Locals show up to a Democratic legislative town hall in Orlando ahead of the 2025 state legislative session (Feb. 26, 2025) Credit: McKenna Schueler

Orlando’s Grand Avenue Community Center, just southwest of downtown, saw a packed house Wednesday night as more than 100 people gathered for a two-hour legislative town hall hosted by the Orange County Democrats.

In attendance at the town hall were Democratic state senators Carlos Guillermo Smith and Kristen Arrington, and state representatives Anna V. Eskamani, Johanna Lopez Rita Harris, LaVon Bracy Davis, and Leonard Spencer. All represent parts of Orange County, and are preparing to head up to Tallahassee for the regular 2025 legislative session that begins next Tuesday, March 4.

Lowering the cost of living (or raising wages), uplifting democracy, and defending marginalized communities from attacks coming from the Republican Party were among key issues discussed.

“We have people who are teachers who are not able to afford where they live. They’re working several jobs to make ends meet,” said Florida Rep. Rita Harris, a Democrat representing parts of Orange County south of Belle Isle and east of Lake Buena Vista.

“They are in charge of our future. They deserve better than that,” Harris argued. “We all deserve better than that.”

Florida Democrats are the minority party in the Florida Legislature, where Republicans outnumber them more than two to one. Orange County is a rare blue pocket in the Sunshine State, where nearly 40 percent of voters are registered Democrats, 27 percent are registered Republicans, and 30 percent of voters affiliate with no major party.

Florida has veered further right in recent years, with the state Republican Party now enjoying a more than 1 million voter registration edge over the Democratic Party. It’s an outcome Democratic party leaders attribute to laws that have disenfranchised voters, by, for instance, requiring voters to renew vote-by-mail requests each general election cycle.

Harris, who just won her second term in the Florida House, admitted their minority status in the state Legislature limits what they can realistically accomplish.

“We don’t get to decide what gets heard on committee agendas. We don’t get to decide what’s heard on the House floor,” she admitted. “So, ways that we fight back in that type of environment is, you know, filing amendments to some of the bills that come through to make them less harmful. We stand up and we grab the microphone whenever we can, all of us.”

Sen. Kristen Arrington, representing parts of south Orange and Osceola Counties, said Democrats have strategically filed a mix of “common-sense” legislation that they believe can garner bipartisan support, as well as “messaging” bills that they believe are important but are unlikely to pass with the current GOP supermajority.

“Some of the messaging stuff that we’re doing is giving women access to their reproductive rights,” said Arrington, referring in part to bills filed by Democrats that would repeal a Florida law that bans most abortions after six weeks’ gestation. “We’re also working on a Medicare for All bill, literally changing some language on it right now, but that should be filed later this week.”

Medicare for All, a proposal for a single-payer healthcare system that would guarantee healthcare as a human right, regardless of ability to pay, is an effort that’s being led in part in Florida by medical students and providers.

Artenisa Kulla, a 26-year-old medical student at one of Florida’s public universities (she requested we not specify, since she’s not advocating on behalf of her university), is organizing with dozens of medical students across the state, in coalition with the group Medicare for All Florida, to push for this proposal.

Organized with the group Students for a National Health Program, Kulla is also pushing for a $35 cap on insulin costs in Florida and a task force to study the feasibility of a state-level universal healthcare system — an initiative that’s also been pushed in California and New York.

“I find myself in medical school and kind of on the front lines of just seeing the, I don’t know, the inefficiencies, the inequities, all of the ‘in’-words that you can think of, as far as American healthcare system goes,” Kulla explained in an interview with Orlando Weekly. “The talking points that resonate, I think, are personal stories.”

Kulla’s father, a blue-collar construction worker and immigrant from Albania, didn’t have health insurance for a long time during her childhood, growing up on Florida’s Gulf Coast in St. Petersburg. Neither did her mom.

When Kulla was young, her dad was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Her family found a free medical clinic in order to get the diagnosis, “and then ended up with a bunch of medical bills after that,” she said.

“My dad made too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough that he could actually afford health insurance,” Kulla explained. Her dad’s economic potential, as a young man in his 30s at the time, was “destroyed” by his illness and his inability to afford care. Her family has faced medical debt, and her father was forced out of work for an entire year in order to receive cancer care and recover from his illness.

“I think it’s one of those things where I truly feel like most people want this, and it’s just a matter of who holds the power to actually enact the change,” said Kulla.

Responding to questions from attendees of the town hall Wednesday night, Democratic lawmakers also discussed immigration policy, DeSantis’ new DOGE-esque state task force, and other proposals they’ve filed for consideration during session that may or may garner the approval of their Republican colleagues — whose support they need to actually get any legislation through.

The inefficiency of DeSantis’ ‘government efficiency’

A recurring topic of discussion Wednesday was a recent proposal from DeSantis to create Florida’s own government efficiency task force, modeled after the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The federal office of sorts, heavily influenced if not formally run by tech billionaire and Trump megadonor Elon Musk, has caused widespread chaos and confusion since Trump took office. DOGE was created, purportedly, to weed out and cut “wasteful” spending by the federal government across various departments and agencies that oversee veterans services, housing assistance, energy policy, healthcare and more.

