A storm breaks over the Everglades. (Photo: US Park Service)
Jan. 3, 2025 by David Silverberg
While national-level elections are not scheduled for 2025, there will be some significant elections—especially in Florida.
Two members of Congress need to be replaced: Matt Gaetz resigned his position in Congress in December, so a special election will be held in the 1st Congressional District in the Panhandle to replace him.
In the 6th Congressional District in northern Florida, an election will be held to replace Rep. Michael Waltz (R-6-Fla.), who was nominated to be National Security Advisor and is scheduled to leave the House of Representatives on Jan. 20. A special election will be held to replace him.
While Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will be leaving the Senate to become Secretary of State if confirmed, a replacement will be appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to fill out the remaining four years of his term, which ends on Jan. 3, 2029.
It is not too early to speculate about DeSantis’ own succession. His term ends in 2026 and he cannot run again so the big question will be who will succeed him.
As the year dawns, two of the leading contenders being mentioned are Gaetz and Southwest Florida Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.). (More about this in a future posting.)
A bombshell House Ethics Committee report released on Dec. 23 stated that Gaetz regularly paid for sex, underage and otherwise, and possessed and used illegal drugs.
In the past this would have disqualified any candidate. However, in the Trump era these standards may not hold. It is also possible that Trump will pardon Gaetz for any misdeeds given the former congressman’s past loud loyalty to the President-Elect.
But any discussion of the gubernatorial race is just early speculation and by 2026 a whole new cast of contenders is likely to emerge, many with statewide name recognition.
Otherwise, across the country, the major contests will be gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.
As of now, there are no local elections scheduled for Southwest Florida.
Southwest Florida investigations
Just because there are no elections scheduled hardly means that there won’t be significant political developments.
As the year dawns the two biggest local political stories in Southwest Florida concern criminal investigations and court cases.
In Collier County, on Nov. 7, multiple federal agencies searched the properties of Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the extremely conservative, outspoken and politically active farmer and grocer.
No information has been publicly revealed following the search and Oakes himself told the Naples Daily News only that “We’re looking into it, but everything’s good.”
However, the federal agencies involved in the search, as reported in local media, provide clues to the nature of the investigation. The presence of Internal Revenue Service agents indicates a tax-related inquiry.
Secret Service agents were on site. While the public largely knows the Secret Service for its protective mission, it is often forgotten that it conducts financial investigations too. The Secret Service was founded during the Civil War to fight counterfeiting and was under the authority of the Treasury Department for most of its history. (It is now part of the Department of Homeland Security.) The presence of Secret Service agents is an indicator of a financial-related investigation but also a possible homeland security or counter-terrorism query.
Also present were Department of Defense (DoD) agents and in particular the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), which investigates all forms of crime against the Department including fraud, contracting violations, terrorism, and cybercrime. The presence of DCIS agents indicate that the search may be related to Oakes’ federal contracting. While in the past he had lucrative contracts with the Defense Logistics Agency, which oversees supplies and contracting for the military, Oakes told The Paradise Progressive in 2022 that he had sold off those units. He also has a contract with the Justice Department to provide food to the federal Coleman Correctional Facility in Coleman, Florida.
Additionally, the well-documented presence of a DCIS firearms instructor indicates that federal agents may have been wary of Oakes’ reported 3,000 guns. (Interestingly, Florida Highway Patrol officers were present but Collier County deputies weren’t mentioned in the news accounts.)
As with all investigations, Oakes is presumed innocent until proven guilty. This may or may not involve the convening of a grand jury to hand down indictments if probable cause for prosecution is found.
In the meanwhile, the public will have to await any announcements from the agencies involved in the investigation if prosecution is pursued—or dropped.
An easy prediction for 2025 is that it will be a major story in Southwest Florida when a public announcement is made in this case.
However, another potential outcome is that given Oakes’ longstanding, outspoken and deep loyalty to Donald Trump, he could be pre-emptively pardoned by the president for any wrongdoing, or, if charged, tried and found guilty, pardoned after the court proceeding.
