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October 8, 2025 12 mins
Florida Politics Publisher Peter Schorsch discusses the latest on the Hope Florida scandal, committee work begins in Tallahassee, new Rays owners talk ballpark plans, and Bob Buckhorn gears up for the Tampa mayoral race.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now let's go to the hotline and bring in the
publisher of Florida Politics. Peter Shorsch is back with us.
You can find all of his work and all of
his teams reporting, and sign up for the Sunburn newsletters
so you get the latest in your inbox first thing
every morning at Florida politics dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
So Peter.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Earlier this year, we talked a lot about this Hope,
Florida scandal involving first Lady Casey DeSantis, Governor DeSantis, the
current Attorney General, James Utmeyer, who was DeSantis's chief of
staff back when this all unfolded. And if anyone thought
that this was going away, well it's not. It's back
and subpoenas are flying around. What's going on here?

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Well, I didn't think it was going away, I will
be I had a feeling that this was going to
come back, at least during the legislative session. Now, what
we have found out is that subpoenas have been issued
by the Leon County State Attorney, not just to governor

(00:59):
gubernatorial staffers. And remember, these guys can't confirm it because
it's grand jury and all that stuff. But I do
know that the subpoenists had gone to I would say
the secondary and tertiary levels, meaning they go beyond just
the Attorney general and the other people that were directly involved,
but also some of the people that were members of

(01:19):
the political committees that got the money. There were two
political committees that received five million dollars each. It's gone
to some of the campaign workers, et cetera. That is
different than what happened during the legislative session on state
Representative Alexandrade really could only talk to people under the
purview of his Subcommittee on Health Appropriate on Health Appropriations,

(01:42):
a very limited view of what he could go after.
He could go after the government spending aspect of it.
This opens up, I think, a whole nest of problems
for all the people involved here. I think it's number one.
It's always jeopardess to go to a grand jury. You
can lie and get caught there. You can find yourself. Listen,

(02:03):
there's a lot of government, there's a lot of I
would say, you know, staffers that are not going to
be so keen on paying hundreds of dollars to an
hour to pay for lawyers.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Will any of those flip?

Speaker 1 (02:16):
You know?

Speaker 3 (02:16):
So there's there's this whole different kind of seriousness between
a a legislative committee investigation and a state attorney. Now,
it could all be solved here and come back and
the state attorney could, you know, file a no bill
here and say, hey, while what was done was not
maybe the most ethical and the most forthright activity, there's

(02:40):
nothing illegal under Florida's very loose campaign finance laws. And
I think that's the argument that the Attorney General and
other people will make, Hey, we you might not like this,
but we played it by the letter.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Of the law.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
And they will also say, we're proud of the fact
that we stopped Florida from elementing a basically if I'm
manning recreational marijuana and loosening the state's.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Abortion loss And just to recap, and again we're joined
by the publisher of Florida Politics, Peter Shorsch. For those
who haven't followed this hope Florida controversy as closely as us.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
What exactly is that the main issue here?

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, it's it is complicated, and it is it's the
state had a settlement with a company named Senteen provides
healthcare services, and they they basically sent Teen had to
pay a fine as part of the negotiations. They said, hey,
we want basically fifty five million dollars fifty six million

(03:41):
dollars to go to the state, but we want a
suiteener on top of that. We want ten million dollars
we want to go. We want that to go to
the nonprofit Hope Florida Foundation, then the Hope Florida Foundation.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
And this is what's up in the air.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
How quickly and at whose direction took that money and
issued five million dollars to two political committees, so that
those two committees then aired ads and campaigned against Amendments
three and four in the in the last election. The
medicaid laws on what you can use that money for

(04:18):
are very strict. Uh, this is federal offense kind of stuff,
very serious stuff that you're not allowed to You're not
allowed to put.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Money in this way.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
And so there is even a hint of a conspiracy here.
I really do think state attorney might you know, prosecute.
But I also think there is the question of whether
or not the Northern District, the federal authorities will get
involved here. So number one, this is not going away
anytime soon. All these people have to be interviewed, their
stories have to be checked against each other. Number two,

(04:50):
you know this, there's no defense here, there's no You're
not going in there with your lawyer. They're just looking
to see if there's enough probable cause to bring an indictment.
And so that's much different than this is not a
trial yet. So this is going to be going on
right into when we get into the legislative session, and
I think it's going to continue to dominate through, you know,
into March April next year.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
We're joined by the publisher of Florida Politics, Peter Shorish,
speaking of the legislative session. Obviously that's still a couple
of months away, but committee weeks are beginning. What are
those and what are some of the issues that are
going to be front and center?

Speaker 3 (05:26):
All right, So just a quick reminder of the legislative
session and an even year starts in January. So they
are doing the leg work of committee meetings now, meeting
basically every other week in Tallahassee for a couple of days,
to start getting reports back from state agencies, starting to
hear the first bits of bills that may come up,

(05:46):
hearing about issues that may need legislative action. Take for example,
the ruling on open carry that is going to probably
dominate news coverage I think for them, you know, the
first six months of this transition to where we have
open carry in Florida, even Attorney General James Uthmeier is saying, hey,
maybe we need to revise some of these the open

(06:06):
carry laws. Maybe we need to look at whether or
not you can carry long rifles, whether or not does
this include the still like the band that's still there
on restaurants and bars. So there's that's one issue where
you need to you know, we need to talk about
Legislators need to hear from people here, from the Florida
shrifes here, from law enforcement, et cetera. And so there's

