Who’s ready for Ron DeSantis?
Florida State Government via Wikimedia Commons
Florida's governor has become a hero among American conservatives – and he has the White House in his sights. Nick Scott asks what this means for the Republican Party, and politics in the US.
The United States midterm elections in November 2022 had one clear winner: the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. Despite being a little known Congressman before Donald Trump’s endorsement in 2017 helped him to win the Republican primary for governor, DeSantis has now risen to fame, largely through this refusal to implement lockdowns and other restrictions even as cases soared. A poor Republican performance in the House and Senate hurt Donald Trump’s standing in the party, while DeSantis was re-elected as governor by a huge margin in his historically competitive state. Now many Republicans, tired of Trump’s scandals, see DeSantis as the future of the party and the best candidate to take on Joe Biden in 2024. Donald Trump made Ron DeSantis – and DeSantis might be the only person who can beat him. But the Florida governor could be just as dangerous as Trump, if not worse.
DeSantis’ tenure as governor has been defined by attacks on minority groups. He signed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law, banning teachers from discussing sexuality or gender identity. The vague language in the measure has led to LGBTQ+ teachers being unsure whether being open about their sexuality in their workplace is a risk to their jobs. Other laws intended to undermine LGBTQ+ rights passed by Florida Republicans include one giving parents more power to challenge books used in schools, particularly ones discussing gender. DeSantis has aggressively targeted trans rights: he has banned trans women and girls from competing in women’s sports, tried to stop gender-affirming care for under-18s, and more recently demanded information from state universities about trans students.
DeSantis has also pursued policies hurting racial minorities. He signed a law, called the “Stop WOKE Act”, that limits what schools can teach about race and diversity; the legislation was partially blocked by a judge who described it as “positively dystopian”. Despite this ruling, DeSantis has since asked universities for data about diversity-related courses, and rejected a new course about African American Studies for high school students. In an attempt to expose what he viewed as liberal hypocrisy with respect to illegal immigration, he flew migrants from Texas to a Democrat-voting part of Massachusetts, which Biden described as “playing politics with human beings.”
Another feature of DeSantis’ time as governor has been his anti-democratic actions. In August 2022, DeSantis suspended an elected state attorney, Andrew Warren, after Warren said that he would not prosecute people under laws banning abortion or gender transition. Warren sued DeSantis, and a federal judge ruled that the governor had violated both the First Amendment, which protects free speech, and the Florida Constitution. For technical legal reasons, the suspension was allowed to remain in effect. DeSantis also forced a rigged electoral map (a so-called “gerrymander”) through the legislature, eliminating a mostly-black district and creating more than twice as many Republican seats as Democrat ones. He has cracked down hard on voting rights, creating a new state organisation to investigate election crimes and using it to arrest mostly black voters with past criminal convictions. DeSantis has used his position to intimidate his opponents and ensure Republican political dominance in Florida.
The governor’s anti-science policies with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic are also worrying. For the position of Surgeon General of Florida, he chose a doctor, Joseph Ladapo, who has questioned the safety of vaccinations and promoted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the disease. In October 2021, DeSantis called a special session of the legislature to oppose COVID-19 restrictions, signing four laws that undermined vaccine mandates (more recently, he said that he wants to make these laws permanent). In December 2022, DeSantis took his most extreme step yet, impanelling a grand jury to investigate “crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 vaccine” – a move seen as an attempt to distance himself from Trump, who has encouraged his supporters to get vaccinated, and to appeal to the right on the issue.
There are still many challenges in DeSantis’ way before he can reach the White House. Beating Trump in a primary would be no easy feat; some polls still give the former president a big lead, and beating an incumbent president (assuming Biden runs for re-election) is an even greater task. But the possibility of DeSantis winning in 2024, real as it is, is not the only thing to worry about. The real concern is that if this extreme rhetoric and actions is what Republican voters want, then DeSantis will be followed by other presidential candidates with similar views – and any of them winning could have terrible consequences.
During the Andrew Warren trial, Ryan Newman, DeSantis’ general counsel, was asked to define what “woke” means. Newman described it as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them." But for DeSantis and his supporters, hurting minority groups is something to boast about. At his gubernatorial inauguration in January, DeSantis gave a speech widely viewed as a precursor to a presidential campaign. “We will never surrender to the woke mob,” he said. “Florida is where woke goes to die.” Americans must mobilise to stop him.