Top Moments Of 2023 🎆

Dear Friend, 

As 2023 comes to an end, we want to take a moment to reflect on our past challenges and triumphs. So here, in no particular order, are some of Team Anna’s top moments from what was another impactful year of serving the Sunshine State.

You’ll notice a common theme in many of these moments of us fighting for a better Florida. I know this was a tough year of many hard battles, battles that we are still fighting. We highlight these to remind each one of us that this is a state worth fighting for, and even in the fight you can find both joy and success.

Here’s to many more years of service and impact!

Onward, 

Rep. Eskamani

Empowering New Leaders

This year we have been lucky to work alongside an incredible cohort of young leaders — people who are finding their voice and creating a positive impact in our community and beyond. From middle school to high school and college students, the future is bright with these young leaders in charge and we are proud to play even a small role in their growth. 

Eliminating the Tax on Diapers & Adult Incontinence Products

Diaper need is a critical challenge faced by Americans each year, yet often overlooked. Unfortunately, one in three families cannot afford the cost of diapers, according to the National Diaper Bank Network. Last year, we secured a one-year bipartisan tax break on children’s diapers. This session, we were successful in working across the aisle to make that tax break permanent and further expand it to include adult incontinence products, too! This exemption will return millions of dollars back into the pockets of Floridians, saving the average family $70 per month, and took effect July 1st.

Fighting for Public Education

Education is the cornerstone of our country and essential for any society to thrive. Team Anna worked hard to fight for an increase to teacher pay and support staff salaries. We also opposed the privatization of public education and fought for accountability among for-profit voucher schools. Ultimately, the 2023-24 budget also contains a $252 million dollar boost to increase teachers salaries over time so we will keep fighting. In the higher-ed space, we worked to secure millions of dollars for my beloved alma mater, University of Central Florida — Go Knights! 

Fighting for Academic Freedom 

Academic freedom and the integrity of our K-12 and higher education institutions have been under attack. From book bans to extremist bills like HB999/SB266, we fought aggressively this year against it all — showing up at Department of Education and Board of Governors Meetings, rallying at New College and activating our local community to take action too. In the legislature, we led the charge against policies that attack our higher education institutions, and we’ll continue those efforts into 2024 too.

Fighting for Our LGBTQ+ Community

An onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ bills permeated this session: banning gender affirming care for young people and restricting access to care for adults, banning transgender people from using facilities that correspond with their gender identity, augmenting the notorious “Don’t Say Gay/Trans” Law to all of K-12 education, and restricting drag shows. This was a very difficult legislative session for equality but we kept going — asking tough questions on each one of these bills, poking holes in GOP arguments, helping to set the framework for strong lawsuit challenges. We also attended multiple Boards of Medicine meeting and worked with providers and patients to help ensure continued access to care. We will continue to  work in the legislature and at a grassroots level to support our LGBTQ+ community. 

Supporting Reproductive Freedom for All Floridians & Getting Abortion on the Ballot

From being a Planned Parenthood patient to volunteering at Planned Parenthood and working there as a staff member, I have been a champion for reproductive freedom for more than a decade. This year, we led coordinated opposition to the 6 week abortion ban, filing more than 50 amendments and are now helping to get abortion access on the ballot! You can help too by visiting FloridiansProtectingFreedom.com. 

Protecting Florida’s Environment

Florida is known for our beautiful and essential ecosystems, which is why we fought unapologetically for our environment and received an A+ rating from the Sierra Club on our legislative track record. We also launched the first ever Bipartisan Florida Energy and Climate Caucus as a means to educate colleagues and lead the state forward in clean energy production and environmental sustainability. We also re-filed our 100% renewable energy goal legislation. We opposed sprawl development, radioactive roads, and pre-emption on local ordinances to curb fertilizer use. We also fought against legislation that strips away local control on issues like conservation and single-use plastic usage. Though state funding was secured for water projects and land conservation, there is still a lot of work to do in curbing pollution and carbon production in Florida. 

Championing Housing Affordability

With rents rising, homes priced beyond the reach of so many, and property insurance prices that are triple the national average, Florida is facing an affordability crisis. Our office hears almost every day now from Floridians who have seen their home insurance premiums as much as double in one year – if the policy isn’t just canceled altogether. We are focused on delivering solutions, and when Tallahassee Republicans called a special session in November to try and prop up Ron DeSantis’ failing presidential campaign, I tried to put property insurance on the agenda by filing two bills – one that would have created an emergency grant program to help homeowners afford their premiums and another to crack down on insurers using accounting gimmicks to siphon profits out of Florida instead of paying claims. I also sponsored the “Keep Floridians Housed Act.” This was one of the most comprehensive housing reform packages ever proposed in Florida – a package that included support for people searching for an affordable place to live and those struggling to stay in the homes they already have.  And while it didn’t pass last year, I have already filed the Keep Floridians Housed Act again for the 2024 session. But we’re also helping folks on an individual level: This year our office has helped constituents who have had their insurance policies canceled find new coverage, as well as helping folks in, on the verge of, homelessness find new homes or shelter.

