TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A Florida governor vetoed a bill that would block cities and counties from plastic tires, arguing that it is an overreach and that citizens are bothered by the ban instead of being able to vote out local officials to implement them.
A Florida governor was also so angry at private companies’ criticism of him that he passed a special law to punish them and said that, now, they would act more in line with their wishes.
As it happens, the two examples depict the same governor – Ron DeSantis, who was separated by only three years and nine months. So, as national attention focuses on the 44-year-old as he prepares for a possible GOP presidential bid, a central question arises: Is he?
“I don’t know if anyone knows who Ron DeSantis really is,” said Jennifer Horn, former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee. “The Republican Party has become too authoritarian. … They’re eating animals. They’re deliberately becoming what the base of the party wants.
While the law punishing The Walt Disney Co. for criticizing the “Don’t Talk Gay” bill is perhaps the most famous example of DeSantis’ use of state power to impose his will and hurt perceived enemies, he is not the only one. . DeSantis suspended Tampa’s elected prosecutor because he said he would not go after people under the new abortion law. He attacked the state’s public liberal arts college as part of a battle to “wake up” and replace the board, which later became an ally of DeSantis as president. He has pushed legislation that consolidates control over Florida’s executive branch by removing some powers from elected Cabinet members.
And this year, he’s behind a measure that would make it easier for him and other elected officials to sue news organizations for publishing stories they don’t like. It would, among other things, give the plaintiff the presumption that the anonymous source was just made up.
“I don’t know why people don’t understand how dangerous this is, someone decides what’s good,” said the former GOP lawmaker who, like most Republicans who agreed to be interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity because of DeSantis’ history of revenge. “He’s willing to punish anyone.”
DeSantis’ staff did not respond to HuffPost’s inquiries for this story.
A former senior official in Donald Trump’s White House, said DeSantis’ approach appears designed to win over Trump supporters — and it appears to be working.
“He picked a fight in Florida. He picked a fight with the right people. DeSantis can reveal the recording he made as we speak,” the former official said on condition of anonymity. “DeSantis knew how to win over Trump voters, and he did.”
From Small Government to the Nanny State
Unlike three previous Florida governors, DeSantis was born in the state, in Jacksonville, before his family moved to Dunedin on the Gulf of Mexico side of Tampa Bay.
He became a local celebrity at the age of 12, when his team made it to the Little League World Series in 1991. His baseball talent later took him to Yale University on a full scholarship. After a year teaching high school history in Georgia, he returned to New England, this time at Harvard Law School, from where he entered the Navy as a judge advocate general.
After serving in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a one-year deployment in Iraq, he joined the U.S. attorney’s office in Orlando as a federal prosecutor before becoming the congressional attorney that opened in his northeast Florida hometown in 2012.
At this time, DeSantis wrote his first book, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers” – a rebuke to President Barack Obama, whose memoir “Dreams From My Father” had come out 16 years earlier and the election had caused Tea. Party movement.
DeSantis criticized Obama for pushing a “transformational” agenda and relying on executive authority. He argued for a return to “Madisonian” democracy and “limited government.”
Eight years later, after three terms in the US Congress and a successful run for governor, that philosophy appeared intact when a bill came to his desk that would have banned local bans on plastic straws – at the time actively involved in the culture war.
To the surprise of many Floridians from both parties, DeSantis killed it. In his May 10, 2019, veto message, DeSantis said local government straw bans don’t hurt the state. “The state should allow local communities to solve this problem through the political process,” he wrote. “Citizens who oppose the plastic straw rule can get help by voting for someone who shares their views.”
In his first year in office, in fact, he surprised many who thought he would govern in the model of the man whose endorsement won DeSantis the GOP nomination a year earlier: Trump.
DeSantis changed his tone and his policies. He supported amnesty for the Groveland Four, African-Americans who in 1949 were convicted of raping a white woman and whose families have sought to clear their names. He followed through on his commitment to increase funding to restore the Everglades.
However, a year ago, COVID-19 arrived, and the coronavirus returned to his old Republican primary campaign persona. As Trump began downplaying the disease, so did DeSantis, and he — using the same justification as the ban on plastic straws — fought against cities and counties trying to impose restrictions on indoor businesses to reduce transmission.
