When I read that Florida Republican State Senator Jason Brodeur had introduced legislation to require registration and reporting by bloggers writing about legislators, plus elected and appointed state officials, I thought, “Is this guy nuts?’

Doesn’t he know that the highest protection under the First Amendment is for political speech?

Here’s what the bill proposes:

For blog posts that “concern an elected member of the legislature” or “an officer of the executive branch,” monthly reports must disclose the amount of compensation received for the coverage, rounded to the nearest $10 value.If compensation is paid for a series of posts or for a specific amount of time, the blogger would be required to disclose the total amount to be received, upon publication of the first post in said series or timeframeAdditional compensation must be disclosed later on.Failure to file these disclosures or register with state officials, if the bill passes, would lead to daily fines for the bloggers, with a maximum amount per report, not per writer, of $2,500. The per-day fine is $25 per report for each day it’s late.The bill also requires that bloggers file notices of failure to file a timely report the same way that lobbyists file their disclosures and reports on assessed fines. Fines must be paid within 30 days of payment notice, unless an appeal is filed with the appropriate office. Fine payments must be deposited into the Legislative Lobbyist Registration Trust Fund if it concerns an elected member of the legislature.For writing about members of the executive branch, fines would be made payable to the Executive Branch Lobby Registration Trust Fund or, if it concerns both groups, the fine may be paid to both related trust funds in equal amounts.Explicitly, the blogger rule would not apply to newspapers or similar publications, under Brodeur’s proposed legislation.

Apparently Governor Ron DeSantis may have a better grasp on the First Amendment than Senator Brodeur.

One can only wonder what heat Senator Brodeur has been taking from bloggers.

Florida Politics reports,

“’Paid bloggers are lobbyists who write instead of talk. They both are professional electioneers. If lobbyists have to register and report, why shouldn’t paid bloggers?’ Brodeur said of his bill.

“Brodeur notably has been the subject of frequent criticism in the media in recent years, much of it surrounding the presence of a ‘ghost candidate‘ when he first ran for Florida Senate in 2020. He won that election with just 50.3% of the vote, besting Democrat Patricia Sigman while a no-party-affiliation candidate siphoned off thousands of votes.”