Hes Developing Blinkers: Has Ron DeSantis Let All the Winning Go to His Head?

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Contrast that, he said, pivoting and somewhat perplexed, with the governor who has said, Were going to dictate to localities about how they handle Covid.

The delineation of a pre-Covid and post-Covid DeSantis is a tad too tidy hes received continued plaudits from environmentalists, for instance, and the pay raises for teachers havent stopped but the shift in vibes and approach since Covid and his resulting (depending on one’s perspective) celebrity or notoriety are hard to ignore. Provocations like the STOP WOKE Act, the Parental Rights in Education bill that critics took to calling Dont Say Gay, the outrage- and headline-generating, Florida taxpayer-paid migrant flight from Texas to the liberal Northeast haven of Marthas Vineyard theyre of a piece with his new, more muscular, more sneering, pandemic-spurred stance. Starting in earnest in April 2020, all of a month into Covid, DeSantis was contrarian and combative in using the weight and the clout of the state lifting lockdowns, resisting school closures, eliminating mandates of masks and vaccines. Covid surges came and went, and people got sick, and some of them died. He was labeled DeathSantis by the left, and he was rewarded by the right, but parents across the political spectrum were at the very least quietly and grudgingly glad that in Florida their kids didn’t have to go to school on a screen. We were right, DeSantis has taken to saying, and they were wrong.

What I hear from others around the country, said Christian Ziegler, the vice chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, is that they are shocked at how much he has won.

I think he was emboldened by his decision-making during Covid, said Tallahassee lobbyist Nick Iarossi, and it just gave him more confidence.

What I hear from others around the country is that they are shocked at how much he has won.

Christian Ziegler, vice chairman of the Republican Party of Florida

But DeSantis didn’t just keep kids in school. He turned Covid into his name-making crusade. Specifically in Hillsborough County a pro-Trump Pentecostal pastor violated stay-at-home orders by continuing to hold services at his Tampa megachurch. Deputies arrested him. Warren’s office started to prosecute him. And then DeSantis quickly eased the rules for churches. Warren went on CNN to call the decision spineless and weak.

DeSantis clearly saw political opportunity. Like Pavlov’s dogs, Stipanovich said. The bell rings, he gets fed some positive feedback in terms of his popularity or press in the right-wing media silo, and one thing leads to another ding, ding, ding until that’s all he does.

In response in part to the riots in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, DeSantis, for example, signed an anti-rioting bill an unapologetic stand for the rule of law following civil unrest throughout the United States over the last two years, in his and his offices words. Warren, who was reelected in 2020 by more votes just in Hillsborough County than DeSantis had won by in the whole state in 2018, was appalled. It tears a couple corners off the Constitution, he said in a statement, adding that the misguided legislation directly undermines First Amendment freedoms by criminalizing peaceful protests.

In June 2021, Warren, with more than 70 other prosecutors around the country, signed the joint statement from Fair and Just Prosecution about gender-affirming care. As elected prosecutors and law enforcement leaders, we condemn the ongoing efforts to criminalize transgender people, the statement began.

Then this past summer, after the Supreme Courts Dobbs decision, he was one of even more prosecutors serving in New York, California and Massachusetts, but also Ohio, Mississippi and Texas to sign another joint statement from the organization promoting a justice system grounded in fairness , equity, compassion and fiscal responsibility. Some of the key language: we decline to use our offices’ resources to criminalize reproductive health decisions and commit to exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide or support abortions, it said. Criminalizing and prosecuting individuals who seek or provide abortion care makes a mockery of justice; prosecutors should not be part of that, it concluded.

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