Uthmeier and DeSantis, seek help for your Napoleon complexes

Are subconscious wounds causing you to mess with elected leaders like Tampa’s Jane Castor?

You guys really have to stop.

As in, knock it off for your own good. Drop the mini muffin and Celsius. Don’t run off to your next grip-and-grin or rush to bully more immigrants. The rapid pace at which you’re working to exert total control over Florida only clouds the core internal wounds causing you to act out.

Consider this a wellness check. You seem to have been afflicted with what in non-clinical terms would be called a Napoleon complex or “short man syndrome.” Whereas some sufferers may compensate for perceived weaknesses with say, a sports car, you do it by pestering local politicians who express disagreement.

This is not a dig at the short kings and queens of the world. Indeed, the potential for this armchair diagnosis runs deep in the halls of the Legislature regardless of physical stature. But for the purposes of this intervention, let’s focus on you, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier. Both of you have made a junior varsity sport of menacing and removing duly elected leaders on the most threadbare pretenses.

First it was DeSantis with local state attorneys, Andrew Warren in Hillsborough and Monique Worrell in Orange-Osceola. Now, Uthmeier, you have found time amid your two busy jobs to threaten Tampa Mayor Jane Castor with removal by the governor. You said it’s because Castor is “forcing sanctuary policies on the Tampa Police Department.” That’s stretch to claim about an agency with a 287(g) Immigration and Customs Enforcement partnership, an agreement activists have decried across the bay in St. Petersburg.

One can’t help but wonder, though: Is this chest-puffing actually because Castor appeared on a panel of mayors in January and said something that hurt your feewings? Is it because she is rather tall?

https://www.tampabay.com/viewpoints/2026/03/13/uthmeier-desantis-tampa-mayor-jane-castor-napoleon/