Weekly Roundup: Betting on Blaise

By Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE — Talk of détente between the camps of President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis took a turn this week as DeSantis tapped Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, as Florida’s chief financial officer, snubbing the state senator who garnered the president’s blessing for the post.

DeSantis made the announcement Wednesday at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay, but Sen. Joe Gruters, a Sarasota Republican who has already filed to run for the state Cabinet office in 2026, isn’t backing away from the race.

The appointment immediately sparked reaction from often-dueling supporters of Trump and DeSantis.

In a post on the social-media platform X, state Rep. Juan Carlos Porras, R-Miami, declared that DeSantis “has single-handedly once again divided the Republican Party because his own ego cannot allow him to support (the) President and his backed candidates like Joe Gruters.”

DeSantis called Ingoglia a warrior on issues such as immigration and insurance and “the most conservative senator in the state of Florida.”

DeSantis added that Ingoglia, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida who brandishes the social media handle of “@GovGoneWild,” will be a “really important voice” in the governor’s push to pass a constitutional amendment in 2026 to reduce property taxes.

Ingoglia used his time at the announcement to lay out his initial goals, which he said include a focus on property taxes, housing affordability and reviewing local government spending, without addressing next year’s race.

“With the audit authority at the CFOs office, I promise you, we are going to start digging in, and we are going to start calling out some of this wasteful spending,” Ingoglia said.

The left-leaning group DeSantis Watch issued a statement calling Ingoglia, who has chaired the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee, an “insurance industry lackey.”

The CFO oversees the state Department of Financial Services and also helps regulate the insurance industry.

The appointment likely will lead to what could be a fierce Republican primary battle in 2026 between Ingoglia and Gruters, who also is a former state Republican chairman.

Asked about Gruters’ endorsement by Trump, DeSantis questioned Gruters’ votes on several issues and said his record is “contrary to what we’ve told the voters that we would do.”

“If George Washington rose from the dead, came back and tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Will you appoint Joe Gruters CFO?’ My response would be, ‘No, I can’t do that without betraying the voters that elected me to lead the state in a conservative direction,’” DeSantis said.

STOMP OVER THE SWAMP

DeSantis traveled to Hendry County Tuesday for the opening of the C-43 reservoir as part of Everglades restoration efforts. But a different patch in the South Florida ecosystem continued to draw intense state and national attention.

As the C-43’s pumps were being turned on, the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida submitted a motion seeking to join a lawsuit filed by Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity over potential environmental impacts of the remote detention compound dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Groups of state and federal lawmakers who toured the center, which is located adjacent to an airstrip known as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, have called for it to be shuttered. DeSantis, however, disputes that the facility threatens the environment.

Expected to cost at least $450 million to operate, the complex neighbors 10 villages that are home to the Miccosukees in the Big Cypress National Preserve — including a village 1,000 feet away from one of the detention center’s boundaries.

Also this week, the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Immigrant Justice, and attorneys representing detainees filed a federal lawsuit alleging that people confined at the facility are being prevented from having access to lawyers and “effectively have no way to contest their detention.”

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez recused himself from the environmental groups’ lawsuit, which was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams.

Williams recently drew headlines for holding Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in civil contempt over his response to her blocking enforcement of a law passed in February that created state crimes for undocumented immigrants who enter or re-enter Florida.

Amid the legal wrangling, critics of the detention center have raised flags about a lack of transparency surrounding the DeSantis administration’s multi-million-dollar contracts with vendors at the center. The money will be reimbursed by federal officials, according to DeSantis.

The governor continued to defend the compound on Friday.

“My administration had a job to do and they did it. And they didn’t twiddle their thumbs. They didn’t sit on their hands,” DeSantis said during a Marco Island appearance. “They constructed a processing and deportation facility in a week. How many other places, other states would have been able to get that done?”

MAP APPROVAL

Three years after DeSantis pushed a congressional redistricting plan through the Legislature, the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a challenge by voting-rights groups that argued part of the plan violated the state Constitution.

Justices, in a 5-1 decision, said an alternative requested by voting-rights groups for a North Florida district would violate the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause because it would involve racial gerrymandering.

Using the state’s 2022 congressional map, Republicans picked up four seats in Florida as the party gained control of the U.S. House by nine seats.

“This was always the constitutionally correct map — and now both the federal courts and the FL Supreme Court have upheld it,” DeSantis posted on X.

The case centered on Congressional District 5, which in the past stretched from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee, and elected Black Democrat Al Lawson.

“This ruling violates the Fair Districts Amendment, passed by Florida voters to protect minority representation and keep partisan gerrymandering in check,” Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried said in a statement.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Gov. Ron DeSantis tapped political ally Sen. Blaise Ingoglia to the Cabinet office of chief financial officer over President Donald Trump’s favored candidate for the post, Sen. Joe Gruters R-Sarasota.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “The justice system may not have the capabilities of bringing back our lost loved one … But, due to the acts of violence, perpetrated in an unhuman form and fashion, justice was served.” — The family of Tamecka Smith, after Tuesday’s execution by lethal injection of Michael Bell, who was sentenced to death for murdering Smith and Jimmie West as they got into a car outside a Jacksonville bar in 1993.