Don’t start budgeting for a lower property tax payment just yet.

A new St. Pete Polls survey (more on those results later) showed just 45% of voters plan to back Amendment 3, which would steadily raise the homestead exemption.

That’s well short of the 60% needed to pass, and the “yes” number is moving in the wrong direction.

Even Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was the main driver behind this effort before backing off when the Legislature tweaked some parts of the proposal, seems to be throwing in the towel.

“I don’t know if it’s going to pass with 60%,” DeSantis said Friday. “I wanted to be bolder and I thought that would bring out more voters who maybe aren’t enthused about voting.”

Even the Republican base is barely backing Amendment 3, per St. Pete Polls, with 63% in favor and 17% opposed. Only 40% of independents back the changes. That number is a woeful 24% among Democrats.

We wrote last week spotlighting Florida Realtors dropping $10 million into Vote Yes on 3, which was the first major money the pro-Amendment 3 campaign has seen. Perhaps once that money begins flooding an effort to garner support, these numbers will shift.

But the reason that donation was notable was that nearly every major interest group — Sheriffs, the state FOP, firefighters, local governments — is on the other side, and has been there for months.

Supporters are running out of time to convince Floridians that this is going to provide relief without gutting local services. That was already a hard argument to make. It’s going to be a lot tougher to make it in the next six weeks.

Now, it’s on to our weekly game of winners and losers.

Winners

Honorable mention: Susie Wiles. Wiles this week announced that she received the news every patient wants to hear.

“Some personal news I’m grateful to share. After a medical appointment at the Mayo Clinic this week, my pathology results came back clear. I am cancer free,” Wiles wrote on X.

“Thank you to my family, friends, doctors, and everyone who prayed for me, checked in, and supported me along the way. A special thank you to President Trump for his unwavering support. I am deeply grateful and will continue to work to advance his America First Agenda.”

That news came six months after Trump told the country she had early-stage breast cancer. And it was met with celebration from many in The Process.

Nearly 1 in 8 American women face this diagnosis, Wiles noted in March. And, like many, she worked through it. Other notable Floridians like Casey DeSantis and Donna Deegan have been through versions of this fight.

This column spends a lot of time on campaign ads, polls and legislative food fights (some of which are featured in this very edition). But every now and then, a family gets news like this — making all of the normal day-to-day sparring in politics look meaningless by comparison.

We know this was a huge weight off the shoulders of her and her family and friends, and the sooner we find a way to eradicate this terrible disease, the better.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest winner: María Elvira Salazar. Well, this is one way to get the President’s attention.

Salazar released her first General Election ad of 2026, filing it in front of the White House to tell President Donald Trump that parts of his immigration crackdown had gone too far.

That’s not how Republicans usually talk to this President on the issue that defined his last campaign. Courage in this party, on this and other issues, usually means releasing a carefully worded statement and hoping nobody at the White House notices.

Salazar deserves credit for putting it on TV in a manner designed to draw attention to it.

Her motivations for taking such a notable step are significant as well. Florida’s 27th Congressional District is 74% Hispanic. Trump won it by about 15 points two years ago. Salazar won her last race by 20.

On paper, this is not supposed to be a flip target.

But Democrats are treating it like one anyway, and Salazar’s first General Election ad buy is a warning that the coalition that made South Florida red is getting wobbly.

It’s also a sign of Trump’s fading influence two years before being termed out as his approval ratings continue to crash. If Salazar thought Trump’s name on a mailer would hold CD 27, she would have run the mailer and avoided the backlash she has courted by running this spot.

Democrats, like her opponent, Eliott Rodriguez, are calling it a conversion of convenience. And Salazar certainly has allied with the Trump administration on several controversial policy positions that will be litigated over the next several weeks.

But she has also been pushing for a comprehensive immigration solution for years while also pushing back on the administration over temporary protected status decisions.

It’s a gamble whether putting out a more forceful message against the Trump immigration policy will move independents more than it alienates Republican base voters. November will decide if the bet works.

The biggest winner: Democrats (in September). Florida Democrats have spent two cycles being told the state is over, but a series of surveys from St. Pete Polls is putting a dent in that narrative.

The question is whether it will hold.

The polls, commissioned by Florida Politics, put the races for Governor, U.S. Senate and Attorney General within a point each.

For this week at least, the top-of-the-ticket races look contestable. But this isn’t the first September we’ve seen such poll results.