Then, when the first COVID-19 vaccine became available, DeSantis aggressively pushed for it, setting up immunization clinics across the country and making many personal visits. But when anti-vaccine voices began to dominate Trump’s voter base, DeSantis rebuffed his efforts, largely shutting down the newly created vaccination infrastructure because the shots were generally available to other age groups.
Horn, a New Hampshire conservative, said he’s watching him carefully in 2020 and sees a clear evolution as he moves forward. “It was a very transformational year for him,” he said.
On February 27, 2023, exactly 1,389 days after the plastic straw veto, DeSantis signed a bill authorizing the election of a board that oversees the Disney tax district. He told the audience that the company had lost its way in recent years. “I think all of these council members are really excited to see the kind of entertainment that the whole family can appreciate,” he said.
In his new book, “The Courage To Be Free,” DeSantis brags about conspiring with Republican legislative leaders to sneak the Disney bill through quickly, before the company could react.
The evolution from limited-government conservatives to government-will-tell-whatever-movies-they-want-to-make populists is complete.
“Does the base follow DeSantis, or does DeSantis follow the base?” said Horn. “I would suggest the latter.”
Tireless Trump
The governing philosophy, there are real consequences for Floridians who cross DeSantis and face his wrath.
The Walt Disney Co. now have to deal with the Board of political hostility in charge of the taxing district governing Disney – and pretty much only Disney – land in central Florida. Suspended Hillsborough County prosecutor Andrew Warren is in the midst of a lawsuit to get back a job that even a federal judge said DeSantis had no reason to take from him.
Disney, of course, can turn to many lawyers and lobbyists in the battle with DeSantis, and Warren has the connections to pursue a challenge, as well. But DeSantis has also uplifted the lives of those who had nothing to stand on their own.
Last year, “election integrity” squads arrested 20 ex-felons, most of them black, on suspicion of voting illegally — even though local and state election officials had approved voter registration.
He also made fake housing and job offers to trick Venezuelan asylum seekers in Texas into traveling to Martha’s Vineyard, using Florida taxpayer money to charter a plane. And they alerted Fox News to film exclusively on the Massachusetts vacation spot.
“If someone shows you who he is, believe him. And the governor has shown who he is,” Warren said. “He’s focused on being a carnival barker willing to break the law to promote his political agenda.”
“All of DeSantis’ victims are collateral damage in the onslaught of the culture war,” added Mac Stipanovich, once chief of staff for former GOP Gov. Bob Martinez. “Their lives have changed radically because they cast him as an extra in one performance or another, but with no more impact than a BB bouncing off a boxcar. … He only cares about the fleeting applause of the wing nut gallery. right and there is nothing about the hardships that will come.
DeSantis, meanwhile, has ramped up his unofficial presidential campaign that began last summer when he toured the country to support Republican candidates.
In Arizona on August 15, DeSantis said mainly about himself and his Florida records, rather than GOP candidates running for statewide office there. “What we’re doing in Florida is we’re really leading the state,” he said of the pandemic response.
“Hello, western Pennsylvania,” he said four days later to a crowd in Pittsburgh before giving a speech more about his background and accomplishments than the virtues of Doug Mastriano, the gubernatorial nominee there.
This month, DeSantis has done fundraising events for local parties in Texas, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California and county committees in Iowa. It’s all technically part of a tour following the release of his new book, with attendees receiving a copy as a gift for donating to the hosting group. It has provided intense news coverage of an unannounced presidential campaign while generating substantial personal income, one top Republican said DeSantis had never made before despite his Ivy League law degree.
“People don’t understand. They want money and they need money,” said a supporter on condition of anonymity. “They can do it in a way that advances the campaign without campaigning.”
According to the most recent financial disclosures filed with the state ethics commission, DeSantis at the end of 2021 had a net worth of $318,987 with income of $134,181 from his salary as governor.
Regardless of his approach and timing strategy, what DeSantis is doing will certainly work, a former Trump White House official said, adding that there is “Trump fatigue” among Republicans in general. “It’s a long way from ’24, he’s in a very good position. It all depends on how he arrives in the big game,” said the former official.
Horn, who worked to defeat the former president who attempted a coup, said that at this point, DeSantis has not stooped to Trump’s level. “He has not led an insurgency that killed the government,” he said. “So, so far, he’s better than Trump.”