‘Forgot why they were elected’: DeSantis allies hit back as GOP fights to weaken his power
Hamza Adam 
Ever since the 2024 election, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s relationship with the Republican-controlled state legislature has deteriorated — and tensions are coming to a head with a legislative fight over DeSantis’ power to control state universities, reported the Miami Herald on Wednesday.
Tensions became apparent as early as January, when the legislature pushed back hard on DeSantis’s demands for a laundry list special session that included a sharp crackdown on immigration. Lawmakers ultimately passed some, but not all, of what DeSantis was ordering. But now, a new piece of legislation has put DeSantis and the Florida legislature directly at odds.
“A bill advancing in the Republican-led Florida House seeks to stop the governor and employees in his administration from getting involved in a university’s presidential search,” reported Ana Ceballos. “If approved, the House bill would prohibit the governor or an employee in his administration from discussing a presidential vacancy or anticipated opening with state and local university leaders.”
The bill in question would also transfer powers to select a president from the Board of Governors for the state university system to each university’s board individually and subject that process to state sunshine laws.
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But DeSantis’s allies are enraged at the intraparty revolt, said the report: “Attorney General James Uthmeier, who up until late February served as the governor’s chief of staff, criticized the House proposal on Wednesday and said Republicans in the chamber “’forgot they were elected to get the woke out of higher ed.'”
The move by the legislature follows years of controversial university president selections at the behest of DeSantis and his appointees, which have drawn accusations of putting politics over qualifications.
Among these selections, former Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse was appointed to head up the University of Florida, where he racked up questionable public spending on lavish functions before stepping down; more recently, Florida International University was strong-armed by the governor’s office to select DeSantis’ own former lieutenant governor, Jeannette Nuñez, as interim president on an $850,000 salary. DeSantis recently admitted he tried to install Rep. Randy Fine, formerly a state senator who clashed with the governor, as president of Florida Atlantic University to get him out of the legislature.
It also comes after DeSantis stacked the New College of Florida with far-right ideologues who turned the Sarasota-based school into a laboratory for “anti-woke” campus reforms, which led to a mass exodus of faculty, critical staff shortages for important courses, and ultimately, the legislature losing patience with the whole project.