Four Democratic members of Congress demanded Friday that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis immediately set a special election to fill the vacancy created by the death of U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings.
U.S. Reps. Charlie Crist, Ted Deutch, Lois Frankel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz said they miss their colleague, who had served more than 28 years before his April 6 death.
They and other Democrats also miss his vote in the House, which Democrats control with few votes to spare.
“Our concern is that there is such a close majority of Democrats in the House that any stalling, any less Democrats that are there and stalling makes it more difficult to get for us to get what we think is a very common-sense agenda through,” said Frankel, who organized a video news conference about the Hastings vacancy.
Frankel, Deutch and Wasserman Schultz all represent South Florida districts that share borders with Hastings’ district in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Crist, who represents St. Petersburg, is considering whether to run for the 2022 Democratic nomination for governor to challenge DeSantis.
“All of Alcee’s constituents deserve to have a representative in Washington,” Deutch said.
Wasserman Schultz said there is “no good reason, none whatsoever, to wait one more day. … Unless of course you want to play petty partisan politics or have no regard for your own state’s constituents. That’s the only reason for DeSantis to delay calling an election.”
Wasserman Schultz also cited several Democratic priorities, including President Joe Biden’s infrastructure proposal and gun safety legislation, that could be eased by having another Democratic member in office.
With Hastings’ death and other vacancies, there are currently 218 Democrats and 212 Republicans — the tightest margin in almost a century. That doesn’t leave House Speaker Nancy Pelosi much room. More than a few defections mean majority Democrats can’t pass bills.
The voters in the now-vacant 20th Congressional District are so overwhelmingly Democratic that Hastings’ successor is virtually guaranteed to be a Democrat.
The Constitution requires elections to replace vacancies in the House, and Florida law gives DeSantis the ability to set the special primary and special general election any time he wants. The Republican governor — who is building his brand for a 2024 campaign for his party’s presidential nomination — has no incentive to do anything that anyone in his party’s base could see as assisting Pelosi.
Vacancies between elections don’t happen very often. The late U.S. Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young, a Tampa Bay-area Republican, is the only Florida member of Congress to die in office since 2000. Then-Gov. Rick Scott set the special primary for three months later. The special general election was almost five months after Young’s 2013 death.
In October 2009, then-U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler announced he would resign from his Broward-Palm Beach county seat in January 2010. Crist, who was then governor, set the special primary for early February. The special general election was in mid-April, so the seat was vacant for about three-and-a-half months.
DeSantis’ office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the Democratic demands on Friday.
But a clear pattern has emerged in the 27 months since DeSantis has been governor, especially since the start of the coronavirus pandemic: Democrats ask or tell DeSantis to do something and he ignores them.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @browardpolitics
