Report: Ron DeSantis personally intervened in a major university’s presidential search

Florida's governor keeps inching closer to turning university presidents into pure political appointees.

Photo caption: Knight Lago

This is Seeking Rents, a newsletter and podcast devoted to producing original journalism — and lifting up the journalism of others — that examines the many ways that businesses influence public policy across Florida, written by Jason Garcia. Seeking Rents is free to all. But please consider a voluntary paid subscription, if you can afford one, to help support our work.

It’s been pretty obvious to anyone paying attention that something is afoul with the search for a new president at Florida Atlantic University.

But a new story published by an obscure conservative news website says that Gov. Ron DeSantis is personally involved.

The story, published over the weekend by an outlet called the “Florida Jolt,” reported that DeSantis recommended FAU hire state Rep. Randy Fine, a Republican from Brevard County.

Fine may be the single most polarizing politician in the Florida Legislature. He once threatened to shut down the University of Central Florida, called one of his local School Board members a whore, and boasted about using state power to punish Disney for speaking out about public policy, among plenty of other controversies.

But Fine is also, according to the Jolt’s reporting, “Governor DeSantis’ nominee” to lead Florida Atlantic, a fast-growing public school based in Boca Raton with more than 30,000 students spread across six South Florida campuses.

People may argue about the central thrust of the Jolt piece, which criticizes the chair of FAU’s board of trustees — who is a DeSantis appointee himself — for hiring a “partisan lawyer” because that lawyer once represented DeSantis’ Democratic opponent in the 2018 governor’s race. The writer ultimately seems angry that FAU initially passed over Fine in its presidential search: “This school needs to be exposed for what it is, a school of woke academics who would rather push a liberal agenda and destroy the university than allow a conservative to run it,” she writes.

But the DeSantis administration has a history of working with conservative news websites to attack people it is unhappy with. And the Jolt writer is also a DeSantis appointee (which she discloses in her bio). So it would make sense that she has some unique insights into DeSantis’ specific actions.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself that you already knew that DeSantis was behind the effort to install Fine atop FAU. But did you really know it?

Yes, Fine has said, publicly and repeatedly, that DeSantis asked him to apply for the FAU gig. And the Governor’s Press Office has told reporters that DeSantis thinks Fine would be “a good candidate for the role.”

But a governor encouraging a supporter to apply for a job at a state university is one thing. A governor telling a state university to hire his supporter is another.

State Rep. Randy Fine (R-Brevard County) (Source: The Florida Channel)

This also puts Ron DeSantis undeniably at the center of the storm now swirling around FAU.

Regular readers probably know the tale but just to quickly recap: After months of speculation about DeSantis pushing Fine for the job, FAU surprised everyone when it announced last month that it had picked three finalists from a pool of 63 applicants — and Fine was not one of them. (Nobody seems to have been more shocked than Fine himself: “I’m in Ireland. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t talk to the Sentinel,” he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, before hanging up on the newspaper.)

But then the chancellor of Florida’s state university system — Ray Rodrigues, another former Republican state legislator who owes his current job to DeSantis — suddenly suspended FAU’s search. Rodrigues said that “at least one” candidate for the job reported that he’d been asked about his sexuality and gender identity, which Rodrigues claimed was potentially illegal.

That one candidate was Randy Fine, according to the Florida Jolt.

So now Florida Atlantic University’s search for a new president is on hold. The three legitimate finalists are in limbo. University trustees are fighting with each other. And DeSantis appointees are attacking DeSantis appointees.

This isn’t the first time the DeSantis administration has meddled to help a political ally get a job atop a public college.  

Earlier this year, a small weekly newspaper in rural Hardee County revealed that leaders of South Florida State College abruptly scrapped their search for a new president after the Governor’s Office stepped in.

The Herald-Advocate reported that the Governor’s Office had the search halted just days before the school’s leaders were set to choose from one of three finalists — all of whom were high-ranking college administrators.

Then all three finalists suddenly withdrew, college leaders lowered the job requirements, and they gave the gig to former state Rep. Fred Hawkins, a Republican from near Orlando who, like Fine, had helped DeSantis retaliate against Disney after the company publicly criticized a state law restricting teachers from talking about LGBTQ+ issues.  

Before that, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune discovered that some of DeSantis’ new appointees to the board of New College of Florida appeared to be quietly coordinating with people behind the scenes to ensure that DeSantis’ former education secretary — Richard Corcoran, who is yet another former Republican state legislator — would be hired as New College’s new president.

And all of that came after DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature rewrote state law to hide much of the university presidential process from the public. The new law, which records show was supported by senior DeSantis staffers, allows colleges and universities to conceal the identities of anyone who applies to be the school’s president. Schools only have to identify the finalists for the job, and they only have to do so shortly before a vote is taken on who they will hire.

The DeSantis administration has already “perverted” the intent of that law, according to one of the former lawmakers who supported it. It did so by using the new law to ensure that only one person was publicly considered for the presidency at the University of Florida: Ben Sasse, the former Republican U.S. senator from Nebraska.