Serving as Chair of the Orange County Legislative Delegation Caucus

I was so proud to serve as Chair of the Orange County Legislative Delegation this year! As a delegation we visited Wekiva Springs, the Orange County Department of Health, the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center and we hosted a volunteer day of service at Second Harvest Food Bank. We also hosted virtual educational seminars with community leaders, like one focused on the opioid crisis with Dr. Hall of Orange County. Later in the year we hosted a marathon Delegation Meeting where more than 160 members of the public testified. Thank you for trusting me to serve! 

Taking Steps to Crack Down on Human Trafficking & Domestic Violence

Florida currently ranks third in the nation in rates of human trafficking with Miami and Orlando ranking in the top ten cities. Team Anna championed  human trafficking prevention legislation and worked across party lines to pass an anti-human trafficking bill. This bill imposes stronger penalties for hotels that do not comply with anti-trafficking training and awareness programs. Moreover, this legislation improves standards of safe houses and ensures annual inspections of adult safe houses. We also secured funding for a local nonprofit that supports survivors of human trafficking. In the realm of domestic violence, Grayson’s Law finally passed: this law provides several additional factors for courts to weigh when determining custody or time-sharing, including evidence of domestic violence, sexual violence, neglect, abuse or abandonment, or or reasonable belief by a parent that they or their child is in imminent danger. We also continued to advocate for common sense solutions to reducing crime in Florida, working with impacted community members to prevent violence and crime from happening in the first place and prioritizing support for victims. 

Fighting for Health Care Access

Team Anna remains committed fighting for Floridians’ access to healthcare including expanding Medicaid and lowering the cost of prescription drugs along with eliminating the APD waitlist. We were proud to continue advocating for decreased drug costs by strengthening state regulations of pharmacy benefits managers (PBM), the middlemen between drug manufacturers and pharmacies who drive up prices of prescriptions. This will lower prices for patients and create a more fair playing field for independent pharmacists attempting to compete with gigantic corporations that own both the PBMs and big retail pharmacy chains. Though we did not see an expansion of Medicaid this year, we did see an expansion of access to Florida KidCare and are currently advocating for Florida to accept federal dollars to stop families from getting kicked off their Medicaid plans. In the arena of mental health, Florida still ranks near the bottom, but we did see some bipartisan legislation pass designed to increase access to telehealth in Florida and the number of providers available to provide mental care. We also helped to secure additional funding for alzheimer’s support and research. Finally, the fight to eliminate the APD waitlist continues, as not enough money was allocated via the state budget to help all 22,000 people waiting for access to care.

Keeping Blaze The Bear Safe

Earlier in the year, a juvenile Black Bear made a surprise visit to our community! Blaze the Bear was trying to make his way to another forest, but ended up in Downtown Orlando instead. By keeping our community abreast on updates and working closely with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, we were able to get Blaze safely transported to the Ocala National Forest where he can be safe and thrive. Thank you Blaze for bringing so many of us together!  

Fighting for Workers

Solidarity, forever. Team Anna stands shoulder-to-shoulder with our unions and a worker’s right to collectively bargain. This session saw one of the worst union busting bills in Florida history being pushed by the GOP alongside billionaires and corporate interest groups. HB1445 increases the threshold to certify a union, and places additional administrative burdens all designed to make it harder to unionize. This law specifically impacts public sector workers like teachers, 911 dispatchers, utility workers, and many others. Despite our inability to stop these bills this session, we fought hard alongside our local unions and even secured some Republican opposition to the bill. This year we picketed with airport workers, airline workers, auto workers, theme park workers, fast food workers, CNAs, and so many more. We will continue to never falter in our steadfast support of unions and workers. 

Delivering High Quality Constituent Services

Team Anna continued to deliver high quality constituent services, even helping two individual Floridians get their property insurance coverage back! The bulk of our constituent services focused on housing affordability issues, small business support, immigration questions, traffic concerns and assistance with programs like unemployment, food stamps, and Medicaid along with disability services. We also went door-to-door to deliver information about constituent services, and hosted multiple in-person and virtual town halls to bring government directly to our community. For the entire year, we hosted weekly Facebook and Instagram Lives, answering people’s questions about state government directly — a tradition we started back in 2020 and have continued to this day. 

