Florida Politics Morning Briefing: Session Turmoil & St. Pete Race

Florida’s legislative session is generating friction at the top of the Republican Party, and one of the chamber’s most veteran voices is not happy about it. Former Senate President Don Gaetz, who returned to the Florida Senate after a term-limit-resetting absence, has publicly called this year’s session an embarrassment, pointing to the GOP infighting that has dominated headlines since January.

But Gaetz may be misreading the moment.

The ugliness he’s decrying isn’t a malfunction. It’s the cost of realignment. House Republicans, in particular, have spent months pushing back against executive branch overreach and reasserting their role as a coequal branch of government. That process was never going to be tidy. Power doesn’t redistribute without resistance, and anyone who has covered Tallahassee long enough knows that institutional fights look messy from the inside even when they’re necessary from the outside.

Gaetz’s frustration is understandable. He came up in an era when Republican leadership locked arms and moved in formation. The current session looks nothing like that. But the disorder he’s lamenting may ultimately produce a more durable balance of power than the disciplined marching he remembers.

On the municipal level, the St. Petersburg mayor’s race just got more complicated. Kevin Batdorf has entered the contest, and while political observers don’t project him as the likely winner, his presence reshapes the arithmetic in ways that hurt incumbent Mayor Ken Welch.

The math matters here. St. Pete’s municipal elections operate under a system where a candidate can win outright in August with a majority of the vote. Batdorf’s entry almost certainly dilutes the field enough to prevent that outcome, pushing the race to a November runoff. That gives challengers more time, more runway, and a different electorate than the August primary typically delivers.

For Welch, a November finish is not the scenario his campaign prefers. The incumbent enters with the structural advantages of office, but a longer race with more competitors means more opportunities for the opposition to consolidate and more time for voter dissatisfaction to crystallize into something organized. There are few positive takeaways in this development for the mayor’s political team.

Ballard Partners, one of Florida’s most prominent lobbying firms with a strong Washington footprint, announced it is expanding its D.C. operation with the hire of Rich Haselwood. Haselwood spent decades at Reynolds American, where he held senior roles in government relations and regulatory affairs, building what colleagues describe as a reputation for bipartisan credibility and strategic effectiveness.

Firm founder and President Brian Ballard framed the hire as part of a deliberate push to deepen the firm’s federal influence. Haselwood will advise clients on regulatory strategy across multiple sectors. His background at one of the country’s largest tobacco companies gives him direct experience navigating the kind of complex federal oversight environments that many of Ballard’s corporate clients face.

Haselwood said he sees the move as an opportunity to apply private-sector experience at a firm he described as widely respected for delivering results.

Ballard Partners has long straddled the Florida and Washington corridors with unusual effectiveness, and adding a veteran corporate government relations hand signals continued investment in the firm’s national profile.

Finally, a bit of local history worth surfacing on St. Patrick’s Day. While Boston and New York typically dominate the American narrative around the holiday, St. Augustine has a legitimate claim to hosting the oldest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the world. Historian Dr. J. Michael Francis has documented a San Patricio feast in St. Augustine dating to 1600, with a formal parade following in 1601. That predates the famous Boston and New York celebrations by more than a century.

Florida’s oldest city doesn’t always get the credit its history warrants. On a day when green beer flows from Southie to the Financial District, it’s the cobblestone streets of St. Augustine that carry the deeper claim.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from South Florida. The session fights will still be waiting when the holiday ends.