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The demise of the payments stands out as a uncommon legislative blow for Mr. DeSantis, who, as he prepares to run for president, has efficiently pushed an aggressive agenda on abortion, gun legal guidelines, the dying penalty, union restrictions and immigration via the Florida legislature this yr. However within the case of the defamation payments, it was Mr. DeSantis’s boosters within the media who confirmed their muscle.
“The minute conservative media shops began catching wind of this it was stopped actual fast,” mentioned Javier Manjarres, the writer of The Floridian, a conservative website that’s often supportive of the governor’s agenda. Final month, he wrote an article that mentioned the laws could be “an irreparable self-inflicted political wound” if Mr. DeSantis had been to signal it.
“They had been making an attempt to hit the liberal media and didn’t understand it could be a boomerang that may come again round proper at them,” mentioned Brendon Leslie, the editor in chief of Florida’s Voice, a digital outlet that’s favored by Mr. DeSantis. He and others apprehensive that the laws, if handed, would encourage lawsuits that might put many conservative publications out of enterprise.
Mr. Leslie sparred on Twitter with Mr. Andrade over the laws.
Individuals for Prosperity, a conservative nonprofit, and the Higher Enterprise Bureau additionally signaled their opposition to the laws, claiming the payments would result in an avalanche of nuisance litigation that might improve insurance coverage charges and trigger countless complications for enterprise pursuits.
Anthony Sabatini, a former Republican member of the Florida Home of Representatives who mentioned he supported the payments, believed the stress from right-wing information media was essential.
“I noticed legislators being attacked by conservative media influencers,” Mr. Sabatini mentioned. “Republican management was being attacked from the fitting and left, from all sides. That killed it.”
A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis didn’t reply questions in regards to the laws, as an alternative referring to a round-table dialogue on defamation that he hosted early in February, saying that it represented “the governor’s place on the subject material of media accountability.”
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