Although more than 717,000 Floridians have already voted by mail ahead of the Nov. 5 general election, it’s hardly a normal time for candidates to engage in traditional campaign tactics, as much of the state remains in recovery mode following Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

And so, on Tuesday, when Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell joined in St. Petersburg with two other Tampa Bay Democrats who are on the ballot, U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor and Florida House District 60 Rep. Lindsay Cross, the discussion centered on the state’s property insurance crisis and how the public can get assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The hour-long discussion at Pinellas County Democratic Party headquarters included plenty of barbs at Republican Rick Scott, who has held a steady lead over Mucarsel-Powell in their race for the U.S. Senate.

Castor was the veteran of the group. Now running for her 10th two-year term in Congress, she is heavily favored to defeat Republican Rocky Rochford (there are also a Libertarian and an independent candidate on the ballot).

She made certain to favorably compare Mucarsel-Powell, a former one-term member of Congress, to Scott on issues like the environment, climate change, and property insurance reform.

Chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis from 2019 to 2023, Castor boasted that her committee delivered 750 recommendations to deal with the climate, 350 of which she said were included in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

These measures, she said, “unleashed a manufacturing boom all across the country, especially in red states, to lower climate pollution and to make our communities more resilient.”

“Who has not been there for us, is Rick Scott,” Castor added, noting the Republican had opposed both bills in the U.S. Senate and along with Gov. Ron DeSantis now believe “that they can write out climate change from Florida statutes and it will all miraculously go away, and instead they’ve sided with the utility companies that keep us hooked on fossil fuels rather than going to cleaner, cheaper energy.”

That was a reference to legislation signed by DeSantis earlier this year that literally eliminated references to climate change in state statutes, and Scott’s eight-year tenure as governor, when officials with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection reportedly were ordered not to use the term “climate change” or “global warming” in any official communications, a claim that Scott denied.

Lower insurance costs

Mucarsel-Powell said that if elected she would propose legislation to lower property insurance rates by 25%, becoming the Senate sponsor of a measure introduced last year by South Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz.

The legislation would create a national catastrophic insurance fund to spread the high cost of home insurance claims caused by major storms. The bill would cap reinsurance requirements, with the federal government issuing post-event bonds to insurance companies to fund the difference between the reinsurance cap and homeowner damage.

Castor added that FEMA needs to update its flood maps. “Those poor folks in North Carolina who were living along rivers, but the FEMA flood map did not show that. People need to have that information,” she said.

Castor mentioned legislation that she has previously filed that would allow the National Flood Insurance Program to bring in private companies. “Not allow them to cherry pick, but I think that if you expand the options and have more options for people, often times those private companies do a better job marketing as long as there are safeguards that they’re not allowed to go into certain areas that don’t have flood risks.”

Cross, running for re-election to her House District 60 seat in Pinellas County against Republican St. Petersburg City Councilmember Ed Montanari, noted that she was a co-sponsor of legislation (HB 1049) that passed unanimously in the 2024 session which requires property sellers to provide information related to flood damage incurred at their property at or before the time the sales contract is executed.

She added that there are “a lot of conversations” in low-lying neighborhoods in her district that often flood about whether there are government programs to assist homeowners and how that money should be allocated.

“If it should go into elevating homes; if there should be some type of buyout program to look strategically at areas that maybe become stormwater ponds or drainage areas,” Cross said.

“But those conversations I think will happen, but right now people are still looking at where are they going to live in the short-term. But we can’t wait too long in those conversations, because people may have the temptation just to put in more drywall, replace the flooring, live there, and then have to deal with another catastrophic flood.”

Growth management

Castor referenced her career before serving in public office, when she worked three years at the Florida Department of Community Affairs, managing the state’s growth management laws. “We had some of the strongest growth management laws in the country and, under [former Florida Democratic governor] Lawton Chiles, post-[Hurricane] Andrew, we passed a lot of updated building codes. That’s why some of the newer homes are safer.”

However, during 2011 in Scott’s first legislative session as governor, he signed a bill eliminating the Department of Community Affairs, which had been created in 1986 to manage growth. The law signed by Scott “largely eliminates state oversight of local planning decisions and raises barriers for citizens seeking to challenge development,” the Sarasota Herald-Tribune wrote at the time.

“He rolled back a lot of those growth management laws that discouraged building in coastal high hazard areas, discouraged building in wetland areas, required that developers pay the cost of new development,” Castor said.

About 30 people attended the event, several whom said they have personally suffered property damage due to the massive storms that have struck the Tampa Bay area in the past month.  They asked questions regarding filing insurance claims with their private insurers, with the state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, or with FEMA.