Recently, such a change would seem impossible in a country known for its narrow electoral margins and counting nails. Mr DeSantis won the governor’s post with around 32,000 votes in 2018, hardly a term. His estranged personality did not shine exactly.
Read more about Florida’s battle with Disney
But in early 2020, politically-minded Mr DeSantis took advantage of dissatisfaction with coronavirus pandemic policies, arguing that economic prosperity and individual freedoms would be more important to voters in the long run than protecting public health. More than 73,000 Florida residents have died from Covid-19, but opinion polls show that Mr. DeSantis and many of his policies remain quite popular.
Parents in particular, who welcomed the governor’s opposition to Covid-19 restrictions in schools, remain active in curriculum and culture.
“I think the governor is more popular than Disney – I think the governor is more popular than the former president,” said Anthony Pedicini, a Republican strategist in Tampa. “If you run for office as a Republican in Florida and don’t follow the DeSantis mantra, you won’t win.”
The question now for Mr DeSantis – and virtually everyone else in Florida – is whether the right-wing slaughter will stop, either through court intervention, corporate reaction or in November, through electoral reprimands. But given Florida trends in recent years, the more likely outcome could be a protracted campaign for a new, tougher conservative orthodoxy that voters could ratify this fall.
The state’s rapid and unexpected turn to the right occurred as Florida swelled with new residents. Between July 2020 and July 2021, about 260,000 more people arrived than left, net migration higher than any other country. The trend began before the pandemic, but seems to have accelerated as remote workers sought warm weather, low taxes and few restrictions on public health.
Culturally, Florida is less conservative than its leaders. They voted by a wide margin to legalize medical marijuana, ban manipulation and restore the criminals’ right to vote. (Last year, Republican lawmakers passed restrictions on the use of such citizen-led voting initiatives.) So the recent break in legislation was met with trepidation in the state’s major cities, almost all run by Democrats.
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