On transgenderism, education, abortion, and Covid, the Florida governor has shown how to navigate choppy political waters.
On transgenderism, education, abortion, and Covid, the Florida governor has shown how to navigate choppy political waters.
G overnor Ron DeSantis said in his victory speech that, not only did he win the Florida gubernatorial race, but he has also “rewritten the political map.” It is difficult to argue with that assessment. He beat Democrat Charlie Crist by 20 percentage points and flipped Democratic strongholds such as Miami-Dade County.
A particularly potent force in his campaign has been culture-war issues — battles DeSantis won by going on the offensive. “We fight the woke in the legislature,” he said in his speech. “We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”
As with Trump, DeSantis’s political aggressiveness wins him admirers. The tactics that some conservatives consider morally or philosophically dubious appear only to intensify his popularity.
In March, the Republican Florida legislature passed the Parental Rights in Education Act, preventing teachers from instructing kindergarten through third-grade students in gender identity and sexuality. “I would say when you oppose a parent’s rights and education bill, which prevents six-, seven-, eight-year-olds from having sexuality, gender ideology injected in their curriculum, you are the one that’s waging the culture war,” DeSantis said in defense of the bill. DeSantis also signed the Stop W.O.K.E. (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act, preventing critical race theory from being promoted or advanced in schools and corporations.
When Walt Disney executives criticized the education law as a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, DeSantis retaliated by questioning whether the corporation’s 50-year-old “independent special district” status should go under “review” to ensure that it is “appropriately serving the public interest.” Charles C. W. Cooke warned about the dangers of this move. Yet, however short-sighted, it was undoubtedly effective culture-war politics. DeSantis’s enemies fell into the trap: Democrats revealed their hypocrisy by rushing to the defense of big business.
DeSantis has also won the PR fight on immigration. His morally dubious decision to fly asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard revealed Democrats’ hypocrisy. His hard line on immigration does not dampen support among Hispanics. According to a Telemundo/LX News poll, DeSantis had a 51 percent to 44 percent lead over Crist among Hispanic voters. A bilingual pollster who conducted the survey explained: “There are lots of Hispanic voters in this state who really like the governor’s style, this strongman who won’t back down.”
On transgenderism, DeSantis has been utterly fearless. He stated that, in children, most “dysphoria resolves itself by the time they become adults” and “it’s inappropriate to be doing basically what’s genital mutilation.” While other Republican states have tried to use legislation to stop gender experiments, DeSantis appointed a state medical board that banned doctors from prescribing puberty blockers, hormones, and gender-transition surgeries. This way, his enemies can’t claim that politicians are interfering in the medical profession. Rather, it’s medical professionals keeping politics out of health care.
Abortion was a tricky culture-war issue for Republicans to handle this election cycle. But here, DeSantis made sure to keep his commitment to pro-life principles front and center, while also recognizing the art of the possible. He promised to “expand pro-life protections” and began by signing a law in April that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Taking swift and decisive action on abortion prior to the Dobbs decision allowed him and Florida Republicans to focus on other issues ahead of the midterms.
The progressive overreach evident in wokeness was also apparent in the response to the pandemic. And it is here that DeSantis excelled the most. While in other states sick people were denied visitors, children were kept out of school and then required to wear masks in school, and people were fired for not getting the vaccines, DeSantis pursued the widely popular “Keep Florida Free” agenda.
As the ascent of Trump demonstrates, there is a great amount of public anger when people are bullied into suppressing their political priorities and values. Culture-war issues are kitchen-table issues. They play out in schools, communities, public services, and the workplace. Trump’s new nickname for DeSantis, “Ron DeSanctimonious,” attempts to cast the governor as being out of touch with the political priorities of the non-elites. But DeSantis has proven time and time again that, in response to popular demand, he is willing to play ball — and, if need be, to play dirty.
Perhaps that won’t be enough to give him the edge in 2024, should the GOP primary pit him against Trump. But when it comes to the culture war, Ron DeSantis, by painting his opponents as the ones waging it against the common sense he stands for, is leading the way for Republicans.