DeSantis recently said he wants the same for Florida.

“For too long, nobody has cared about the taxpayers, much less the next generation, who is ultimately going to have to pay for all of the mismanagement that we have seen over these many, many years,” DeSantis claimed at an appearance earlier this week in Tampa.

Democrats, however, question the sincerity of this proposal. Sen. Smith and Rep. Bracy Davis, for instance, pointed out the DeSantis administration’s own use of taxpayer money to, for instance, fly groups of migrants out-of-state, fight ballot initiatives, and pay for students of wealthy families to attend expensive private schools.

“If we’re going to talk about government efficiency, and we want to welcome that conversation without sounding like we’re kissing up to Elon Musk, we need to talk about all those government inefficiencies that are happening right now with our taxpayer money in Florida [going to] unaccountable private schools through voucher programs,” said Smith.

Rep. Bracy Davis said if DeSantis truly wants to take an axe to wasteful government spending, she’s happy to help. “I have plenty of ideas on how to cut the fat.”

Tackling immigration policy

One audience member at the town hall also asked Democrats how they plan to protect immigrants who are being threatened by both state and federal policy proposals.

The Trump administration launched a mass deportation effort on day one of Trump’s presidency, initially purporting to target undocumented people with criminal histories, although reports have since emerged of people without histories of violent crime getting caught up in detention and deportation efforts, too.

Florida lawmakers also convened in Tallahassee for not just one, but three special legislative sessions over the last month — on the taxpayer’s dime — to address immigration policy, repealing in-state tuition rates for undocumented students in Florida, and increasing criminal penalties specifically for undocumented people.

Sen. Smith described the affair and the resulting changes to law as “mean” and “petty.”

“Talking about government efficiency, [it] expanded the size of state government in Florida by creating a new immigration enforcement board and appropriating hundreds of millions of our dollars for state and local actors to do the immigration enforcement work of the federal government,” Smith chided. “We have to fight back against this.”

He said he and fellow Democrat Dotie Joseph in the Florida House will be proposing legislation to reestablish in-state tuition for undocumented students who have lived and attended school in Florida for years.

The proposal, he said, would also establish a 500-foot buffer prohibiting immigration enforcement from happening within 500 feet of a school or a religious institution, and that makes it easier for people without legal status to legally work in Florida.

“Let’s not forget, we can’t say that we are demanding lower prices and cheaper eggs and cheaper groceries, while also saying deport all the immigrants,” said Smith. “You can’t have it both ways. We can’t exploit immigrants for cheap labor, but we also cannot say that we want affordable prices, while also saying we’re going to deport all of the immigrants who are working hard to provide fresh groceries and put food on our tables to make this economy thrive.”

Florida has the third-largest population of undocumented workers in the country, and one of the largest populations of immigrant workers of all legal statuses, period.

‘Defense, defense, defense’

Eskamani said Democrats are committed to filing proposals to address issues that affect people across party lines, from housing affordability to property insurance reform, teacher pay, small business relief and privatization efforts in education.

But another key pillar of Democrats’ work in the state Legislature, she admitted, is “defense, defense, defense.”

“A bill was just filed to make it very difficult for there to ever be a ballot initiative process in Florida,” she said. “We’ve also had legislation filed attacking, once again, diversity, equity and inclusion — this time in medical school programs.”

Republicans have so far filed proposals that include: further weakening child labor protections for teenagers in the workforce; allowing employers to pay apprentices, interns and employees of other workplace programs less than minimum wage; banning local governments and public schools from displaying Black Lives Matter or Pride flags; banning guaranteed income programs; allowing college students to carry guns on campus; and more.

Democrats have filed bills that include: strengthening efforts to address notary fraud; legalizing abortion up to fetal viability; establishing statewide workplace guidelines to protect workers from extreme heat on the job; strengthening paid parental leave for state employees; and allowing for more flexibility in the allowed uses of tourist development tax (TDT) funds that local communities receive through a small tax on hotel stays.

Granted, only a very small percentage of bills that are actually filed by Florida legislators each year actually make it to the governor’s desk for final approval.

Last year, state lawmakers filed 1,902 bills, memorials or resolutions for consideration, including duplicate proposals filed by the House and Senate. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed 299 of the measures into law and vetoed 14 bills.

What members of the public can do, if they support or oppose bills, is contact their state representatives, their state senators, and contact members of the Florida Legislature who sit on committees that each bill must go through before reaching the full House and Senate.

The Orange County Democrats also encouraged people to organize with an advocacy group like the Youth Action Fund or 50501 Orlando, and to call on Republican state legislators to similarly hold town hall meetings open to the public.

A few state Democrats on Wednesday declared, “It’s a great day to be a Democrat” — a claim that received mixed reactions from the crowd.

Some people applauded or cheered, while others groaned or grunted.

Smith, for his part, tried to end the night on a bright note. “I’m hopeful that even though a lot of people call Florida a red state, we’re really just an under-organized, under-resourced blue state. And when we rebuild, what gives me hope is that we are rebuilding from Orlando out.”

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