FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla.—Getting ready for the Republican debate on Aug. 23, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threw a Florida beach party.
Out back of The Gulf restaurant in Fort Walton Beach, about 1,100 guests in shorts and T-shirts, sundresses, and ball caps fought the 90-degree heat with beer, bottled water, and cold drinks as they waited for the governor to arrive.
Lucky ones got to stand in the shade. Rock music like Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” blared as guests partied. It seemed fitting, as Mr. DeSantis’s PAC is named “Never Back Down.”
Big donors and VIPs weren’t in evidence. Most guests were locals. Several told The Epoch Times they'd never been to any political rally before but saw ads or received invitations.
“I heard on the radio that DeSantis was going to be here,” said Donna Paradise of Fort Walton Beach. “So I went online to check out the situation and got myself a ticket.”
“It’s my first time at a political rally. At any time in my entire life,” she said.
She came, she said, because she had the opportunity—and because her triplet grandbabies recently turned 5 and started kindergarten.
She'd been a special education teacher but quit when they were born to help with them. Her daughter is a military wife, with her husband an airman stationed at nearby Eglin Air Force Base.
As she chatted with The Epoch Times, her dog Riley, a Shih Tzu-poodle mix, dozed in a stroller beside her.
In the Florida Panhandle, Fort Walton Beach is friendly to conservatives.
Mr. DeSantis, when he arrived, told the crowd that in Florida’s years as a deeply divided state prone to close elections, Republicans relied on Northwest Florida to deliver victories.
He did in his narrow 2018 win of the governor’s seat. He said he hadn’t had to wait for the area’s returns in his landslide reelection last year, as he won big counties like Dade and Palm Beach that hadn’t gone Republican in years.
According to a press release, his campaign staged the event to highlight his military service.
He would be the first president since George H.W. Bush to have served in a war. Bush, a pilot, fought in World War II.
Mr. DeSantis was introduced by Kris Hager, chairman of the Gold Star Fathers of Florida. His son, Army Staff Sgt. Joshua R. Hager, was killed in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2007.
Mr. DeSantis put his presence there in military terms.
“We’re excited to be here,” Mr. DeSantis greeted his well-wishers. “We’re going to be headed up to Milwaukee tomorrow. We’ve got the first debate in this whole shebang that we’ve got to deal with. It should be a lot of fun.”
“But at the end of the day, you know up in Northwest Florida—being a military community, you know me being a veteran—we have a mission that we are on. It’s very simple: We are sending Joe Biden back to his basement.”
Mr. DeSantis delivered his stump speech, touching on what he usually does. He’s kept his campaign promises in Florida, and he'll do it as president.
He‘ll invalidate President Joe Biden’s executive orders. He’ll fire FBI Director Christopher Wray. He'll end the nation’s spending binge, which he labeled “Bidenflation” but which he said he holds Republicans as well as Democrats responsible for.
He'll secure the southern border.
“I’m going to be the first president that’s willing to lean in against the Mexican drug cartels. We have tens of thousands of people that are dying because of the poison of fentanyl that they’re bringing into the country.”
And he delivered a line, one he’s used before, that was this crowd’s favorite, judging by their applause.
“It’s wrong that Biden is not lifting a finger to stop this. So when I get in, we are going to make sure to use lethal force against the Mexican drug cartels. When they try, if they try to bring the fentanyl across the border when I am president, we are going to shoot them stone cold dead.”
Two men fist-bumped as the crowd hooted, hollered, and cheered.
He decried misguided COVID-19 lockdown policies that cost schoolchildren more than a year of school in some places and destroyed countless small businesses. He promised to deliver justice and to hold those responsible accountable.
“When I’m president, you will never see me turning over my office to Dr. Anthony Fauci. You don’t protect Fauci, you don’t coddle Fauci. You bring somebody like Fauci in and you sit him down and you say, ‘Anthony, you are fired,’ ” Mr. DeSantis said.
He alluded to former President Donald Trump’s famous tagline from his reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” a seeming rebuke for Mr. Trump not having done himself as president.
Mr. DeSantis railed against woke prosecutors who won’t enforce the law, making various big cities nationwide unsafe. He reminded the crowd he'd removed two in Florida.
He attacked other aspects of wokeness, including the military’s preoccupation with it of late, and attempts to insert such thoughts into public school education.
“You know, in Florida, men can’t get pregnant and it’s just that simple. It’s [wrong] to pretend otherwise. We’re not going to teach our kids to memorize 37 different pronouns in school. It’s just not happening.”
Military recruiting is at its lowest levels since just after the Vietnam War, and this is one of the reasons, he said.
“I talk to people on active duty now and they talk about the training they’re doing for pronouns. How do pronouns help you win a war against [communist] China? It doesn’t.”
If elected, he said, he would “rip it out of the military” and return it to “mission first.”
Afterward, one young man, 25 and working in real estate, wouldn’t give his name but said he goes by “TheFreeFloridian” on Instagram.
His top issue, he said, is being pro-life. He supported Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 but has switched to Mr. DeSantis.
“I’m now seeing what he’s done. He offers a better vision for the future,” TheFreeFloridian said. “He’s done a fantastic job governing Florida.”
He credited Mr. DeSantis with passing a heartbeat bill limiting abortions to the first six weeks of pregnancy.
His friend Andrew Muller, who lives in nearby Valparaiso, Fla., said he came to the rally because he “loved” DeSantis and thought him a fine governor. “He’s not a puppet.”
“But if the election were today, I'd vote for Trump,” Mr. Muller said. “I want the guy the Deep State and the establishment hates the worst. I want the guy with the most indictments by the Deep State.”
Before the rally, rival groups of demonstrators occupied opposite corners of the approach street, DeSantis supporters on one, Trump supporters on the other. Each waved signs and flags and cheered for their candidate. It seemed amicable.
Liz Reese, an American Airlines flight attendant, said she was vacationing in nearby Destin, Fla., and planned to move there from the Dallas suburb where she currently lives.
“I love DeSantis. I love him,” she said.
She said she supports his strong stand against human trafficking. She volunteers to work with children rescued from sex traffickers and others from distressed backgrounds. She said she recently helped her airlines rescue a 23-year-old Jamaican girl being trafficked on a flight Ms. Reese was working.
“I got her off the plane at Love Field [in Dallas],” she said, choking up as she talked about her volunteer work. “She had cuts on her wrists. She couldn’t speak.”
It enrages her to see children trafficked, she said. “I have grandchildren that age.”