Being Recognized by Healthy Start Coalition & Our Local PBS Station

This year we were so fortunate to be recognized by several organizations for our positive impact in the community and that includes two of the best nonprofits in Central Florida: Healthy Start of Central Florida and WUCF-TV. These are two organizations that have a very special place in my heart; as a young woman growing up in Orlando, I volunteered and supported Healthy Start early on in my advocacy work and in similar fashion, it was my early activism work at the University of Central Florida that was the foundation to creating WUCF-TV. It’s incredible where life takes you. Thank you so much for these recognitions and to all others who recognized our impact this year, too. 

Holding Corporations Accountable & Advocating for Consumer Protections

Florida is an economically upside-down state: The bottom 20 percent of working families are taxed more than five times as much as the top 1 percent, and 99 percent of businesses don’t pay a dime in corporate taxes. But we fight every day to create a fairer system that supports workers, consumers and small businesses and ensures that the biggest corporations actually pay what they owe. We’re winning some of these fights, too: This year, we helped to stop a new round of massive new corporate tax breaks and to block a bill that would have let government contractors slash wages for tens of thousands of workers across the state. We also supported a successful bill that established important data-privacy protections for consumers. We sponsored legislation to close corporate tax loopholes and to stop states from giving away ever-larger taxpayer-funded subsidies to businesses in the name of “economic development.” While neither bill based, they helped shine a bright spotlight on the need for people-centered tax reform in Florida. And we fought like hell against a terrible bill pushed by corporate landlords that stripped tenant-protection rights away from renters. We were proud to be named one of the “Heroes” of the Florida Legislature by Florida For All for our efforts to stop corporate greed in this state.

Pushing Back Against Culture Wars 

Despite rising insurance costs, a lack of renter protections, the corrosion of healthcare access, and many other challenges facing Floridians, an unsettling amount of legislation this year was aimed at “winning” culture wars. Whether this was mobilizing the levers of government power to target private corporations or overexerting executive authority to install ultraconservatives in positions of power at New College of Florida and other boards, Governor DeSantis and his supermajority in the legislature enjoyed this gross authoritative overreach. However, Team Anna alongside a bipartisan coalition of community leaders, advocates, legislators, and citizens have been pushing back, and working to bring the policy conversation back to where it needs to be: helping all Floridians thrive. 

Advocating for Arts and Culture Funding 

House District 42 is home to some of the most renowned arts and culture venues and organizations in the State of Florida and in the country. That’s why fighting for arts and culture funding is so important to us, and this year we were successful in working across the aisle to secure $59,000,000 to fund Florida’s statewide arts and culture program. Though this is not 100% funding for the programs, it’s still pretty close at 85%. As a high school theatre kid myself, I know how important arts and culture funding is to our community and we will continue to push for 100% funding. 

Supporting Our Diverse Community

This session saw several bills pass that specifically target our diverse community. SB1718 is an omnibus anti-immigrant bill that demonizes asylum seekers and our DACA recipients. It mandates attempts at data collection to intimidate immigrant communities and conflicts with federal law. Another bill, SB264, creates new barriers and regulations based on national origin that will have a profoundly negative effect on Chinese American and anyone who looks Asian. We opposed both of these bills, and worked alongside community partners to try and amend these bills and help the greater public understand their harm. On a more positive note, legislation to integrate the historical contributions of AAPI people into Florida public schools did pass, and we plan to follow the implementation of this new law very closely. 

Advocating for Gun Safety

Our district is home to Pulse nightclub, so not only do we stand with our LGBTQ+ community but we also support common sense policies to reduce gun violence. Unfortunately this legislative session was the complete opposite with permitless carry passing and being signed into law. Nonetheless we still championed policy ideas to reduce community violence and suicide rates — and we stopped Florida House Republicans from decreasing the age to buy a rifle from 21 to 18 years old. We are grateful to all of the community partners who continue to fight towards ending gun violence in our country and state. From March For Our Lives to Moms Demand Action, Everytown, Giffords, and so many others — thank you ! 

Bringing Funds Back Home

Together we secured nearly $7 million in state funding for House District 42!  For those who may not know, the only constitutional duty of Florida House members is to pass a balanced budget, and we’re thrilled to say ours includes funding for nonprofits like Adult Literacy League, The Lifeboat Project, and Recovery Connections. We also brought back millions of dollars for other efforts, including projects by our local governments in Winter Park, Maitland, and Belle Isle. These special projects included funding to help protect and improve Loch Haven Chain of Lakes! We also worked across the aisle to secure $1 million for Homelessness Services Networks. 

