Rene Garcia - Florida Senate

Florida Senate

When Rudy Garcia could not run for the Senate again due to term limits, Rene Garcia once again ran to succeed him. He faced no opposition in the primary or the general election, and thus won his first term in the 40th District unopposed. When Florida Senate districts were redrawn in 2012, Garcia was redistricted into the 38th District, which included most of the territory that he had previously represented. Once again, he was elected unopposed.

While serving in the Senate, Garcia joined with State Representative Michael Bileca to sponsor legislation that prevented state and local governments in Florida from doing business with companies that were connected to Cuba. When the Florida Chamber of Commerce opposed the legislation, Garcia blasted them, calling their opposition "an abomination to the very fabric of our state and country." The law was later struck down, however, by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which said that it "reaches far beyond federal law in numerous ways and undermines the president's exercise of the discretion afford him by Congress." Additionally, Garcia joined with State Representative Manny Diaz, Jr. to sponsor legislation that would ban Cuban-trained doctors from practicing in Florida, noting, "The Fidel Castro medical scholarship program is purely a propoganda tool. Hopefully this legislation will stop American citizens from participating in Cuba's medical apartheid program."

Garcia worked with Democratic State Senator Dwight Bullard to continue subsidizing private tutoring companies in Florida, an effort that ultimately failed. Speaking in defense of their proposal, Garcia asserted, "What we're trying to do is keep it in law that the students have the option of tutoring services, both public and private. At the end of the day, the ones who benefit from this are minority students." Garcia also joined Democrats in the Senate to defeat the controversial "parent trigger" legislation, which "would have allowed parents with students at F-rated schools to petition their school board to select one of the state's mandated turnaround options--which include converting it to a charter school."