Dem
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GOP
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It's all over for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). He thought he was going to out-woke Trump and glide into the Oval Office after crushing the feeble Joe Biden. It didn't quite work out and the Governor is definitely not a happy camper. Neither is the missus. But he has 3 more years as governor and it is going to be a rocky period. Not only is he not going to be president, but due to Florida's term limits law, he is also a lame duck.
On top of this, the members of the state legislature resent him for riding roughshod over them for 5 years and now feel his weakness. However, some of them support Donald Trump and they are worried if DeSantis is going to spend the next 3 years punishing them. He could. He's definitely that kind of guy. One of the state legislators, Randy Fine (R), who flipped his endorsement from DeSantis to Trump, said: "You have a choice: You can accept responsibility or you can blame others. I don't know which he'll choose. I hope he uses it as a learning experience." Rick Wilson, a former Republican consultant, said: "I suspect Ron's learned very few lessons from this campaign. He's gonna come home and kick the dog."
There's a fair bit of reason to think that Wilson is right. In Florida, the governor has a line-item veto on the state budget. Last year, state Sen. Joe Gruters (R) said that DeSantis used his veto to kill projects Gruters supported because Gruters supported Trump. It could be a couple of years of vengeance and retribution. That is very much DeSantis' style.
A first hint came Monday evening when DeSantis let it be known that he didn't want Florida taxpayers to help foot Trump's legal bills. Within an hour of his announcement, the state senator who had sponsored the bill to help Trump withdrew it.
Nikki Fried, who is chair of the Florida Democratic Party, said: "It depends on who he blames for his downfall. If he's frustrated and he's angry, he may come back and try to burn it all down."
In past years, DeSantis had a robust agenda for the legislature. For 2024, he has very little. It is as if he hasn't thought much about governing, since he wasn't planning to spend much time at home in 2024. After his first election, he actually had many priorities that were popular. He wanted to protect the environment and raise teachers' pay. He made deals with the legislature and got bills passed. Only when COVID-19 hit did he start becoming very controversial, banning mask and vaccine mandates and lockdowns. Once he started to think about running for president, he was all about race, gender, guns, and abortion. He also used executive power in ways no previous governor had, firing prosecutors he didn't like and flying migrants from Texas to Massachusetts, with a very brief stopover in Florida to make it look slightly legal. And, of course, there was the war against Disney.
A big problem for state legislators is that Trump really detests DeSantis and many of them are (outwardly) loyal to Trump. This means that when DeSantis wants some bill passed, Trump may intervene and tell the legislators to kill it. Then the question will arise of whom they are more afraid. Both Trump and DeSantis can be nasty and if Trump wants to destroy DeSantis so he can never rise from his ashes, he may order legislators to kill DeSantis' pet bills. It could get messy. (V)