GAINESVILLE — Less than three weeks after taking over University of West Florida in Pensacola as interim president, Manny Diaz Jr. abruptly dismissed the school’s top legal officer after she objected to hiring one of his longtime allies: a politically connected law firm that earned millions in contracts when Diaz ran the Education Department under Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The same Tallahassee-based firm, Lawson Huck Gonzalez, is now helping steer that university’s search for a permanent president – a post Diaz has said he intends to pursue. Trustees last week approved an annual compensation range for the next president between $800,000 and $1.2 million.

The university quietly awarded the firm a contract capped at $100,000 in August, despite objections from its then-general counsel, Susan Woolf

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