NORTH VENICE, Fla.—When Ron DeSantis arrived in Tallahassee in January 2019 after winning Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial race by 32,000 votes—less than a half-percent of 8 million ballots cast—he was told by insiders, experts, and pundits that the narrow victory was cause for cautious moderation in managing the swing state.
“I rejected that advice,” he said.
While “[I] may have only won the election with 50 percent of the vote, I have 100 percent of the executive power. My duty is to put that to best use.”
And so he did—early and often, as DeSantis explained to about 1,500 people at PGT Custom Windows + Doors in North Venice on Feb. 28, the first of four speaking engagements for the day, including in Leesburg and The Villages, with at least three more planned in Naples, Miami, and Palm Beach on March 1.
One of the first things he did as governor was to fire Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher by executive order, one of many decisive actions that would lead to clashes with school boards, corporations, and the federal government over the next four years.
“We had a strategic plan on how to use the levers available to me to advance our agenda,” he said. “We’re going on the offensive, actively seeking out issues. From day one, we went off to the races.”
Voters responded.
“We took a 32,000-vote victory and turned it into a 1.5-million vote victory in four years’ time,” DeSantis said of his November 2022 reelection. “I love what we have coming up in the next legislative session (which begins March 7). Buckle up. It’s going to get a lot—a lot—better.”
Sudden Spurt of Serial Speeches
The governor is barnstorming the state touting his “Florida Blueprint” plan in his recently published book, ‘The Courage to Be Free,’ without formally acknowledging that the sudden spurt of serial stump speeches are what amounts to the unofficial launch of his 2024 presidential campaign.If those in the sprawling PGT window factory were hoping for some transparency regarding his presidential ambitions, DeSantis didn’t deliver. He did spell out that he is a man of action who understands that candidates aren’t elected to be “potted plants” but to use the tools of government to get things done.
DeSantis spells out how he honed his leadership skills in Tallahassee in his book, which he held up for all to see a day after it officially hit the shelves.
“You’re looking at the No. 1 book on Amazon,” he said, holding a copy aloft to kick off his 75-minute speech. “There are a lot of people in the media who are not happy to see this at No. 1.”
DeSantis said any newly elected leader must “find where the pressure points are” and address remedies regardless of immediate reactions from ideologues and whatever the polls say.
“As a leader,” he said, “you are not captive to public opinion but shaping public opinion.”
The DeSantis administration has battled school boards, corporations, and then federal government across a range of issues that surfaced with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.
In an executive order, DeSantis in May 2020 lifted business lockdowns long before most others states did so, drawing the ire of the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC), National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci—now chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden—the National Institutes of Health, and the Food & Drug Administration.
“Fauci dictated all this stuff. He was so upset with Florida for everything we did,” he said. Federal agencies “were not following the data. They were following an agenda. They were bogus, they were wrong—they were disastrously wrong.”
When DeSantis decreed schools would reopen as normal in August 2020, “We got nothing but negativity from the media and Fauci. ‘Good Morning America’ [portrayed rural residents] as “dumb Floridians are putting their kids in harm’s way.”
But the bottom line, he said, was that data showed it was safer for students to be in schools than isolated at home, especially when the disease did not pose significant risk to youngsters.
“There was no argument against every school in Florida being opened for the students,” DeSantis said. “At the time, they actually believed lockdowns worked. I knew that wasn’t the case. Now, nobody will admit they opposed us on the schools reopening.”
Florida Charting Country’s Course
So followed battles with the federal government over banning vaccine mandates for medical workers and for outlawing vaccine “passports;” with school boards over parents’ rights, which amounts to “sending kids to schools without a teacher telling them they are in the wrong body;” and against “woke” corporations, such as Disney.The day before, DeSantis had signed into law a measure adopted by lawmakers in a special session that formally terminated Disney World’s Reedy Creek special district after the corporate behemoth opposed a 2022 bill giving parents the right to object to teaching “sexuality and gender ideology” in kindergarten-through-third-grade classrooms.
The governor said he advised Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek to “not get involved in this. I don’t think that is too smart” because for those who “try to placate the woke mob, it is not a recipe for success.”
The 40-plus mile special district gave Disney “unrivaled privilege” in self-government that the company abused not only in exerting influence in Tallahassee but in homes across the globe with programming DeSantis said was becoming problematic with many Americans.
“You all subsidized that activism through this arrangement,” he told the booing audience. “They called the shots in the state of Florida. That’s the way things worked until I got in there. We are not going to subcontract out [state responsibilities] to a woke corporation based in Buena Vista, California.”
DeSantis said his actions against Disney, on behalf of parents, and in thwarting “control” by the federal government just for the sake of control, have proven Florida under his leadership “saved America from going into the abyss.”
He recalled how tremendous pressure from all sides was levied against him and it would have been easier to relent “to give myself political cover” but he wasn’t going to do that—nor would he—should he, say, find himself in a higher executive capacity.
“We were the refuge of sanity while so much of the world had gone mad,” DeSantis said. “I told myself, “I got to be the one who has to make decisions here.’ I said, ‘We are going to have to chart a course for the country out of these lockdowns.’ That is what Florida did for the country.”
T-Word Never Mentioned
There were 2.400 tickets issued for the event with doors open at 8:30 a.m. for the governor’s 10 a.m. speech. By 7:40 a.m. the line was already 100 yards long.Kathleen Perez, “a retired cop” from New York City moved from Staten Island to Osprey four years ago. “We relocated here to escape the crime-infested city,” she said.
Perez and friends were toting a ‘DeSantis 2024 banner.’ “I like him for his leadership,” she said.
“He can win in 2024 because he can build a big base and is a phenomenal leader who can make the country safe.”
Michael Gray, who works in the PGT factory but was enjoying his day off on line to see the governor said he wants DeSantis to run, even though the nation’s gain would be Florida’s loss.
“People in Florida don’t want to let him go, but we need DeSantis to save our country,” he said, noting the governor is “someone who has shown he is not going to be a follower.”
Jim Lentini of Venice was there because, “I want to see what Gov. Ron has to say. I want to see him up close—see if he’s for real.”
An entrepreneur who has “retired 14 times” after owning numerous businesses, including a hurricane shutter factory and a glass and mirror ship, Lentini said he’s working on three inventions, including an EV battery that could go from “here to California” on one charge.
There are “too many progressives in government,” he said, and too little common cause.
“I grew up in this country when there was the ‘American Dream.’ Now nobody even knows what that American Dream is anymore,” Lentini said.
He voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 and was the only one who mentioned the former president, at least out loud, in the window factory in North Venice while the governor was there. He wouldn’t say whom he’ll vote for in 2024, but has it narrowed down.
“Ron or Trump, basically,” Lentini said.
