It was springtime for Florida's extreme right in January 2011.
Rick Scott, fresh off of his narrow victory over Alex Sink, and buttressed by giant Tea Party-driven Republican majorities in the Legislature, was ready to make his very regressive agenda a reality. And indeed, Scott and his allies did some serious damage. There was a $1 billion cut to public education, resulting in thousands of teacher layoffs across the state along with the elmination of crucial after school programs. A proposal to essentially privatize Medicaid sailed through, although it now awaits final approval by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The Department of Community Affairs (DCA), Florida's growth management agency, was shuttered.
But in all the right's new strength, a key weakness remained: Floridians really didn't know Rick Scott, and what they did know they didn't like. Scott was inaugurated in January with an approval rating in the low 40s - not great. Another big mistake that the right made (and one they never seem to learn from) is that Floridians as a whole are not like them, so as Scott began taking a sledgehammer to local schools, basic health care for children and seniors, along with sensible protections for our land and water, Floridians became angry. Welcome to the backlash. By the end of the legislative session in May 2011, Scott's approval rating was at 29%. Yikes.
Florida progressives did not merely sit on the sidelines and watch this happen. On the contrary, progressive organizations and groups turned crisis into opportunity. Knowing that Scott was a soft target, it became much easier to unify the progressive community against him and his agenda while also standing up for essential progressive values.
We at Progress Florida sent out our year-end fundraiser (contribute today!) this morning which featured this list of accomplishments for 2011:
- We launched the Awake The State movement alongside our progressive partners with hugely successful rallies in March to highlight the destructive proposals being put forth by Gov. Scott and right-wing extremists in the state legislature. Today Awake The State is a growing movement with grassroots networks in almost every major city in Florida.
- We won important legislative victories in concert with our allies, including: stopping SB830, the "worker gag" bill designed to destroy unions along with the right to collectively bargain for wages and benefits; derailing House Speaker Dean Cannon's politically driven Supreme "Court packing" bill; defeating the abortion clinic shutdown bill; and stopping massive funding cuts for Florida's developmentally disabled.
- We helped lead the fight against voter suppression by tea party extremists in the Legislature. More than 13,000 Floridians signed our petition opposing the 2011 Voter Suppression Act, helping in a big way our ongoing efforts to repeal this travesty of a law.
- We fought to protect the Fair Districts amendments from self-serving politicians. Progress Florida and partner groups helped boost progressive turnout at public hearings throughout the state, and thousands of Floridians signed our petition demanding Speaker Cannon drop the taxpayer-funded lawsuit against Fair Districts, garnering statewide press coverage.
- We turned up the heat on Senate President Mike Haridopolos via DirtyHari.org, a website exposing Sen. Haridopolos' numerous ethical problems and extreme positions. Once the GOP front-runner to challenge Sen. Bill Nelson, "Dirty Hari" dropped out of the race in disgrace.
I hope you noticed that in most of these acheivements, they were in collaboration with other progressive allies. Working with the progressive community and building the movement is a core part of our mission. And of course, this is just a partial list. Our partners at Florida Watch Action started the wildly successful Pink Slip Rick campaign which has taken the term "direct action" to new heights. Latino organizations flexed their muscles and successfully stopped an Arizona-style racial profiling law earlier this year. There's been a kind of rebirth of campus-based progressive activism in the form of Fight Back Florida and amazing events like Rise Up UCF. And then of course there's been the flowering of the Occupy Wall Street movement thoughout Florida which has helped grow and sustain activism at a local level.
Make no mistake, challenges remain. But if Gov. Scott and his allies in the Legislature are going to do terrible things, at least the progressive movement is taking advantage in pointing out the mindless and unnecessary extremism and growing their numbers and strength. Whether this newfound momentum can sustain itself through 2012 as the Presidential election attracts more and more attention and resources is the big question.
This was supposed to be the right wing's big year in Florida, and in a small sense it was, but the backlash produced will likely have far more significance in the years ahead in both elections and policymaking.
