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'Petty, retaliatory': One South Florida lawmaker punished, another promoted in wake of state immigration bill fight

Anthony Man, South Florida Sun-Sentinel on

Published in News & Features

Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez has punished state Rep. Mike Caruso of Palm Beach County, stripping him of his committee chairmanship and booting him out of his corner office into another space.

It was a classic display of political power by Perez, the Miami-Dade County Republican who took over as House speaker following the November election, sending a warning to other rank-and-file Republicans.

Caruso, who also is a Republican, said the speaker’s actions were “petty, retaliatory measures.” He’d also been openly taunting Perez with criticism of the speaker and his fellow Republicans in the state House of Representatives.

Another South Florida lawmaker ended up benefiting from Caruso’s ouster and exile. Perez named state Rep. Chip LaMarca of Broward as chair of the Economic Infrastructure Subcommittee.

Power struggle

The conflict stems from a power struggle among top officials at the state Capitol, pitting Gov. Ron DeSantis against Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton.

It erupted when DeSantis ordered the Legislature to return to Tallahassee in a special session to change Florida law to make the state fully in sync with President Donald Trump’s plans to round up and deport illegal immigrants.

DeSantis did it with minimal consultation or notice to the legislative leaders, his way of operating for the previous six years of his governorship. The leaders said it was premature.

Legislators have been smarting about being under DeSantis’s thumb for the entire time. Perez and Albritton became the Legislature’s top officials after the November elections and they balked at rubber-stamping DeSantis.

So they ignored his proposals and passed their own version of the legislation, which they named the TRUMP Act. DeSantis has threatened a veto.

Caruso’s part

Caruso has made clear he knew he was taking a risk by breaking with Perez and his Republican colleagues. He was the only House Republican who voted against the leadership’s TRUMP Act.

Since then, he’s been publicly aligning himself with DeSantis and criticizing leaders and his colleagues on social media.

And DeSantis has praised Caruso while criticizing the legislative leaders himself. When DeSantis visited Palm Beach County last week, for one of several immigration events he held around the state, the governor had Caruso seated next to him.

DeSantis called Caruso “the legend” and said he was “strong for what the voters asked, even against the wishes and a lot of pressure coming down from politicians in Tallahassee. … Mike stood strong against what the leadership was doing and he embraced what we had proposed.”

And Caruso piled more criticism on Perez.

“There’s such a hostile oppressive environment in the Florida House that’s brought on by leadership, brought on by the speaker of the House, that if you don’t fall in lockstep with them, there’ll be consequences. Consequences. Your bills won’t be heard in committee, your appropriations will die. Everything you worked so hard for will be gone in a flash and that’s the oppressive environment that’s there and that’s why they all fall in line,” Caruso said.

“What’s going on here is a dog fight. And we know in a dog fight the only thing that gets damaged the worst, the thing that gets harmed the most is what the dogs are fighting over. And in this case, what they’re fighting over is not a chew toy. They’re fighting over the desires of Floridians across this state and that’s wrong and that’s sad. And I’m so proud of the governor for standing so strong,” Caruso said.

Consequences

On Monday, he learned about the consequences.

“I was stripped of my chairmanship and my corner office was taken away,” Caruso said in a statement Monday evening.

He told Politico that he learned about it through a memo issued by Perez that stated LaMarca was now the chair.

Caruso didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to a text message seeking comment. And Perez’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Caruso’s statement described Perez’s actions as “retaliation” and “petty.”

He said that when he “supported the governor’s strong agenda” he knew there would be consequences “and did it anyway because Florida and America come first.”

 

Later, he downplayed the punishment.

“For me, there never was any actual consequences to be concerned about because things like corner office are not why I was elected by my constituency. Good governance is why I’m here and that’s it. I stand for Floridians and I would never sell out our people for an office.”

He said his split with the legislative leaders was motivated by doing the most important thing a legislator can do: “what’s best for Florida. By voting against a weak pro amnesty bill and standing strong with Governor DeSantis, I put Floridians first.”

Caruso said the so-called Trump Act was “intentionally crafted to mislead Floridians into thinking it was doing something that it wasn’t.”

Caruso also lashed out at his fellow Republicans. “It definitely duped the many legislators who blindly followed the speaker, just did what they were told they had to do, and didn’t even bother to read it.”

New chair

LaMarca said Perez called to tell him he was now chair of the Economic Infrastructure Subcommittee after serving for four years as vice chair.

“It’s something I’ve been involved with since the year I got up here,” he said. “I think it’s clearly a good fit.”

He declined to delve into what happened with Caruso. The two entered the Legislature in the same year.

“My friend from my class decided he wanted to make his opinions known and they didn’t quite align with the House,” LaMarca said.

“Some changes were made,” he said. “I’ll leave how we got here to the speaker.”

LaMarca’s pre-Legislature background has been in power generation and infrastructure.

Among the issues he said need attention is ensuring that people who buy electric vehicles are confident they can charge them. LaMarca said he doesn’t own an EV, but recently rented one and felt the anxiety that users experience when they’re not sure when they can next charge the vehicles.

He also said the issue of how electric-vehicle owners pay toward infrastructure needs to be examined. State road funding comes primarily from the gasoline tax, which electric-vehicle owners don’t pay.

LaMarca has already been moved into what was Caruso’s office in the House office building, which LaMarca said is located near other chairs and professional staff for the committee’s subject area. (It’s a return for him; the location was his office three years ago under a previous speaker.)

LaMarca said he wasn’t focused on the back-and-forth at the top when he voted for the TRUMP Act. He said the choice was voting for or against the proposal, since there wasn’t another vehicle for action.

“We need to do something about immigration. … The vast majority of that bill is something I would vote for every day.”

“For me it was let’s get something done,” he said.

Coastal lawmakers

Caruso and LaMarca were elected to the House of Representatives in 2018 and are beginning their final two years there before term limits kick in preventing them from running again in 2026.

The lawmakers both serve largely coastal districts.

The day after Mike Caruso was elected to his final term in November, his wife, Tracy Caruso, filed paperwork to raise money as a candidate to succeed him.

On Tuesday, the conservative Florida Jolt website, where Tracy Caruso writes, published his statement about the Perez actions with the headline: “Cost of Courage: Mike Caruso Persecuted for Opposing Leadership’s Amnesty Agenda.”

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©2025 South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Visit sun-sentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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