MIAMI — Florida voters are being asked to weigh in on the attorney general’s race this November.
The governor’s former chief of staff, Republican incumbent James Uthmeier, is facing his first election test to hold the seat Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him to. Uthmeier is facing off against former state Democratic lawmaker Jose Javier Rodriguez.
“I am running to restore the attorney general’s office to the people,” Rodriguez said. “I am going to tackle crime, cost, corruption.”
It’s a race playing out in the shadow of the Hope Florida investigation.
“At the center of the Hope Florida scandal is the Attorney General,” said Sean Foreman, a political scientist who teaches history and government at Palmer Trinity School and Barry University.
A grand jury determined the state “misappropriated” $10 million in taxpayer dollars, diverted through the Hope Florida Foundation — a charity championed by the governor’s wife — to political action committees, which then funneled millions to “Keep Florida Clean,” a PAC funding a campaign to oppose a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana. That PAC was chaired by Uthmeier.
“Everything seemed to flow through James Uthmeier’s directions,” Foreman said.
While the report said there was “insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally,” in part because “nobody would take responsibility,” the grand jury said it can “plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes” — which is why ethics questions remain.
“Many lawyers looked at that process. I was not attorney general at the time, but there were multiple lawyers who signed off on it,” Uthmeier said.
Foreman said Democrats see the election as their opening to dig deeper.
“So while the attorney general is dismissing that case and saying the grand jury doesn’t have any charges, let’s move on, Democrats really are hoping to win the attorney general and governor’s seats so they can reopen that grand jury and see if they can get some real answers about if there was criminal activity and who should be held accountable,” he said.
That could be a tall order for Democrats in a state where Republicans have the math on their side — more registered voters and a bigger war chest.
“Republicans are still in a strong position,” Foreman said. “Even with allegations of corruption, even with unanswered questions, Republicans are in good shape to win just on a generic ballot of Democrat versus Republican because of the dynamics of Florida now.”
Another key issue in this race, according to Foreman, is consumer protection.
“So the main job of the Attorney General, other than to enforce laws across the state, is really to be a watchdog for citizens, and in particular to stand up for consumers against businesses. And so that’s where the consumer protection comes in,” Foreman said. “There are some complaints that Uthmeier has not been strong enough in protecting consumers, that he has raised a lot of lawsuits against businesses, but they might be for his own political agenda rather than for the people of Florida. So there’s a lot of activity there, but some feel that it’s misplaced and that it’s not focusing on consumers.”
Foreman said that criticism is one Rodriguez, the Democratic candidate, has been pointing out. Uthmeier, for his part, argues he’s being tough on crime and protecting citizens — going after child molestation and human trafficking cases, and pushing to hold AI and social media companies accountable for how children use them, according to Foreman.
Rodriguez laid out his own priorities for the office.
“My message as the next attorney general is that no one is above the law, including the state government itself,” Rodriguez said. “I am running to restore the attorney general’s office to the people. It has been a very long time since we had an attorney general that actually focuses on the people of Florida. I am going to tackle crime, costs, corruption. My priorities are very clear — we need to protect kids from threats like big tech, all the synthetic drugs hitting the streets. We also need someone advocating for us, fighting the insurance companies, fighting the utilities, going after corporate landlords, enforcing minimum wage. To do these things that in other states people have attorney generals to stand up for them when they are getting screwed — that doesn’t happen here. So that is what Floridians can expect.”
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