‘We Want People That Are Going to Fight the Left,’ Says the Man Out-Trumping Trump

Damon Winter/The New York Times
GUEST ESSAY : OPINION
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, is giving Donald Trump a run for his money as the most divisive politician in America. “We want people that are going to fight the left, and that’s what we need to do in this country,” DeSantis declared in an interview with Fox News on Feb. 8. “That’s what we’re doing in Florida, standing up for people’s freedoms. We’re opposing wokeness. We’re opposing all these things.”

In a Nov. 5, 2021, article on the liberal Daily Beast website, “Desperate, Deranged DeSantis Devolves Into Dumb Troll,” Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote that DeSantis “is a terrible governor who is failing his leadership course with flying colors. Driven only by politics and naked ambition, he pursues reckless policies that divide Floridians and may even put them in danger.”

The governor routinely succumbs to right-wing pressure groups, Navarrette continued, “because he apparently has no core beliefs other than the unshakable conviction that he should sit in the Oval Office.” » | Thomas B. Edsall | Wednesday, March 16, 2022

As Covid Surges in Florida, DeSantis Refuses to Change Course

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has been unyielding in his approach to the pandemic. Credit...Joe Raedle/Getty Images
THE NEW YORK TIMES: A virus spike connected to the Delta variant has led to a record number of Covid-19 hospitalizations in Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis has not altered his approach, for better or worse.

MIAMI — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida snapped this week at a reporter who asked if masks might help keep children safe in a state that now has more Covid-19 hospitalizations, including for pediatric patients, than anywhere else in the nation.

He blamed President Biden’s purported failure to control the spread of the virus across the border after the president suggested that governors like Mr. DeSantis should either “help” fight the coronavirus or “get out of the way.”

And he touted a new state rule, adopted on Friday, that will counter local school mask mandates by allowing parents to request private school vouchers if they feel that the requirements amount to “harassment.”

Mr. DeSantis has been unyielding in his approach to the pandemic, refusing to change course or impose restrictions despite uncontrolled spread and spiking hospitalizations — an approach that forced him to undertake the biggest risk of his rising political career.

The governor reopened his state’s economy last spring and kept it that way, defying coronavirus surges that filled hospitals, and then celebrated as a statewide vaccination campaign took hold and life in Florida began to look normal.

Now Mr. DeSantis is gambling again. A new virus spike has led to a record number of Covid-19 hospitalizations that have undone some of Florida’s economic and public health gains and again raised the stakes for Mr. DeSantis. » | Patricia Mazzei | Friday, August 6, 2021