Seeking Rents – The Podcast

In this episode : Florida Republicans’ red sea wall held as a blue tsunami washed across the nation. But there was lots of localized flooding: Democrats made their biggest state House gains in at least a generation and virtually every Republican on the ballot was swept away in Orlando, which has become the most important blue stronghold in what is now the nation’s biggest red state. But the top st...

In this episode : Election Day is finally here and Florida voters have a rare chance to completely reshape their government in Tallahassee — with competitive races for governor, attorney general, chief financial officer, and a host of seats in the state Legislature. In today’s show, we run through some of the big issues hanging in the balance. Show notes To make a donation to Seeking Rents, click...

In this episode : Though the job doesn’t get nearly as much attention as governor, the Attorney General is one of the most important figures in all of Florida politics. The state’s highest-ranking lawyer has the power to investigate, litigate and prosecute — powers that have been used in the past to challenge electric utilities and phone companies but also to defend cruise lines, car dealers and D...

In this episode : Early voting has begun in Florida. So, too, have the eleventh-hour election schemes — particularly in the campaign for Attorney General, which just may be the most important race on the ballot in Florida this year. Allies of incumbent Attorney General James Uthmeier are trying to censor TV commercials that spotlight Uthmeier’s role in the $10 million Hope Florida scandal. At the...

In this episode : The data center-backing billionaires behind ChaptGPT and a prominent right-wing tech investor are trying to tilt swing elections for seats in the Florida Legislature. So, too, are developers and real-estate investors behind some of the most sprawl-inducing bills to come through Tallahassee in recent years. Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier c...

In this episode : In June 2025, just a few hours before Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature finalized a new state budget, GOP leaders in Tallahassee slipped a sentence into the spending plan authorizing state officials to acquire a piece of property in the Panhandle through a popular land-preservation program. Three months later, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet used that little l...

In this episode : The Ron DeSantis administration has been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to hide the Ron DeSantis administration’s misspending of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. The governor and his allies have also been handing out promotions, appointments and contracts to people who played roles in what is now widely known as the Hope Florida scandal. Show no...

In this episode : A new investigation reveals that Florida was secretly confining immigrants in cages the size of phone booths inside its infamous prison camp in the middle of the Florida Everglades. Meanwhile, the state attorney general and politically ambitious judges are colluding to weaponize family-law courtrooms and use them as fronts in their crusades against women’s healthcare and LGBTQ+ r...

In this episode : Earlier this year, Ron DeSantis and state legislators enacted a new law forcing Florida’s public nonprofit insurance company to set up a program pushing condo owners into higher-priced private insurance. The law was written in part by lobbyists for an insurance brokerage led by a billionaire megadonor that wanted to make money managing the new program on the state’s behalf. But t...

In this episode : Newspapers across Florida have been pulling back the curtain on schemes orchestrated by political consultants working on behalf of a small number of big corporate clients, including utility giant Florida Power & Light. Many of their plans focused on one target in particular: José Javier Rodriguez, a Cuban-American Democrat from Miami who was once seen as a future candidate for go...

In this episode : The release of a bombshell grand jury report into the $10 million “Hope Florida” affair has rocked the state’s political landscape two months before the election. James Uthmeier, the former Ron DeSantis chief of staff at the center of the scandal who the governor then promoted to attorney general, threatened a television reporter simply for asking him a question about it. Byron D...

In this episode : A scathing grand jury report — one that some of the most powerful politicians in Florida tried to keep hidden from voters — says that the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis “misappropriated” $10 million in taxpayer money “as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities.” The grand jury broadly laid blame for the Hope Florida scandal with James Uthmeier, the former...

In this episode : A number of lavishly funded candidates fell to grassroots challengers running on shoestring budgets during this week’s primary elections, showing that Big Money can become a big liability. Then again, Facebook’s favorite legislators survived their races and the candidate with the biggest bank account of them all — Byron Donalds, the new Republican nominee for governor — won his c...

In this episode : In Tampa, Big Tech giant Meta Platforms is funding last-minute mailers on behalf of a Democratic legislator who is locked in a tough primary for an open seat in the state Senate. And in Miami, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram is paying for digital ads promoting a Republican legislator who is in line to become speaker of the state House. It’s all part of a nationwide c...

In this episode : A month-old law enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature — with help from lobbyists representing major developers — already has more than 15 square miles of farmland around the state at risk of being consumed for new housing subdivisions. Many of the proposed projects have been previously rejected by county commissioners because of concerns about traffic congestio...

In this episode : A billionaire hedge fund executive gave $10 million last week to Byron Donalds, the Republican Congressman from Naples who is the favorite to win the GOP nomination for Florida governor in next month’s primary elections. His gift came after a billionaire TikTok investor gave Donalds at least $7.5 million. Other billionaires are pouring money into the Donalds campaign, too. Their...

In this episode : Data center interests have spent more than $5 million supporting Byron Donalds, the Trump-endorsed Congressman from Naples who is the heavy favorite to win the Republican nomination for Florida governor in next month’s primary election. But all that industry money is morphing from a strength to a liability amid a rising bipartisan backlash to data center development around the st...

In this episode : Led by a Donald Trump-appointed judge, a federal appeals court struck down Florida’s infamous “Stop WOKE Act,” a Ron DeSantis-championed law meant to censor university professors on subjects like racism and sexism. But Florida and other GOP-controlled Southern states are working on another way to control what can be said, taught or studied on college campuses. Meanwhile, rural an...

In this episode : Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has been using his office to help donors, intervening in at least three civil disputes on behalf of special interests who gave $25,000 gifts to his fundraising committee. Meanwhile, Florida state House Speaker Danny Perez has been using his powers to help secret clients of his private legal practice, including Airbnb and Newsmax. For a pair...

In this episode : Following a last-minute blitz of vetoes by the governor — including half a dozen bills and more than $800 million in spending — the 2026 legislative season has finally come to an end in Florida. Which means election season is here. But before campaign coverage crowds everything else out, we take a closer look at some of the bills Gov. Ron DeSantis decided to stop from becoming la...

In this episode : Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis confirmed this week that the state is closing “Alligator Alcatraz” after one year — but not before paying out millions in “demobilization fees” to vendors who have already banked hundreds of millions building and operating the infamous immigrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades. Plus: A closer look at some recent favors Florida’s governor and...

In this episode : A new nonpartisan analysis of a proposed constitutional amendment to cut and cap property taxes across Florida finds that it could wipe out nearly a quarter of all local government property tax collections. It could also fuel further privatization around the state — of everything from electric utilities to animal shelters. Plus: How lobbyists for a national pet retailer weakened...

In this episode : Twenty years ago, Republican leaders in Florida raced to get a radical property tax plan onto the statewide ballot — a plan that was negotiated largely in secret, sprung on the public at the last minute, and approved during a lighting-quick special session in June. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that is, beat for beat, what just happened again in Tallahassee, where Ron DeS...

In this episode: Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature has finally agreed on a new state budget, following a flurry of last-minute spending deals — most of them negotiated behind closed doors and sealed late on the Sunday night of a holiday weekend. The eleventh-hour additions to Florida’s $115 billion spending plan include provisions that could let the state buy more property from a big dev...

In this episode : Florida lawmakers might take more powers away from cities and towns, cut funding for a cross-state wildlife corridor, and start testing toilet water for drugs. They could give politicians more control over courses offered at public universities, let the attorney general dish out rich legal contracts with less scrutiny, and make taxpayers foot the bill for Ron DeSantis’ security e...