Heavy Hitter: Heavy Hitter: Florida's new speaker of the House is one of the most powerful in decade

Originally published Feb. 27, 2017

Among the portraits of Senate presidents and House speakers that hang in the legislative chambers, Barron’s portrait stands out. He had himself painted sitting astride a horse, the reins visibly dangling from his right hand. It was, according to Tallahassee lore, a message: No matter who was Senate president, Dempsey Barron held the reins.

Barron still ruled the Senate in 1983 when a briefcase-carrying kid from Hudson High School in Pasco County arrived in the state Capitol. Sponsored by a local legislator, Richard Michael Corcoran had been selected to be a messenger in the Florida House of Representatives through a program that gives middle and high school students from around the state an opportunity to experience state government up close. The program lasted one week. But Corcoran never really left.

Since running messages as a teenager, Corcoran has climbed slowly through the state’s political universe, bouncing among the House of Representatives, the Republican Party of Florida and private legal and consulting gigs. And after nearly three decades, he reached the pinnacle of legislative power in November when he was elected as the new speaker of the Florida House.

Now, Corcoran is vowing to upend the same system he has spent a lifetime mastering. He has condemned the influence of special interests — and the weakness of individual legislators — and promised stronger ethical firewalls and a state budget with more transparency and less pork.

A free-market evangelist who describes nearly all forms of regulation as lobbyist-led schemes to stifle competition, Corcoran wants to deregulate across state government — especially in K-12 education and health care. He has denounced the Florida Supreme Court and called for term limits for all appellate judges. And he has challenged Gov. Rick Scott by threatening to eliminate spending on economic incentives and tourism advertising.

More than any presiding officer since Republicans won control in the mid-1990s, Corcoran is in a position to deliver on his vision. Due to a combination of his own planning, circumstance and luck, Corcoran has amassed more power and influence over the process than anyone since the man on the horse. One friend predicts, “He’s going to be the Dempsey Barron of the House.”

Corcoran’s record doesn’t always align with his unflinching and ideologically rigorous rhetoric. He vilifies special interests while soliciting five- and six-figure campaign contributions. He criticizes legislators who profit from their public service — despite having taken a $172,000-a-year job at a top law firm the same year he secured the votes to become House speaker. He ridicules runaway government spending after serving the past two years as House budget chairman and being one of the primary architects of the two most porkridden budgets since the recession — budgets from which the governor vetoed more than $700 million. Meanwhile, Corcoran warns fellow legislators that voters are tired of politicians constantly campaigning for higher office even as he stokes speculation he himself might run for governor in 2018.

Though most are too timid to say it publicly, many legislators and lobbyists in Tallahassee regard Corcoran as the ultimate creature of the system rather than its savior.

Corcoran, who turns 52 this month, can be derisive and caustic about people he disagrees with. He quotes Thomas Hobbes, Martin Luther King and the movie Braveheart and tends to describe public policy debates in apocalyptic terms.

He is most comfortable smoking cigars and drinking red wine late into the night with small groups of people he trusts. But he says his reputation as a master manipulator — the Machiavelli of Tallahassee — is a fiction invented by the lobbyists and special interests who have the most to lose if his reforms are successful.

“Unlike these guys, I’ve read ‘The Prince.’ These guys haven’t. They’ve just heard a term,” Corcoran says.

“I tell the members all the time, fight MMA — not ninja,” he says, referring to mixed-martial arts combat. “My philosophy has always been: I’m going to tell you what exactly I’m going to fight for. And we’ll get into an octagon and we’ll fight it out.”

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