Subject: Re: the next nominee
(e.g. his latest proposal for bloggers to have to register if they want to criticize him...even Gingrich thinks that's nuts: https://www.theguardian.com/us......).

As always, media reports about the contents of a bill are typically inaccurate.

Not that this is a great bill, mind you. But what it says is that individuals who are paid for writing blog posts about a state officer, registration and disclosure is required.

The problem that this bill is aimed at has nothing to do with the Governor. We've started to see a particularly nasty technique in state rep elections, where you have dark money hiring someone to create and populate an anonymous attack blog against their opponent - which pieces then get circulated around via social media. The idea is that these blogs are functionally the equivalent of paid political advertisements, but without any expenditure reporting or disclosure that would be required if they were super-pacs.

The really ironic thing is that this bill is taking the progressive side of the argument. Normally, it's progressives who are advocating for disclosure when funds (especially dark money) are being collected and spent on election efforts.

Now then - I am not defending the bill. It is terribly drafted, and certainly unconstitutional. I doubt it went through legal review before being filed. But then again, it's only the third day of the legislative session - the time when every legislator gets to file their six bills. 90% of which will never go anywhere, and are just there so they can say that they introduced a bill to address X problem. Because de Santis is in the national news, the national (and international) press is paying attention to these bills that normally would just be ignored as irrelevant because they're not going to pass.

Link to the bill:

https://www.flsenate.gov/Sessi...