TALLAHASSEE, FL—Personal injury lawyer and major Democratic donor John Morgan has challenged Republican Rep. Tom Leek to a debate over a 2022 insurance bill Leek sponsored, which Morgan argues increased rates and worsened the homeowner crisis.
Furthermore (and perhaps more devastating), Morgan believes Leek has "Little BB balls."
"I don't care who you vote for. I don't really know who all is running. But I will tell you this: if you vote for him, you're voting against yourself," Morgan said in a three-minute video, daring Leek to debate him on the insurance bill. "I will give $100,000 to the charity of your choice, as long as it's not your favorite charity: you...If you have the balls to do it. But you don't have the balls, your balls are little BB balls on the desk of Charlie Lydecker, your employer at the insurance company."
He referred to the Legislature calling a special session in 2022 to address Florida's spiking insurance premiums, which were triple the national average at the time. Leek introduced—and eventually passed—a bill seeking a $1 billion reinsurance fund and reduced litigation costs.
Morgan claims it also made citizens poorer and insurance companies richer.
"Once upon a time insurance companies had to do the right thing—no longer," he said, blaming Leek, who is running for the newly vacant Senate District 7 seat in a heated primary, for setting up a system that Morgan believes is anti-homeowner. "Tom Leek got rich on it."
Morgan pointed out that former President Donald Trump had posted via Truth Social that the Leek bill, backed by "Ron DeSanctimonious", was the "worst insurance scam in the entire country." Trump has since endorsed Leek’s primary opponent, Sheriff David Shoar, while DeSantis and several Florida Republicans have thrown their support behind Leek, an insurance attorney.
"He carries [insurance companies'] water...In the old days, if an insurance company denied your claim, they were responsible for your attorney's fees plus the fix[ing] of the house. After Tom Leek finished with his special session, no longer would you get attorney's fees if your house was damaged. You would now, under the Tom Leek bill, have to give your lawyer a piece of the money to fix your house, which means you won't have enough money to fix your house," Morgan said, slamming Leek's bill for rates that did not go down, but instead went up.
This is not Morgan's first swipe at Leek this cycle. The founder of the popular personal injury firm Morgan & Morgan, he has become a key donor to the Florida Democratic Party as well as Democratic Congressional and Senatorial campaigns and committees. And in June, Leek first came on his radar after the Senate hopeful released an ad attacking liberal personal injury firms.
Morgan promptly responded, calling him a "country club RINO"—though Leek denied ever having attacked the lawyer in the first place—and promising that "this dog bites."
And now he has.
