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Politics and Policy May 15, 2023

POINT/COUNTERPOINT: IS DESANTIS THE GOP’S FUTURE?

By Katie Couric

Getty Images/KCM

Is he the next presidential nominee, or a passing political phase?

I lived in Miami in the mid-’80s when I worked as a local news reporter. Now
that I’m in my sixties, I also know a lot of people who have retired to the
Sunshine State, which made me wonder about the 59% of Floridians who support Ron
DeSantis. The 44-year-old governor seems to elicit very strong feelings —both
positive and negative — so I asked two longtime residents to write an essay
conveying their thoughts. One a former congressman from the Gulf Coast and
another, a longtime political reporter I worked with at WTVJ. Here are their
views on the man who’s often mentioned as a possible Republican presidential
candidate.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DeSantis’ Pandemic Policies Saved Florida

When recently reading about the closure of a Whole Foods store in downtown San
Francisco due to issues surrounding employee safety, I was reminded of the
devastating COVID policies implemented by Democratic-controlled states and
cities all over our country. Three years later, countless children, families,
and businesses are still paying the costs of that misgovernment, in the form of
learning regression in schools, out-of-control crime, and bankruptcies. Many on
the left insisted on keeping everything closed with the justification of saving
lives. Now Democratic communities are suffering as businesses shutter and people
flee to the safety — and freedom — of states like Florida.

No matter your opinion of Ron DeSantis, Florida became the place to live, work,
and play during the pandemic. On top of the standard offerings of low taxes and
warm weather, DeSantis made clear that canceling life for everyone was not an
option in the state — that the lives of the vulnerable could be protected
without destroying the livelihoods of everyone else. Of course, Florida suffered
death and illness just like every other state in the country. While every life
lost calls for mourning, the state’s rate of infection and death did not differ
significantly from those of other states, despite dire and alarmist warnings
from federal officials and many medical experts. And today, Floridians are not
mourning the death of their urban communities or the flight of capital, jobs,
opportunity, and hope.

If a record and results were the most important factors in determining candidate
success, DeSantis would easily be leading Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and every
other presidential aspirant.

In reaction to DeSantis’ pandemic policies, Democrats and many in the media
offered sharp criticisms, even referring to him as “DeathSantis.” Despite that,
the Governor pressed forward undeterred, and continued welcoming new Floridians,
more visitors, and capital. The overreactions from the left only made him
stronger and more credible with swing voters — and even some Democrats.

Perhaps the most powerful move made by the Governor was keeping Florida’s public
schools open for in-person instruction for the entire 2020-2021 school year.
DeSantis stood up to labor unions and liberal activists pressuring schools
nationwide to remain closed, leaving children and families at the mercy of
inadequate remote learning. In fact, remote-learning policies had the most
devastating consequences for low-income students, who lacked the technological
resources, parental supervision, and in many cases, the physical space to
thrive. I can’t help but think of the immigrant children who were English
language learners whose parents couldn’t work from home. Or the mother of three
children under the age of nine, who was forced to play the role of kindergarten,
second, and third grade teacher every single day.

These decisions to open up the state and to keep it open despite untold
pressures benefitted the hardest-working Floridians. Restaurant workers and
others in the hospitality industry were able to continue earning tips to
supplement their income. Those looking to advance and grow in their jobs were
not relegated to sitting at home, waiting for the next direct deposit from the
federal government. Moreover, the mood in Florida was not one of fear and
despair: The Governor’s leadership made people feel like the pandemic didn’t
have to dominate their daily lives.

So it isn’t surprising that DeSantis was able to build such an impressive
coalition to secure his reelection, with a nearly 60 percent of the vote in a
state known for close races. The red wave of 2022 never materialized, except in
Florida. DeSantis fairly claims credit for this: He earned it by charting his
own course at a time when groupthink had overtaken the country. He immediately
rose to national prominence and overtook Donald Trump as the leading GOP
candidate in some state and national polls.