(06:27):
all those bills that are starting to come up to
I think this week they had something about artificial intelligence.
The other big thing is, and this is a story
that will dominate from now until probably next November, is
what are the what are they going to put on
the ballot As far as property tax so called reform.
The governor Santus wants property tax reform.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
There's a lot of clamoring for it.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
If they're going to put something on the battle on
the ballot, that has to be that has to pass
through the legislature as a resolution, and so there there's
a there's a committee right now with thirty one members.
They're all throwing out ideas on that one. So this
is when you start to see bills shape up as
we get into it, and it dies back down for
the holidays and then they come back for session. But

(07:13):
here's when a lot of the work gets done. So
it's important to pay attention.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Publisher of Florida Politics, Peter Shorsh. So, Peter, let's talk
about some local issues, and I want to start with
former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, who seems pretty intent on
running for mayor again, and it looks like there's quite
a bit of money backing a potential run.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yes, we first heard about this that he was raising
money and it was a who's who of Tampa, Bob Buckhorn,
who was mayor before Jane Caster. Jane Caster's tournamented, so
this will be he would like to come back to office.
He raised over a million dollars into the Friends of

(07:55):
Bob Buckhorn political committee, putting down a big deposit on
what is expected to be, you know, a expensive race.
Bill Carlson, a city council member who is a longtime
adversary of Bob. Bob Buckhorn and his allies. They have
sparred in public. It's going to be a just a

(08:16):
barn burner of a mayoral race. I don't remember Tampa having.
I'm sure other people will get in, but I do
think it will get down to Buckhorn versus Carlson, and
it's going to turn into just one heck of a
race there. So this was kind of the first shot
across the bow to anybody thinking about running against Bob
Buckcorn that he is going to have the money to

(08:37):
be on TV, to dominate.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
The airwaves in a local election.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
So you know, I would imagine by the time he
finally kicks off, he's going to be a two or
three million dollars that's gonna be pretty significant.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
And then you've got the name recognition and generally solid
approval ratings that were pretty high when he left office,
right Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
I mean, Bob Buckhorn, as some people said, you know,
brought the swagger back to Tampa, and it I want
to say, as a Saint Pete guy, it had always
been kind of it was the bigger city, but it
wasn't as cool as as Saint Pete but between Pami
Orio doing a lot of infrastructure work, between Buckhorn, between Castor.

(09:17):
You know, you've got a lot going on in Tampa,
especially downtown, especially where the development on Water Street has
taking place. You know, I read an article, I think
in Tampa Bay Business Journal about Yeah, we've got the
elite now in downtown of Tampa.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Can we can we build out the rest of it?

Speaker 3 (09:34):
And so I think Bob wants to come back, and
I think there's this like yearning to like kind of
finish the job of the goodness that was started with
him Jeff Bennick, et cetera, ten twelve years ago. Maybe
a second I will say a warning. Remember I don't
want to like ruin anything. But Dick Reco tried this
this same thing coming back, you know, for another buye

(09:56):
to the Apple. Everybody thought he was gonna be the
front runner and he ended up finishing third. So I
I hope Bob Buckcorn takes a lesson from our friend
Dick re Reco and and campaigns a little bit harder
than the former mayor did.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, reboots don't always work.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
And one thing that the next mayor of Tampa will
be dealing with a new race ballpark. What you make
of the rollouts from new Ray's ownership of their their plans,
their goals, their aspirations for the team.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
Oh, this is so cliche, but I'll say it's kind
of major league. I have questions about it. I will
say it's clear Saint Pete is no longer a fit.
And I say that even as a Saint Pete guy.
They're looking to do what Atta the Atlanta Braves did
and their with their baseball team and.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Build a whole one hundred and ten acre district out
of it.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
I don't think that the Tropicana Field site is the
right footprint for that. I think you're I think it's
going to become clear that the Rays are going to
fill out their contract.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Twenty twenty six.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
I think they want to have a stadium in place
by twenty twenty nine, what the new owners said there,
so you'll get three more seasons of the Rays and
Saint Pete. You know, Saint Pete had Kathy Wood, the investor,
put forth a big proposal last week about what she.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Would do with the area.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
I think that that's just going to be redeveloped into
something amazing for Saint Pete. But the owner, the new
owners of the Rays. And there's a lot of heavy
hitters on there. There's Mario Sany, you know, the chair
of the UF board. There's Will Weatherford. I saw Shane Battier,
the former NBA player, is on that list. They've got
a lot of big name minority partners. I think that

(11:36):
you know, they definitely want to be in Tampa. And
the key is it's not just about baseball anymore. The
baseball stadium is the anchor, but it's not the entire focus.
It's about can you bring awesome hotels, can you bring
awesome restaurants and other entertainment to it? And so that
was the thing about it seemed very tough. But I
will say the other thing, just from a baseball fan,

(11:56):
they said it is their rule that the ownership group
will not be getting.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Involved in the baseball side.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
Tankway sw Sternberg ran the organization and that worked out
pretty well for the Rais. You know, it's the opposite
of the Stipbrenner model. You know, the business side is
the business side and the balls and strike side is
the other side. And they seem like they want to
focus very much on the business. I will say this
it's a real estate deal. That's what it basically is,
that Tampa Bay Rays are just a big, multi billion

(12:25):
dollar real estate deal.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
The publisher of Florida Politics, Peter Shores. Check out all
of his work and all of his team's fantastic reporting,
and sign up for that Sunburn newsletter so you get
the latest in your inbox first thing every morning at
Florida Politics dot com. Peter really appreciate it. We'll talk
to you next week, all right, Ryan, thanks for having
me on.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
The Ryan Gorman Show on NewsRadio WFLA. Follow us on
Facebook and Instagram at Ryan Gorman Show, and find us
online at Ryan Gormanshow dot com
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