Ladies and gentlemen, we have our October Surprise! Yes, the election year tradition of a sensational news story flooding the airways to distract voters has come early this cycle. Several weeks ago, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flew several dozen Venezuelan migrants from San Antonio, Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, a wealthy island vacation community in Massachusetts. The stunt was an attempt to criticize the supposedly left-leaning residents who were causing the ‘border crisis’ currently facing the southern United States.
It should be mentioned that Florida is not a border state, and that DeSantis has essentially spent many millions of taxpayer dollars to use human beings as pawns. This is not an article about migrants, Martha’s Vineyard or immigration; there probably is something to be said about wealthy liberals sheltering themselves into enclaves lacking in the diversity or class mobility they claim to espouse, but that is not my point. What does this maneuver say about our politics that the governor of the third-largest state in the Union has engaged in human trafficking for a campaign stunt? What kind of person does it take to actively sabotage another state in the name of political advancement? In other words, what is Ron DeSantis?
Ron DeSantis used to be a pretty standard Republican congressman. First elected in 2012, he later became known as a fierce defender of President Donald Trump. This secured him President Trump’s support in his race for Florida Governor in 2018. That year DeSantis would be elected by a mere 30,000 votes, a .4% margin of victory. Most candidates who are elected by slim margins tend to be moderate once in office so as to not alienate the large population that just voted against them. Ron DeSantis however, is not most candidates.
DeSantis’s governorship is characterized by a confrontational style of populist, culture war politics that reverberates across the country. He has been ahead of the curve on his party’s recent rightward shifts on the issues of public health, immigration, abortion, education, voting, tech, etc. DeSantis’s refusal to impose COVID-19 restrictions even as his state became a virus hotspot empowered other red state governors to do the same, exacerbating the pandemic. DeSantis rode the wave of outrage at school board meetings to sign legislation which barred the discussion of LGBT themes in some public schools, followed by similar legislation in other red states.
That is a common theme for DeSantis: the embrace of culture war politics on a national stage. Rarely will he make an announcement on issues solely facing Florida. Rather, he will take a stance, get a bill rubber-stamped by the gerrymandered legislature and use his star power to get similar legislation passed in other states. This not only allows him to stay in the national spotlight, but also allows the kind of soft power few figures outside congressional leadership and former presidents have to coalesce.
After the Florida Legislature passed sweeping election laws restricting the usage of mail-in ballots, DeSantis conducted only one media interview to broadcast the signing, with the sympathetic ‘wFox & Friends.’ Here again, even in his position as a state figure, DeSantis acts more like something of a national celebrity. Disallowing local journalists to cover an important matter so he can be thrown softball questions by a friendly media indicates the behavior into which the American right has devolved. A sphere of friendly media gives free exposure to right-wing figures who then inflame viewers with a new culture war, in which friendly media may farm more clicks and views. This policy is so effective that it even got conservatives to hate something as quintessentially American as Mickey Mouse.
After the Walt Disney Company (the second largest employer in the state) expressed their disapproval, DeSantis threatened to revoke Disney’s special development district. He handed a loss to one of his state’s largest employers, saddling them with more bureaucracy if they want to develop. However, it helps him secure support from a conservative movement that has been increasingly antagonistic with the Mouse. This raises a major question: what is his endgame?
In about a month, Ron DeSantis will be reelected Governor of Florida. All that exposure has allowed DeSantis to gather a 9-figure campaign war chest; his Democratic opponent representative Charlie Crist has a tenth of the cash on hand and none of the energetic fervor of DeSantis. But where does he go from there? The obvious answer is the presidency, but that would likely put the Floridian in conflict with one of his earliest supporters, former President Trump. Much of what DeSantis has done in terms of crafting ‘us-v-them’ culture war clashes is straight out of Trump’s playbook. Whether he can square that circle and convert enough of the Trump faithful will ultimately decide what will likely be a brutal primary of many soundbites and little else.
You can hate DeSantis — I certainly do — but nobody becomes popular by accident. Something within our politics has changed. I would argue that most people do not have the stomach for the genuine daily goings-on of politics — just check CSPAN’s declining ratings for proof — but what we
do
long for is conflict. Imagining yourself as a member of this army of followers fighting the wicked wrath of an invisible enemy is so much more fulfilling than getting off Twitter and helping real people in the real world. But if you do want to be a part of that invincible army, there is an election just around the corner.