Stopping Judicial Consolidation

During the summer, the Florida Legislature, having gerrymandered Congressional seats, set their sights on gerrymandering Judicial Circuits under the guise of improving efficiency. In reality, this was a ploy to redraw the judicial circuit map for partisan advantage. Collaborating with community partners, we successfully opposed this effort, culminating in a recent Florida State Supreme Court opinion rejecting judicial consolidation, emphasizing, “We do not find that there is a need to consolidate judicial circuits at this time.” This win safeguards our judicial system and echoes widespread statewide opposition to consolidation. It’s noteworthy that a conservative State Supreme Court opposes this conservative idea. With this ruling, I hope discussions on judicial consolidation in the legislature cease, directing attention instead to funding our court systems and ensuring swift access to justice for everyone, preserving the integrity of the essential Judicial Branch in American democracy. 

Supporting a Free Iran

The brutal murder of Mahsa Amini in September of 2022 led to massive protests across Iran under the banner of “women, life, freedom.” As an Iranian-American, I was deeply honored to present and pass a House Memorial in partnership with Senator Bobby Powell that garnered bipartisan support to honor the brave protestors fighting for a free Iran. The House and Senate passed the resolution unanimously and called upon the United States Congress to support a free Iran. 

Multiple Days of Service & Supply Drives

This was another busy year of giving at Team Anna, with incredible generosity from our community! We hosted multiple community cleans up, picking up hundreds of pounds of trash from all parts of our district. We also facilitated multiple supply drives, from our annual diaper drive to Thanksgiving Baskets with Conway Community Market and then our toy drive along with shoe and sock drive for the holiday season. We also hosted a supply drive to help fellow Floridians impacted by hurricanes, collecting supplies at our office while we didn’t have any power! We also volunteered to help pick up debris for our neighbors in the district, too. We actually have scheduled a period product drive for the New Year already, too! 

Impact of People Power for Florida

People Power for Florida, our voter registration and empowerment organization, had another incredible year. Our dedicated team of Organizing Fellows registered over 1,250 Floridians to vote this year, with a focus on engaging college and high school students. We also gathered 3,667 petitions for the abortion ballot initiative through 72 events and assisted more than 600 Floridians in renewing their vote by mail ballots through our online portal. Larry and our phone banking team reached out to over 12,968 voters, ensuring that they renewed their vote by mail ballots. Our impact on college campuses has expanded with eight Organizing Fellows working across 11 campuses and we hosted five successful youth organizing bootcamps, training nearly 200 students! We also rolled out a new and improved website that includes crucial resources for online voter registration, vote by mail requests, and polling information. The support of everyday people has been instrumental in the success of People Power for Florida too — thank you! 

Kicking off Our 2024 Re-Election Campaign

This year we kicked off our 2024 Re-Election Campaign at The Abbey to a crowd of more than 300 people! This will be my last election to the State House, and I am so eternally grateful to the incredible outpouring of love and support. And thanks to our volunteers, we’re going into 2024 with enough signatures already collected to qualify for the ballot in 2024 too! Here we come, 2024! 

Fighting to Protect Democracy

This year saw more attacks on voting with new legislation passed that makes it nearly impossible to register people to vote in Florida. We not only fought back against these policies in the Legislature, but we also traveled to Washington DC to join colleagues for an Ad-Hoc Committee Meeting on the rise of fascism in Florida. Shortly after we saw the removal of another duly elected official in Florida, this time Circuit 9 State Attorney Monique Worrell. We continue to fight back against these undemocratic actions, not only advocating against them but showing up in court too. In fact, I was deposed by the Governor’s Attorneys in a lawsuit focused on gerrymandering Florida’s Congressional maps for more than six hours! Whatever it takes, we will fight to protect Democracy in Florida. 

Helping SWAN To Save an Orlando Abortion Clinic

This year the State of Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) tried to shut down our local abortion provider by placing a huge fine on the clinic to the amount of $193,000. SWAN — a local abortion freedom organization — launched a crowd fundraising campaign to pay the fee, and we helped to boost their efforts along the way leading to all the money being raised and more! SWAN continues to fundraise for other abortion clinics too. This was a major win for reproductive rights and showed how Orlando can fight back against the state and their anti-abortion agenda. 

Best Of Orlando Awards

Three years in a row Orlando Weekly readers have chosen us as Orlando’s Best Politician, along with several other recognitions too. Words cannot express our deep gratitude to you, for trusting us to serve and to be your voice in the State Capitol. Thank you!