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Four years ago, Ron DeSantis he became Governor of Florida in a heartbeat. The election was so close – by just 32,463 votes – that it required a recount. This Tuesday, the governor knocked out his Democratic rival Charlie Crist and will lead the Sunshine State for a second term, with the vote of six out of 10 Floridians. He could also be the next Republican candidate for the White House.
Last night, the re-elected governor gave a speech in Tampa to reconfirm the image he has built as a freedom fighter.
LOOK: How Miami stopped being the Democratic bastion of Florida and became the epicenter of the conservative wave of Latinos
“Florida was a haven of sanity when the world went crazy,” he said from a stage with a giant flag behind him, and his wife at his side. “We stood up as a badge of freedom for people in this state and indeed around the world. We face attacks. We take the hits. We weather the storms. But we stood firm. We didn’t back down. We had the conviction to guide us and we had the courage to lead,” he noted.
He also recalled that People from other states governed by “leftist” leaders have found refuge in Florida, which he called “the promised land.”
The governor was at the time under fire for defying the guidance of public health experts during the pandemic. Outdoor sports were never banned, restaurants that worked with delivery reopened to the public just two months after closing, beaches opened in June 2020, and children returned to classrooms earlier than in other states. But perhaps the most testable example was Disney: In Florida it was closed for less than four months since the beginning of the quarantine. In California, one year and 47 days.
But at the same time, Florida was successful in distributing vaccines. When the country was starting to vaccinate doctors, the state also included those over 65. In December 2020 and January 2021, people from other states arrived to be inoculated, and initially had the highest rates of vaccinations in the country.
“We made promises to the people of Florida and we have kept them,” DeSantis told a crowd Tuesday in his speech. And so today, after four years, the people have delivered their verdict. freedom is here to stay”.
Florida in red
In these elections, the state map was tinted republican red. Of 67 counties that make up the peninsula -while the vote count continues-, the governor would have lost in just five.
DeSantis, a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School who joined the United States Navy in 2004 (spent a year in Iraq) and was a federal prosecutor in Florida until 2010, achieved the largest margin by a Republican gubernatorial candidate in state history, with a difference of 20 points. The previous victory had been of the ex-governor Jeb Bushwhich he won by 13 points in 2002.
It’s also the first Republican governor to win Miami-Dade County, a Democratic stronghold, since Jeb Bush in 2002.
For Eduardo Gamarra, a professor in the Department of Politics at Florida International University and head of the ICR political pollster, the victory was due in part to the discipline of the Republican Party in the last five years of the campaign, based on “two big lies, question the legitimacy of the last elections [en las que ganó Joe Biden] and associate democrats with socialists.”
“We’ve seen it in every Republican study, the message that the Democrat is a socialist has been shown to work. The Republicans have done their job well, while the Democrats have not. They always start late, and they think Latinos are related just because historically they were. That is based on a national image, perhaps of the Mexican, or of the Puerto Rican; but it is not the story of the Venezuelan, Colombian, Nicaraguan, or Cuban, who is the majority of the Miami-Dade electorate. They do not study their constituency”, he emphasizes.
Given Tuesday’s results, a good part of the analysts are coming to the conclusion that Florida is no longer a swing state (pendular state). They claim it is solidly republican.
“I would not guarantee that there will be a Republican cycle for 25 years. There is a lot of evidence: They won everything last night. If you look at the registration rates, in only seven counties there are more Democrats than Republicans registered, in the remaining 60 there are more Republicans, that’s about 300,000 more in the state. Democrats won Broward, Orange, Leon, Alachua and Gadsden, but the only significant counties are Orange and Broward, the rest are small. They lost Miami-Dade, which is key. This leads the Democratic party to think about where they are located in Florida”, analyzes.
However, Gamarra makes the comparison with Argentina. “There was Peronist dominance for decades, but it came [Mauricio] Macri and was four years. In the next election, Macri, Larreta, Bullrich or Milei may come. I am not so convinced that these cycles are so long. The Democratic Party led Florida for decades until the arrival of Jeb Bush”, and exemplifies that nothing is certain in politics: “With all my colleagues we were convinced that what happened in Florida was going to happen nationally, and it was not like that”.
The Democratic Party, particularly in Florida, is going through a severe identity crisis, he says. “It is a party that has been undermined in some places, in Miami-Dade, for example, by progressives. They believe that they lost because they did not go too far towards progressivism, when the problem is the other way around, they could not retain the conservatives”.
DeSantis, controversial
Other issues that added followers and detractors to the DeSantis administration is its position on sexual education and gender issues during the first years of schooling. This year the law was voted “don’t say gay”, that prohibits classroom instruction on sexuality or transgenderism from grades 5 through 3 in public schools.
The measure was implemented to give parents more discretion over what their children learn in school, claiming, according to the governor, “parental authority.” The fact aroused the rejection of the LGBTQ community, which called it “discriminatory”.
The management of immigration is another of the hot spots. Two months ago, in a political maneuver, sent illegal immigrants on a flight to Democrat states, which attracted international attention and provoked the condemnation of the affected governors. DeSantis has been calling for action against illegal immigration, and criticizing the failed border policies of the Biden administration, with no echo from the other side. Along with the Republican Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, it sent immigrants to Democratic strongholds without warning.
For being a pro-market and pro-company man, his critics question that under his administration, Florida has become one of the most expensive states to live in. with house insurance and rents that go through the roof. The prices of estate, defends, are due to the exodus of inhabitants of Democratic states who have fled due to the strong restrictions on freedom in the face of Covid, and higher taxes. Republicans, instead, blame Biden for inflation.
The economy, however, has not caught on with many voters, perhaps because they associate the economy primarily with the White House.
By Lucila Martí Garro
Source: Elcomercio
I, Ronald Payne, am a journalist and author who dedicated his life to telling the stories that need to be said. I have over 7 years of experience as a reporter and editor, covering everything from politics to business to crime.
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