In Lee County to the north, resolution of accusations against Lee County sheriff Carmine Marceno for possible money laundering and misappropriation of funds will be another major political story for 2025.
On Dec. 3 a grand jury convened in Tampa to consider potential charges against the sheriff. The accusations stemmed from allegations made by an electoral opponent, Mike Hollow, in his race against Marceno. Hollow quoted Ken Romano, a contract employee, that he received a “no-work” contract and kicked back money to Marceno’s father. Hollow provided a video of Romano making the allegations.
Marceno has called the allegations baseless.
DeSantis is reportedly already considering people he can tap to replace Marceno.
As of this writing, no word has been heard from the grand jury but if indictments are handed down it will be a major political story for Southwest Florida this year.
The state, the legislature and the Trump regime
On the one hand, with Florida resident Donald Trump scheduled to take office Jan. 20, the likelihood is that Florida will be favored in federal decisionmaking in the year ahead. After all, during the height of the COVID pandemic, the state of Florida was given special access to the US stockpile of COVID supplies and vaccines.
Also, the executive branch will be stocked with Floridians. Some must be confirmed by the Senate but others are presidential appointments. In addition to Rubio at State, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi has been nominated as US Attorney General subject to Senate approval.
In the executive branch, Florida political operative Susan “Susie” Wiles has been named White House Chief of Staff and Palm Beach resident Taylor Budowich has been named Deputy Chief of Staff. As mentioned previously, Waltz has been tapped as National Security Advisor. Janette Nesheiwat, Waltz’s wife, was nominated for Surgeon General; Mehmet Oz, the television doctor and a resident of Palm Beach, has been named Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Todd Blanche of Palm Beach has been nominated for Deputy Attorney General.
Other Floridians appointed are David Weldon as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jared Isaacman as Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Jay Bhattacharya as Director of the National Institutes of Health; Paul Atkins of Tampa as Chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission; Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., and a Floridian, as ambassador to Greece; Daniel Newlin, an attorney, as ambassador to Colombia; and Peter Lamelas, a Trump donor and doctor who helped found MD Now Urgent Care that serves Florida, as ambassador to Argentina. And Naples resident Callista Gingrich has been named ambassador to Switzerland.
The key qualification for all these nominations, of course, is loyalty to Donald Trump.
The big question in the year ahead will be whether—and in what way—all these Floridians favor the state over the rest of the country when it comes to resources, benefits and federal aid, especially if there are disasters or crises like epidemics.
One person who is clearly out of favor and likely to stay out of favor is DeSantis. The governor’s unforgiveable sin was to actually run against Trump for the presidential nomination in 2023. Trump forgives or overlooks a lot of transgressions (after all, his own vice president once called him “an American Hitler”) but primarying the king was beyond redemption. There were reports that DeSantis was briefly being considered for Secretary of Defense but those went nowhere.
The prospect for 2025 is for DeSantis to keep governing the state, with an eye to his post-gubernatorial opportunities. But a position in the Trump regime seems unlikely to be one of them.
Once again DeSantis will be ruling over a subservient, super-majority legislature that will likely do his bidding on all things with the exception of paving over state parks. Not only will Republicans dominate the legislature for the next two years but their majority has grown with the defections of two state House members elected as Democrats. State Rep. Susan Valdes (R-64-Tampa) and Hillary Cassel (R-101-Hollywood) have both declared themselves Republicans, with Valdes being rewarded with a second-place slot on the House Budget Committee. While both lawmakers gave different justifications for their defections, the fact is that they likely could see no way to get anything done other than as Republicans.
That legislature will likely follow a Trumpist-DeSantis anti-“woke” program, although probably with less extremism and zealotry than in the 2023 session. Then, DeSantis looked like he might become president based on an anti-woke culture war and legislators wanted to get on his right side with ever more outlandish and sometimes bizarre proposals.
Presumably that won’t be the case this time unless they aspire to favors from the Trump regime in Washington, DC. There’s less incentive to follow the DeSantis “line,” whatever that may be in the coming year but that doesn’t mean they won’t follow a basically Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology.
