As Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, was rushing from his office to the Senate chamber this week, the News Service of Florida got a chance to ask him how he feels being back in Tallahassee for the first of at least two special sessions this summer.
Jones and other Democratic members of the Senate were candid about how they feel about Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposed congressional redistricting map, vaccine exemption expansion, and the Legislature’s attempt at passing protections against artificial intelligence, also known as the “AI Bill of Rights.”
RELATED: 5 questions for Jimmy Patronis
All three are priorities of DeSantis, who also called the special session to revisit these two bills that passed the Senate during the regular session but never made it past the House.
Jones said the governor should be reminded that the House, Senate, and the executive branch are “independent bodies,” and the governor should stop “playing these political games.”
The following has been edited for clarity and brevity:
Q: How do Senate Democrats feel about the governor’s proposed redistricting map?
JONES: What our constituents are expecting us to do right now, they want us to push back on this. It has been clear that Floridians don't want gerrymandering.
Q: What do you think of the House saying they would not take up “Medical Freedom” and the AI Bill of Rights”?
JONES: Great. Good. I think Speaker Perez is clear that those two measures were rejected in the regular session. The governor called this special session for the maps, and that's what the focus needs to be, not playing these political games and trying to bring back things that just did not go through the regular process. Unfortunately, the governor fails to realize that we are independent bodies: the House, the Senate, and his office. The days of the king’s rule are done, and so the governor has to understand that we are back to independence.
Q: Is there a measure that you wish would come back, that you wish you could revisit before July 1?
JONES: Anything that deals with affordability, anything for Floridians to feel it, at their kitchen table, feel it in their pockets, in their pocketbook. I'll take any one of those bills. There are quite a few that never got a hearing
Q: What's the overall feeling right now among Democrats having to come back for special sessions on redistricting and the budget?
JONES: You're wasting taxpayer money. The amount of money that we're spending to come back and forth to Tallassee when legislators should be with their families, and we should be back in our districts. Whatever we couldn't do in the regular session goes to show you that we weren't effective, and we were actually derelict in our duty.
Q: Is there anything in Tallahassee that you miss when you're home?
JONES: I enjoy camaraderie and the people up here who I get to hang out with, and they're from all over the state. I tell people all the time that I know I represent one district, but I'm happy that I got friends all across the state.