In September 2018, Rasmussen had Andrew Gillum at 48% and Ron DeSantis at 42%. SurveyUSA had Gillum up 47%-43%. Mason-Dixon in late September had Gillum 45%, DeSantis 44%. Other shops had the Democrat up by 4, 5, even 9 (looking at you, Quinnipiac). St. Pete Polls had the race between 1 and 2 points in favor of Gillum.

We know how that story ended. And Florida has spent the years since then moving the registration math in their favor. Republicans now hold about a 1.5-million voter edge.

The money edge still heavily favors Republicans in all three of these races. But independents appear to be breaking, and Democrats could reinforce that advantage by engineering an enthusiasm gap over Republicans.

Democrats should take the week to reinforce messaging that these races are winnable. They should also remember that Florida’s last dead-heat Governor’s race ended with the Republican being sworn in.

Losers

Dishonorable mention: Cory Mills. It’s been a tough month.

After getting booted by voters in the Primary last month, Mills had to deal with his name in the headlines for a different reason this week.

On Wednesday night, Taylor County dispatch took a call from a Pacem Defense grenade factory in Perry following reports of an explosion.

One building is a total loss, though thankfully nobody was hurt. A security officer and an office worker were on the property, but the factory was otherwise shut down following furloughs in 2025.

Mills co-founded Pacem Defense before joining Congress, though he stepped away from operations in 2021. He said he had no details about the explosion.

Still, Mills’ disclosures list Pacem Defense Holdings and Pacem Solutions International as assets, some of it in a blind trust. So it’s unsurprising that the recent incident resulted in outlets reminding readers of Mills’ connections to the company.

Mills will be leaving Congress soon, but we don’t think this is what they mean when they say you should go out with a bang.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest loser: FSU football. Florida State fired athletic director Michael Alford on Monday, a week after a 27-24 home loss to SMU that the Mustangs spent most of the night trying to give away.

President Richard McCullough thanked Alford for his service and said the school wants teams that can play for championships. Senior associate AD Bruce Warwick will serve as interim AD.

A national search is coming. And yet people in Tallahassee are talking about the likely next move on the table: whether Mike Norvell is next.

Norvell is 39-35 in seven seasons. Since his most successful year, when the Seminoles went 13-1, the team is 8-18.

A CBS Sports source said the board did not want Alford making the next coaching hire and said Monday was the first domino in making a change.

Yet, what’s old may become new again, because reports are already swirling that Jimbo Fisher wants the job back.

Maybe Fisher can recreate the magic he had while winning a title with Jameis Winston. Maybe the new era of college football will eat him alive.

But whether or not that shiny object will lead the team back to the promised land, right now, the team remains mired in mediocrity, without a captain steering the ship, and facing down a massive buyout if they do decide to move on from Norvell.

The biggest loser: HD 10 Republicans. House District 10 Republicans had a choice on Aug. 18. Chase Brannan had the institutional backing and a father who had held the seat previously. Marshall Rawson had a League of the South problem Florida Politics had already put on the record.

North Florida Republicans nominated Rawson anyway, and this week is showing his list of problems is (unsurprisingly) longer than we thought.

Talking Points Memo released a story saying Rawson marched at the infamous Unite the Right Rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Christopher Mathias’ reporting says video shows Rawson and his now-wife arriving in Charlottesville in 2017, greeted by name by League of the South members, hugging people in that crowd, and appearing in footage near James Alex Fields Jr., who later drove into counterprotesters and killed Heather Heyer.

Rawson said he went to defend the Lee and Jackson statues, arrived late on the second day, and that the pictures are of a group walking back to a parking lot.

TPM also tied more than $15,000 in campaign money Rawson received to donors with White nationalist records. He said he doesn’t vet individual donors.

The outlet also flagged an old pseudonymous account they tied to Rawson that appeared to advocate for lynching.

“Multiculturalism kills and public lynchings worked,” read a post from 2018.

Rawson declined to respond to questions about his involvement in the account.

The state party declined to comment on any of it.

The thing is, there’s likely no stopping this train now. Rep. Chuck Brannan won HD 10 with 74% in 2024. Rawson is still favored against Democrat Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson.

A deep-red district could have sent a conventional North Florida Republican to Tallahassee. It sent a man whose first month as nominee produced national stories about marching with the League of the South in one of the most infamous rallies in recent American history.

What exactly were voters and the party thinking in nominating this guy?