Fast forward five months and DeSantis is in a deepening political rut. Why?
Because he’s no longer serving as the consensus-building governor that
Floridians got to know throughout 2019. He is no longer the independent-minded
leader the country discovered during the pandemic. DeSantis is doing his best
Donald Trump imitation and failing miserably at it — and running against someone
while transparently emulating them is a strategy destined to fail.

In trying to religiously follow the Trump playbook, DeSantis is stumbling and
fumbling. His once-interesting war with Disney is coming across as petty and
vindictive. His obsession with culture wars is getting old and now, on issues
like abortion and guns, DeSantis has embraced positions out of the mainstream
which make him a less viable general election candidate.

All of the Governor’s important work and leadership during the pandemic is going
to waste (politically), and his missteps have improved the prospects of his
former ally, Donald Trump, in the Republican primary. Whether DeSantis can
recover remains to be seen. If he cannot, we need a next-generation Republican
leader to address the serious challenges our nation faces.

As Joe Biden and Donald Trump are again the two leading candidates for
President, in order to be successful, DeSantis (and other Republicans running)
must make a compelling case for change. After all, no other two candidates are
more representative of the status quo in politics than the current and former
presidents. Rising generations of Americans are desperate for a political
renaissance — for new leaders who they can relate to and who can see beyond
today’s horizon. The two options on the table belong to yesterday and offer none
of the above. If DeSantis is to convince the next electorate he can deliver for
them, he’ll have to abandon the politics of pettiness, divisiveness, and cheap
imitation which have plagued our country for far too long.

-Carlos Curbelo, who represented the 26th district of Florida in Congress from
2015 to 2019, is now principal of the Vocero public affairs firm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ron De Santis’ Not-So-Free State Of Florida

Ron DeSantis is not a guy you want to have a beer with.

Not unless you’re willing to listen to him blather on about the “free state of
Florida” (for which he claims full credit), where “woke goes to die.” It’s an
empty campaign shtick he repeats ad nauseam wherever he goes.

Lately he’s been going to states with early primaries promoting his
platitudinous memoir, The Courage to be Free. And at state agency expense, he
recently toured Japan, South Korea, Israel and the U.K. to gain some foreign
policy cred. In Japan, he met with the prime minister and when a reporter asked
if his sharp drop in the polls was concerning, he replied with a goofy grin, “I
am not a candidate” — his head bobbing around cryptically — “so we’ll see if and
when that happens.” It will happen now that the Florida Legislature has
adjourned.

Ron is not a barrel of laughs. Or even a single laugh. He’s certainly smart
(Yale undergrad, Harvard Law) but he’s not charming. Or personable. Or likable.
In fact, he’s shown himself to be mean-spirited and vindictive. One telling
example: When the 9-member Broward County School Board disagreed with his
masking policy — they wanted kids to continue to mask up at school — he docked
their pay, suspended the liberals and appointed Republican fill-ins. The most
Democratic county in the state suddenly had a GOP-majority school board. And a
corollary: When Fort Lauderdale was recently drenched by 26 inches of rain and
huge portions of the city were under water, DeSantis never called, commiserated
or came down for a look-see.

The most notable example of DeSantis’ revenge politics is his ongoing feud with
Disney. After the Don’t Say Gay bill (formally the Parental Rights in Education
act) had passed the GOP-dominated Legislature (so full of DeSantis toadies that
I call it Toad Hall), Disney’s then-CEO issued a critical statement saying the
bill offended their corporate values and their many gay employees.

DeSantis threw a hissy fit and conspired to destroy the special taxing and
governmental district that Florida created in 1967 to lure Disney to Florida.
Disney is the state’s largest employer and one of its biggest taxpayers; it also
hands out millions in campaign contributions to the governor and state
lawmakers. Even so, just voicing disagreement with the governor was too much for
Gov. Ron to bear. He began to dismantle the Reedy Creek Improvement District —
the unique self-governing district that oversees Disney World’s governmental
services — and Disney’s ability to run their world-famous theme park.

