Session Winds Down, But Political Season Will Continue
The 2014 legislative session is drawing to a close, but in some respects this only means the political process will shift forums. Florida’s 60-day legislative session has only a week remaining. The last week is always the most active, with bills that have not yet passed being in a do-or-die situation for this year. Among the bills that remain active in this session, the legislature has yet to pass the residential property claims bill of rights. The House version of the bill (HB 743) is on second reading but hasn’t moved in about a week. However, the Senate passed its bill (SB 708) on April 24 and sent it to the House.
In the political arena, we tend to get two primary questions right now– what is going to happen in the legislative session? And what is going to happen in the Governor’s race? By the end of this week, we’ll know the answers to the first question (subject, of course, to watching to see whether the Governor vetoes any measures passed by the legislature). This only means that the second question will come into greater focus. The television airwaves already are active with campaign commercials, and with both Governor Scott and former Governor Crist having plenty of resources, we can expect to see this continue through the primary and general election cycles.
Several weeks ago polls showed Charlie Crist leading Governor Scott by up to eight percentage points. Some polls continue to show Crist with a small edge, but a Mason-Dixon poll released this week gained some attention when it showed Crist and Scott deadlocked at 42% each, with 12% undecided. The poll, which considers likely voters, has a margin of error is 3.8%.
It’s hard to say what any of this means at this point, except that the race will be hotly contested and polls probably will reflect several momentum swings along the way as the candidates strive to get out their messages and attempt to sway the relatively few undecided voters.