As we discussed on Monday, Governor Ron DeSantis has chosen to play politics with multiple vacancies in the legislature as session approaches, denying largely minority constituencies in south Florida representation as long as possible. It’s been almost three months since those vacancies were created by Florida’s Resign to Run law, and typically it takes about a week for the Governor to call a Special Election, particularly as we discussed Monday when vacancies involve safe GOP seats.

Now the Florida Democratic Party has joined the call for DeSantis to relent.

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“The Resign to Run law was designed to avoid a domino effect of empty seats caused by legislators running for different offices. Governor DeSantis is shirking his responsibility and potentially leaving hundreds of thousands of Floridians without representation in the process. Floridians in House Districts 88 and 94, and Senate District 33 have a right to equal representation.
“The Governor should call a special primary election on January 11, 2022, concurrently with the congressional special general election. The Governor should similarly call a special general election by February 15, 2022. We know that the Supervisor of Elections offices are capable of holding elections on these dates and further delay is simply unacceptable. It should not take citizens filing a lawsuit for the Governor to do what he is required to – it’s long past time to stop playing politics and schedule these elections.”

Ben Tyler, the Florida Democratic Party’s General Counsel