Florida shows all the symptoms of a one-party state. Democrats have been crushed twice in two consecutive elections. Despite the Herculean efforts of Democratic Party Chair Nicole “Nikki” Fried and her success in getting Democrats to contest all open seats in 2024, Democrats lost nearly every race they pursued. They are an even smaller minority in the state legislature than before. The state Party shows little signs of recovery—or even life.
Also defeated were two major constitutional amendments, Amendment 3 to legalize recreational marijuana and Amendment 4 to protect the right to abortion. Neither received the 60 percent vote they required to become part of the state constitution.
The consequence of Florida’s abortion ban has already manifested itself in Collier County, with installation of a “baby box,” a medieval contraption that allows mothers to anonymously abandon unwanted infants. In the current version approved by the Board of Commissioners in October, babies can be turned over at Medical Services Station 76 near the intersection of Vanderbilt Beach Road and Logan Boulevard in Naples. At least, unlike Texas, mothers aren’t tossing infants into dumpsters—yet.
Not only did the defeat of Amendment 4 mean that Florida women cannot have abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, it deflated the perception of pro-choice women as a powerful voting bloc with momentum that needed to be respected, or at least considered in decisionmaking. Anti-choice groups and activists are now likely to push for a total ban on abortions and may well get it.
Politically, Amendment 4’s defeat broke an important element of the Democratic coalition in Florida. Democrats were counting on women, minorities, the young, Hispanics, unions and working class voters to take them to victory. Instead they were defeated by MAGAs, billionaires, hostile propaganda and an undeniably impressive Republican registration drive.
It’s hard to see a new majority Democratic coalition coming together in Florida or elsewhere that would propel the Party to future victories, especially given the voter suppression and MAGAism that will likely reign, especially if Trump refuses to step down in 2028 or if the 2026 elections are rigged, as they are now likely to be.
America is now likely to become Florida, as DeSantis proposed in his presidential campaign. The politics and culture Americans will find emanating from the Sunshine State will be sclerotic, hypocritical, repressive, regressive and corrupt. All that will be lacking will be the humidity and hurricanes.
At the grassroots
So how will all this manifest itself in the daily lives of Southwest Floridians?
Every indication is that inflation will soar. Whether from tariffs and trade wars or a drastic reduction of the migrant workforce that makes the local economy work, every policy proposal from Trump to date leads to higher prices and fewer goods.
The general perception is that Trump won the election based on the economy and unhappiness with inflation under President Joe Biden. But Biden, along with the Federal Reserve, steadily brought prices down after the highs of Trump’s first term and the COVID pandemic.
But now, as the saying goes: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Of course, Trump will take no responsibility for any of this. He will no doubt blame the weakened Democrats and “far left Marxist radicals” for any problems he causes. If the past is prologue, Fox News and the MAGA faithful will buy it.
The climate change constant
Another impact will come from the skies. Mother Nature doesn’t abide by human politics.
Southwest Florida is uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as last year’s experience of hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton showed. Its towns, cities and counties are especially dependent on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for disaster preparation and recovery and the predictions of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for accurate forecasting and warnings. Along the coasts homeowners rely on the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to insure their homes and property.
How has the state government of Florida reacted to the climate change challenge?
In May 2024 the state banned the term “climate change” from statutes. When DeSantis sought a special session of the legislature to tackle the resulting insurance crisis, he was rebuffed by the House.
Nationally, Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and once tried to change the course of a hurricane with a Sharpie. He took the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords in 2017. President Joe Biden put it back in 2021 and is likely to take it out again.
What is more, Project 2025, which will likely be implemented in whole or in large part, calls for the dismantlement of NOAA for being part of the “climate change alarm industry” and elimination of NFIP. FEMA will likely become far more stingy in its support of states and localities after disasters.
So, when the hurricanes hit—as they surely will—Southwest Floridians will likely see slower and less effective debris removal, higher taxes and fees as communities try to recover without federal help, and fewer and likely less reliable warnings of approaching storms and dangers.
