There’s been a lot of discussion whether or not Ron DeSantis is going to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination as president. Does he think he can win? Is he concerned with being humiliated by TrumpAttacks that will undermine his political future? Does he think he has a better chance in 2028?
All reasonable questions. But I think there’s another issue at play why he hasn’t announced yet. I don’t necessarily think it’s the main reason – but it’s close. And it’s not one that most media has even mentioned. It’s that Florida has a law that says “any officer who qualifies for federal public office must resign from the office he or she presently holds if the terms, or any part thereof, run concurrently with each other.” In other words, if Ron DeSantis runs for president next year, he has to resign as governor! That seems to be like a pretty strong deterrent from running in 2024 against a brutal candidate who is still the party’s leading choice. There are a few oddities at play here – which being Florida shouldn’t shock anyone. Most notable is that the law was only passed four years ago – and (get this…), the Florida legislature is thinking of already changing it. To benefit DeSantis, of course. There are also some legislature who want to twist the law into a pretzel as they try to interpretate in ways that don’t appear to exist. One convoluted interpretation of the law being jury-rigged, the Tamp Bay Times writes, is that “a candidate running for federal office doesn’t have to resign as long as they’re not also trying to be reelected to their state post.” And since DeSantis is term-limited, he couldn’t be a candidate for the same office. Mind you, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the law stated above that says anything about trying to get re-elected. Just that if you’re presently in office, and your term would overlap the federal office, you can’t run. That seems pretty clear. (In fairness, the law might be much longer and say what some are trying to interpret. Though if that was the case, it would then be totally clear, and nothing would need to be “interpreted.” Additionally, the word “qualify” isn’t completely clear, according to John Mills, who is a constitutional law professor at the University of Florida. I think it’s clear to most people, though not if you’re the governor of the state where legislators want you to run. My favorite attempt to “Er, yeah, but…” the law comes from Sen. Travis Hutson (R-Palm Coast) who actually sponsored the bill in 2018. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Hutson said “he believes the legislation allows for DeSantis to run without having to resign. He said the intent of his legislation was to stop people from ‘window shopping’ or using their current seat to springboard to another, which he said DeSantis is not doing.” One big problem with that is that it doesn’t appear to be anywhere in the law, nor does it seem to even be suggested by what’s in the law. “It’s okay to run for a federal office if you’re governor as long as you don’t want to run for anything else” just doesn’t appear to have even the remotest connection to the law, nor that anyone would even think of writing a law that way, even the person who actually wrote the law. In the end, I have two suppositions. The first is that a really big reason Ron DeSantis hasn’t announced his candidacy yet, or come close to, is because this Florida law is a huge hurdle for him, especially if he thinks he might not win this year, but will want to run in 2028. And the second is – this is the Florida legislature. They will figure out a way to change the law or re-interpret the law (no matter how convoluted the effort) in order solely to let their Gov. DeSantis run.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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