Florida's Latest News

Republicans closing voter registration gap with Democrats

Republicans have made statewide gains on Democrats in registering voters in Florida since the last presidential election, as shown by the official voter registration book closing for the August 18 primaries.

This latest book closing report shows Democrats’ voter registration advantage over Republicans has been trimmed to 1.7% statewide.

That is down from the gaps seen in the last several statewide elections, including the 2016 general election. Democrats had a voter registration advantage then of 2.5% but Republicans won the big contests anyway, with Donald Trump grabbing Florida and winning the presidency and Sen. Marco Rubio easily dispatching Democratic challenger Rep. Patrick Murphy.

Nikki Fried ‘looking into’ 2022 run for Florida Governor

The 2020 campaign cycle isn’t even over yet, but that doesn’t mean candidates interested in 2022 aren’t exploring their options.

Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services Nikki Fried, the state’s only elected Democrat, is one of them.

On Wednesday morning, she told a South Florida radio audience that running for Florida Governor was “definitely something I’m looking into.”

The comments were made, for those who want to hear them for themselves, at the 12:31 mark of her interview on the Brian Mudd show. The program aired Wednesday morning on NewsRadio 610 in Miami.

Florida awards Deloitte $135M contract despite unemployment failures

Deloitte Consulting, the company under fire for its work on Florida’s failed unemployment system, has been awarded a state Medicaid modernization contract worth at least $135 million.

The company, which is still under investigation and was hit in a 2019 state audit, has drawn political and public scrutiny after the unemployment website it built in 2013 failed under a crush of pandemic-related jobless claims. For months, Floridians have told horror stories about attempting to access the system or get state help.

Gov. Ron DeSantis in May ordered Inspector General Melinda Miguel to investigate the contract Deloitte inked with former Gov. Rick Scott’s administration and why it was amended several times, a probe that is ongoing. The Agency for Health Care Administration, which is led by Mary Mayhew, a DeSantis appointee, awarded Deloitte the Medicaid contract on Monday, according to state procurement records.

Florida, Education Union Battle As School Openings Near

With some students set to return to classrooms on Monday, state officials and Florida’s largest teachers union are locked in a legal battle over an order requiring schools to reopen this month amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Florida Education Association last month filed a lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran and other defendants, alleging that a July 6 order issued by Corcoran violates the state Constitution, which guarantees Floridians the right to “safe” and “secure” public education.

But the governor and Corcoran this week asked a Miami-Dade County circuit judge to toss out the lawsuit, calling it a “misguided effort to obtain a judicial mandate that forbids any school in the state from providing in-person instruction to any student.”