Stratification
All this appears certain to have a heavy financial impact. Indeed, in Southwest Florida society will likely divide much more starkly into an upper class that can afford to live or own property along a dangerous coast because it can self-insure (without the benefit of NFIP) and pay for rebuilding after disasters without federal aid.
The losers, of course, both nationally and in Southwest Florida, will be members of the middle class and retirees, who have been supported by government policies, especially tax policies, since the New Deal of the 1930s.
But now, the Trump regime is likely to skew taxes to favor billionaires and the extremely wealthy while shifting the burden to a middle class that is likely to decline given Republican and Trumpist assaults on it.
This will probably be especially felt in Southwest Florida. Far from the relatively warm, inexpensive, retiree haven it has been in the past, it will now likely stratify as the costs of living, insurance, property, and climate change damage make it unaffordable for anyone other than the ultra-rich.
This will become even more pronounced if social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare are altered, restricted or eliminated altogether. A significant number of less wealthy Southwest Floridians rely on these programs.
In a town hall meeting in November, Elon Musk, who appears to be Trump’s foremost advisor, stated that: “We have to reduce spending to live within our means. And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”
“Hardship” can be very hard on the non-rich and just how “temporary” it will be is anyone’s guess. As the economist John Maynard Keynes once said: “In the long run, we are all dead.”
Who will serve the ultra-rich who remain? Many low-wage workers will be gone, caught and removed in anti-immigrant roundups and detentions. Perhaps some who remain will continue living in affordable localities distant from the wealthy enclaves they serve. So the region will continue to see ever more distant commutes and congested roads as the people who can least afford it travel longer and further to jobs serving ever smaller and more concentrated enclaves of wealth.
This population will also be less healthy than in the past as public health protections are dismantled and vaccinations dismissed. Public health will be in the hands of anti-vaxxers, both nationally (Robert Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services) and statewide (Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo).
It’s worth remembering that Florida lost 89,075 people to the COVID pandemic, of which 551 were in Collier County and 1,009 in Lee County. Yet in what is likely a precursor of national Trumpality, the Collier County Board of Commissioners passed an anti-public health ordinance and resolution in 2023.
The possibility exists that all the medical measures that have improved life over the past two centuries—everything from vaccines to public sanitation—will be turned back or abandoned in the coming year and in the ensuing years of the Trump regime. The whole elaborately constructed public edifice that includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect against epidemics and outbreaks, the Food and Drug Administration to ensure food and medicinal purity and safety, and the National Institutes of Health for research and cures, will likely be reduced or eliminated, leaving Americans and the world vulnerable to diseases that are either entirely new or were nearly eradicated.
Another example of the war on public health, if a relatively minor one, is the effort to eliminate fluoridation to prevent tooth decay. Once a nationally accepted public health measure, in the last year it was removed in Collier County and then the City of Naples. Ladapo issued a statewide warning against fluoridation in November. Kennedy has stated it should end nationally and Trump has said he’s “okay” with that.
Hunkering down
No matter what happens nationally, Southwest Floridians will feel the reverberations at home, at the supermarket and in their tax bills.
For now, Southwest Florida still has its beaches and tourist attractions. Its vestigial democratic institutions continue to function. The law still applies to everyone other than the president, providing a form of order. And given the arctic blasts of the north, the tornadoes, sea level rise and flooding, for most of the year it still has the best climate in the country when there are no hurricanes.
Many political storms are headed toward Southwest Florida this year. But just as Southwest Floridians have learned to stock up and hunker down when the skies darken and the wind starts blowing, they can do the same politically. Those who value their Constitution, the inalienable rights endowed by their Creator, and the country they made great through lifetimes of labor and service, need to continue their efforts to ensure that freedom and democracy survive until the storm passes and they can nurture the light to fullness again.
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Part 1—Defying darkness: Anticipating the year ahead in domestic politics
Part 2—Defying darkness: Anticipating the year ahead abroad and the new triumvirate
Liberty lives in light
© 2025 by David Silverberg