But Disney got the last laugh by quietly doing a legal end-run around DeSantis’
hand-picked successor board. DeSantis still won’t let it go even though many GOP
business execs — raised on Bugs Bunny and free enterprise — think Ron should
back off. He won’t. His super PAC is called Never Back Down. And now Disney has
sued DeSantis alleging “a targeted campaign of government retaliation.” Which it
is.

I met DeSantis in 2018 when he was the underdog Republican candidate for
governor. I was the senior political reporter at Channel 10 in Miami and the
founding moderator of its Sunday morning political discussion show, This Week in
South Florida. DeSantis was a guest a few times and impressed me as bright, if
extremely conservative. Ask him about his philosophy of government and you’d get
a disquisition on The Federalist Papers. He gave no hint of the autocrat he
would become.

After squeaking into office by just 33,000 votes, DeSantis moved to the
political middle. He went all in on Everglades restoration — and is still there.
He granted clemency to the Groveland Four, a quartet of young black men
wrongfully convicted in 1949 of raping a white woman. DeSantis also visited
Israel and has spoken out against antisemitism. At the beginning of the
pandemic, he urged Floridians at risk to get vaccinated and sent National Guard
teams into nursing homes and ACLFs to administer shots. When it came to Covid,
DeSantis was also giving signs he would govern from the center right. Oh, how
wrong we were. More than 87,000 Floridians have died from Covid and I’ve never
once heard the governor express condolences to their families or remorse for the
downside of his anti-mask, open-for-business policy.

Ron DeSantis has become a power-hungry autocrat, pushing Florida farther and
farther to the right. He’s made the culture wars his signature issue. He
championed a bill cracking down on public protests after the George Floyd
murder; a driver caught up in a street demonstration can now plow through the
crowd with impunity. Critical race theory was banned from public schools even
though it wasn’t being taught. K-8 teachers are forbidden from teaching about
sexual orientation or sexual identity.

He signed a six-week abortion bill in a closed ceremony at 11 p.m. He asked for
and got a permitless carry law that lets almost anyone strap on a gun without
any training or licensing. To prove his hardline on immigration, he had the
state fly 49 Venezuelan and other migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s
Vineyard. And then abandoned them.

This is the man who aspires to be President and will soon announce his
candidacy. The campaign has had a few hiccups so far: Some major donors have
taken a time-out because of his rigid culture wars agenda and Draconian abortion
law. They also complain that in person, DeSantis is cold and impersonal. “I
think he’s got a problem with personal relationships, generally,” says Miami
Mayor Francis Suarez. A former Congressman who sat next to DeSantis for two
years on a House Foreign Affairs committee says DeSantis never even said hello.
“I think he’s an asshole,” former Rep. Charles Trott told Politico, “I don’t
think he cares about people.”

Gov. DeSantis scored a remarkable win last November, crushing a tired Democratic
opponent by 19 points. Now he’s marketing himself as the most electable GOP
candidate — Trump without the bombast. Younger (44), smarter, and more
competent. But DeSantis is, at his core, a mean-spirited guy. He can raise money
and attract supporters, but he doesn’t give voters that jolt of excitement and
hope, the existential frisson that great politicians can give.

It’s not easy living in Gov. DeSantis’ “free state of Florida,” with its
six-week abortion ban and restrictions on teaching kids about race and sexual
orientation. Where books are easily banned from schools and vouchers worth
$8,000 are available to almost any student, even those from wealthy families.
The state where it only takes eight jurors for the death penalty. The state
where universities are forbidden to teach about diversity, equity, and inclusion
because they’re too “woke.”

DeSantis has been successful at home pushing his culture war agenda, but I doubt
it’ll play as well in a nationwide campaign. It’s not what voters want to hear
about at, say, the big Steak Fry in Iowa. Retail politics is not the governor’s
long suit.

The Free State of Florida? Sure it is, as long as you agree with Ron DeSantis.

-Michael Putney reported on politics and government for 33 years at WPLG-Channel
10 Miami-Fort Lauderdale. He was also a reporter and op-ed columnist for the
Miami Herald

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