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As governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis reopened his state quickly after COVID-19, limited economic damage and managed to reopen schools by the fall of 2020, reducing learning loss. Florida also had an impressive vaccination rate and a lower age-adjusted COVID-19 death rate than most American states. Debates over COVID-19 policies and their consequences will continue for decades, but a growing number of nonpartisan historians are arguing that DeSantis was far more right than wrong.
His environmental record, including protection of the Everglades, is better than many Democratic strongholds, he raised pay for public schoolteachers and he offers most Floridians school choice. Cranes are a prominent part of the skylines in cities like Miami and Tampa, places that are booming as many Americans move south to find lower tax rates and cities that feel safer and friendlier to new businesses. And DeSantis won reelection in 2022 by a stunning 19 percentage points.
So why has DeSantis’ presidential campaign melted down faster than a soft-serve cone in Miami Beach?
One reason, of course, is that Democrats and the party’s media surrogates have pummeled away at DeSantis. Democrats know that Donald Trump, indictments and all, cannot beat Joe Biden in a head-to-head contest, whereas an unbloodied DeSantis represented far more of a threat. But that’s politics, not an excuse for DeSantis’ failures.
So far, the Florida governor has run a bloated campaign organization that has had none of the efficiency or effectiveness of the government in Tallahassee. On the contrary, it has been amateur hour. On Tuesday, Politico reported DeSantis had fired more than one third of his campaign staffers in part due to concerns about overspending.
But the main problem in DeSantis world has been DeSantis himself. Instead of running on his record in Florida, he’s embroiled himself in an absurd fight against Disney, which just happens to be one of Florida’s most important employers. He failed to stand up for the rights and freedoms of the LGBTQ community, which just happens to be one of Florida’s most important populations. And he found himself on the wrong side of an argument over Florida’s teaching of the history of slavery, of all things. The most egregious elements of that curriculum may have been cherry-picked by Democrats for political advantage on social media, but DeSantis should have predicted and had an answer for that.
We’re hardly done: DeSantis signed into law a bill that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, an absurdly draconian policy that might as well be a total ban, given that many women don’t know they are pregnant at that point. Given the widespread support among Americans for abortion rights, at least in the first trimester of pregnancy, that decision was destined to infuriate legions of women whom DeSantis could potentially have won over.
A plurality of Americans believe that discussions of gender and sexual identity with young children should be age-appropriate and involve their parents, at least wherever possible. But DeSantis decided to parlay that into a crude banning of those topics in the classroom, thus turning him into a censor of open discourse and making him look squishy on the importance of free speech.
And don’t get us started on DeSantis calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute,” even if he tried to walk it back. See how well that would go over in Odesa.
It should not have been this hard. Take, for example, the carefully worded statement handed out by Citadel hedge fund founder and former Chicagoan Ken Griffin in recent days after journalists asked him about his apparent step back from DeSantis. Griffin, as Illinoisans know, was burned by the disappointing campaign run by Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin in the Illinois gubernatorial race last year, and he clearly doesn’t intend to find himself there again.
Chicago Tribune Opinion
“I care deeply about all children having access to a high-quality education, preserving American competitiveness,” Griffin said, “guarding personal liberties, ensuring our communities are safe and secure, fiscal prudence, and maintaining America’s leadership role on the global stage. I am committed to America being the greatest democracy in the world.”
If ever there was a coded message for DeSantis, the ever-shrewd Griffin was giving him one. Campaign on that, Griffin was saying, and you might even win the Republican nomination — along with my financial support.
Whether DeSantis is listening remains to be seen. In the meantime, his meltdown further increases the likelihood of Trump, with all 71 of his felony charges, being at the top of the ticket of a major presidential party with all the attendant risks for the nation. Mitt Romney, in an op-ed published Monday in The Wall Street Journal, raises the alarm over the number of minor candidates vying for the Republican nomination, perhaps for the personal benefits that accrue merely from running, and thus splitting the vote and paving the way for Trump.
“Our party and our country need a nominee with character, driven by something greater than revenge and ego, preferably from the next generation,” the Utah senator writes, rightly arguing it is critical that the Republican primary soon become a two-person race if Trump is to be stopped.
The remaining question is the identity of the vital second candidate.
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