Sunburn — The morning read of what’s hot in Florida politics — 7.26.22

We may not have scored an invitation to the Sunshine Summit, but Florida Politics is the most-read news outlet among state lawmakers for the third year running, according to a new survey of legislative aides.

Conducted by CATECOMM, the 2022 Florida Legislative Aide Survey found that 90% of Florida lawmakers read Florida Politics, Sunburn, or FlaPol texts daily, a 4-point increase over the 2021 survey and more than double what Florida Politics scored in the first Florida Legislative Aide Survey in 2013, when we were SaintPetersBlog.com.

Florida Politics holds a 22-point lead over local TV news, which placed second. The next most-read news source was POLITICO Florida, which 64% of legislative aides said their bosses read daily, followed by the online editions of local newspapers at 60% and print editions at 50%.

Forty-eight percent of lawmakers regularly viewed local Sunday shows, such as Political Connections and Facing South Florida. Further down the list were 24-hour news networks, led by Fox News at 38%, CNN at 36%, and MSNBC at 28%.

The Legislative Aide Survey also asked what social media platforms lawmakers use — and how they use them.

Twitter topped all other social media platforms in the survey, with 54% of aides saying it was “very important” to lawmakers and 28% saying it was “important.” The remaining 18% said lawmakers are either “neutral” or view the service as “not important.” Facebook ranked No. 2, with 48% saying it was “very important,” followed by Instagram at 18%, YouTube at 10%, and TikTok at 4%.

As far as receiving views from constituents, Facebook is king. Ninety percent said the service was either “very important” or “important” in getting their message out. Twitter scored 78% combined, with no other service crossing the 50% threshold.

According to staffers, three in 10 lawmakers maintain complete control over their social media accounts, with an additional 44% personally getting behind the keyboard or camera “sometimes” and 24% doing so “rarely.” Just 2% of Representatives and Senators never operate their social media accounts.

— SITUATIONAL AWARENESS —

Tweet, tweet:

Working Americans,of every background,struggle with real problems like gas prices & flight cancellations

But we have a Transportation Secretary who wants us to focus on a fake problem & who went to Harvard but apparently doesn’t know the difference between state & federal issues pic.twitter.com/hI5rMKvwvX

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) July 24, 2022

—@AnnaLecta: The CEO of a “dark money” group raising millions from secret donors saying “confidentiality is best for democracy” is like a fox saying the henhouse doesn’t need a guard.

—@JesseScheckner: If you object to people of color playing traditionally white roles in period dramas like The Great, Bridgerton & Persuasion but have no issue with everyone, from Russians to Romans to the French, speaking English with a British accent, your problem isn’t with historical accuracy.

—@bendreyfuss: Life was certainly more fun before search engines because no one knew anything, and everyone decided what was true based on the strength of the personality of the person in the bar speaking to them.

Tweet, tweet:

One of the things that stops me from being a totally jaded cynical curmudgeon is hearing from the people for whom my novels were at least a small part of their reason for going into the sciences / enviro fields. Totally unexpected, but much love. https://t.co/lmDZ1fvRwE

— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) July 25, 2022

Tweet, tweet:

I know this might be sacrilegious, but…Heat 2, the book, is on par with the movie. Part prequel and sequel and every bit as gripping. https://t.co/054AT8ubJM

— Ric Bucher (@RicBucher) July 25, 2022

—@NotHoodlum: People in the Tallahassee area can now signup for Yoga with Ghislaine Maxwell classes.

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Sunburn is authored and assembled by Peter Schorsch, Phil Ammann, Daniel Dean, Renzo Downey, Jacob Ogles, and Drew Wilson.