Senate President Passidomo warns some culture war-type legislation may be dead
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, warned that some House legislation related to culture war issues could potentially be dead or stalled out in the Senate this week.
“Our bill process is not the Republican Party of Florida,” Passidomo said. “We are the legislature. We make the laws, we review the laws.”
Passidomo referenced the Florida GOP in response to a question about her thoughts regarding the state party’s recently ratified platform, which featured some bills primarily focused on “culture war” issues.
She referred to the legislation on protecting historic monuments and political flag displays. Both Senate versions of the bills were sponsored by Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers.
SB 1122 protects historic monuments from being taken down by the direct order of county or municipal governments.
SB 1120 prohibits political and ideological flags from being displayed on or inside government buildings.
Passidomo also mentioned the Senate’s own independent process and rules. She stressed that just because a political party pushes a policy change doesn’t mean the Senate will circumvent rules to fast-track it and/or ensure it gets a Senate floor vote.
She explained that the flag bill continued to be temporarily postponed in its Senate committee assignment, to the point where now the committee is not meeting for the remainder of session.
The House has consistently moved forward with their version of each piece of legislation in their committee stops.
In regards to the monument legislation, she argued that it had been “weaponized by both sides,” which troubles her.
“That’s not how we run our chamber, that’s not how we pass our legislation, at least for me, so at this point I don’t see that bill coming back,” she said.
Other priorities of the Florida GOP include enacting term limits for country commissioners, ending forced pronoun usage in the workplace, making gold and silver legal tender in Florida, lowering the firearm purchase age to 18 and more.
