Do Florida lawmakers serve citizens or lobbyists and legislative bosses?

At one time, Tampa Bay lawmaker Mike Beltran appeared to have it made with a promising political career. 

An archconservative Harvard Law School-educated attorney, Beltran held a safe Republican state House seat in right-leaning east Hillsborough County, easily winning elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

But in 2024, Beltran announced unexpectedly in June that he would not seek reelection. He gave some of the common reasons — a growing family, a law practice and an elderly father out of state, all needing his attention.

But there was another reason, which Beltran didn’t want to talk about at the time: What he describes as an oppressive and dictatorial atmosphere in the Florida Legislature, where all legislative initiatives and even members’ votes are tightly controlled and monitored by top leaders in the House and Senate. 

That system, according to Beltran’s view, stifles independence by rank-and-file members and forces them to consider the demands of legislative leaders more than their own consciences or the wishes of their constituents.

In a recent interview with the Florida Trident, which he declined to have prior to the November election, he elaborated.

“It’s a culture from the top that encourages groupthink and conformity,” Beltran said. “It’s like going to the cafeteria in a prison where they serve what they serve and you eat it. If you don’t take what they serve up, they think you’re a bad person and treat you accordingly.”

“We have taken what is on paper a constitutional republic and we have backed ourselves into an oligarchy,” he said.

The system also forces legislators to kowtow to special interests and the money they give legislative leaders to fund campaigns, Beltran said. It comes in unlimited soft-money donations to political committees, routinely six or seven figures, from the state’s largest and most powerful corporations and their lobbyists. 

“As long as you have a soft-money loophole allowing committees to raise and spend unlimited money, you will allow special interests to have an outsize influence on politics,” Beltran said. “It also allows legislative leadership to essentially control the rank-and-file members by controlling access to fundraising.”

In the New Year, lawmakers and lobbyists will be in the state Capitol for interim committees in January and February, and the 2025 regular legislative session will convene March 4. They’ll work on policy issues, legislation and a massive state budget for Florida.

Beltran will no longer be there.

Maverick stances and bucking leaders

As a conservative Republican, Beltran should have fit in with the Republican supermajorities in the House and Senate.

But he was, if anything, too conservative for the GOP legislative leadership, he said. He became known for taking maverick stances and challenging leaders on their top priorities. His influence suffered as a result — a fate usually experienced by Democrats.

“I got bad committee assignments, bills of mine were killed, I didn’t get chairmanships” despite his seniority, Beltran said.

Of the 19 bills he sponsored in the 2023 and 2024 legislative sessions, 10 died without getting even a committee hearing, according to Trident research. Three passed, one of them a “local” bill affecting only a small taxing district in Manatee County.

Influence in the Legislature also comes from raising money for the parties’ legislative campaigns, and Beltran didn’t want to. 

“I refused to raise 5- or 6-figure sums for leadership,” he said. “I wasn’t going to pay tribute or extortion.”

The climate he described in the Legislature stems largely from House and Senate rules, constitutional mandates and Florida’s campaign finance laws. Together they give the House speaker and Senate president effective vetoes over any legislation.

“They are basically omnipotent,” said Republican former state Sen. Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, who like Beltran developed a reputation as a maverick and lost influence as result.

Legislators can always vote their consciences against leadership priorities, but not without cost, said Brandes.

A champion of prison reform and individual liberties, Brandes objected to a leadership-backed proposal in 2021 to cut the Department of Corrections budget, closing four prisons, when the beleaguered department faced severe overcrowding, rampant staff turnover and reports of abuse.

Brandes also opposed a bill championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to limit street protests following the Black Lives Matter movement, and a proposal to punish social media companies for flagging users’ content – both bills later ruled unconstitutional.

As a result, Brandes said in an interview with the Trident, he was yanked off an important appropriations conference committee temporarily – “until the press found out.”  In the following session, he lost his post as chair of the powerful Senate judiciary committee and was relegated to what he called “a freshman committee” related to government oversight.

Many bills die

Committees are where most legislating is done and where bills are winnowed for floor votes in the House and Senate chambers. To become law, a bill must usually pass all the committees it’s referred to one at a time.

But the vast majority of the 2,000-3,000 bills legislators file each year die without ever getting a single committee hearing, largely because of time limits, said Brandes. The Florida Constitution limits the annual legislative session to 60 days. 

As the 60-day limit nears expiration, there’s typically a chaotic rush in the last few days to bring to the floor bills that have passed their committees. Many bills die simply because time for floor votes run out, and the House speaker and Senate president decide which bills get the precious floor time.

The governor can still veto a passed bill, but since the late 1990s, Republicans have controlled both the House and Senate under Republican governors who negotiate priorities with the leaders, making veto fights rare.

“The entire point of having a legislature is to not have what you have in Florida, which essentially is executive lawmaking,” Beltran said. “Three people — the House speaker, Senate president and governor — hold 95 percent of the lawmaking power.”

“The question is, will the speaker and the president let a bill move (through committees), and will the governor sign it? If all three aren’t in the affirmative, the bill is dead,” he said.

The speaker and president even have the power to designate members’ office locations and parking places.  It’s not unheard of for maverick legislators to find themselves relegated to an office in the Capitol basement parking level. 

“There is relatively little active power wielded by the rank and file – it amounts to begging the leaders or chairmen to do something and acquiescing in everything they do,” Beltran said.

Heavy on fundraising

Under the Florida Constitution, the House speaker and Senate president are elected to two-year terms by their house’s members shortly before every other year’s session.

But in practice, the process begins years earlier and depends heavily on fundraising.

Ambitious and charismatic members, early in their legislative careers, begin recruiting allies and raising money. Most of the money comes from special interests and lobbyists, and the aspiring leaders use it to support other legislators or candidates who promise to support them later for a leadership post.

“You have to start building a coalition almost before you even get elected to the Legislature, then hold your coalition together until your year rolls around,” Beltran said.

A year before the leader’s formal election, party caucuses choose a “speaker designate” and “president designate,” and their fundraising roles intensify. For the next year, their job is to raise money for the party’s candidates, building a majority that will formally elect the designate.

With Republicans holding supermajorities in both House and Senate, Democrats have no leverage in the process.

Beltran, however, is far from a Democrat or moderate. He’s ardently anti-abortion, pro-gun rights and anti-spending. In his final session in 2024, he proposed a “personhood” bill banning abortion from the time of conception and a bill for open carry of firearms.

As a lawyer who favors citizen access to the courts, he opposed a top 2023 priority of then-House Speaker Paul Renner for “tort reform,” or limits on lawsuits, strongly favored by business interests.

Beltran said he enjoyed the role he played in the House and was considered by some to be “conscience” of the Legislature.

“People have called me the conscience of the Legislature,” he said. “I put things like consumer protection and access to the courts against the needs of the House.” 

Legislative leaders try to maintain at least the appearance of allowing members some independence, he said, but “If somebody wants to be a dictator, the checks and balances have been diluted or eliminated.”

“If a legislature doesn’t act as a check on concentration of power,” said Beltran, “then it hasn’t done its job.”