of board members, she said, is the board's policy against arming teachers.
"He would open up the gun issue and arming teachers," she said. "We campaigned hard for those races as a county party. It would be making a decision to try to influence policy in the school district."
Republicans say the missteps, delays and short tempers in Bucher's office have made it a toxic place for handling the most important proceedings in a democracy. They say the governor's action was necessary and should be seen in the context of the elections office's problems, not through the prism of party politics.
"I don't really care who we work with, Republican or Democrat here in Palm Beach County, as long as we can avoid some of the problems in the supervisor's office," said Palm Beach County Republican Chairman Michael Barnett. "We're very grateful that Ron DeSantis took this action after only two weeks on the job. It had to be done."
Democratic state Rep. Evan Jenne praised DeSantis for taking a bipartisan approach in his first weeks in office by naming a fellow Broward Democrat, Jared Moskowitz, to run the Division of Emergency Management, and promising to drop appeals in a lawsuit over smokable medical marijuana.
"Governor DeSantis has eclipsed what Governor Scott did in terms of bipartisanship in one month," Jenne said. "I don't think he wants to be a partisan hack,"
And Jenne admitted that the suspensions of Israel, Bucher and Snipes could be popular among South Florida residents. But he warned the suspensions could be viewed as heavy-handed, partisan moves.
"When the majority of people that he goes after are Democrats in a Democratic stronghold," he said, "it does leave the potential for the stink of partisanship to be on those decisions."
.jpg?w=600)
