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Anyone who crosses Donald Trump in any way can expect a swift punishment, often a career-ending punishment. Just ask former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. But Trump isn't the only politician who could be mistaken for a mafia boss. When Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) ran for president, he was a small fish in a big pond. Now back in Florida, he is a big fish in a much smaller (alligator-infested) pond. And he hasn't forgotten which Florida politicians have endorsed Donald Trump. In fact he has a list of them and is about to act on it.
State senators and state representatives are especially vulnerable if they have endorsed Trump. Many of them have pet projects in their districts that they care about deeply and want funded. DeSantis knows this and he is not a man who lets bygones be bygones. He is planning to cut hostile legislators' projects out of the state budget. Florida has a line-item veto, so DeSantis can punish legislators who didn't support him with surgical precision. Probably they didn't think about that when they supported Trump. Or maybe they did, but felt they were caught in a vise and supporting Trump meant losing their pet projects but supporting DeSantis meant facing a Trump-endorsed primary opponent. It's a tough call.
The 14 lawmakers who supported Trump have good reason to fear DeSantis. They have seen him in action for 5 years now. In 2022, he made the president of the state Senate, Wilton Simpson, stand on stage with him while he cut $3.1 billion out of the state budget, including $50 million to widen a road in the Senator's district. Later, when Simpson became commissioner of agriculture, he hacked at Simpson's priorities. State Sen. Joe Gruters (R), a long-time Trump ally, said that DeSantis cut millions of dollars of funding for his district on account of his support for Trump. DeSantis denies this and merely says he supports fiscal responsibility. Absolutely no one is saying that DeSantis is suffering from memory loss.
Once in a while, politics trumps revenge, though. State Rep. Randy Fine (R), the only Jewish Republican in the state legislature, flipped from DeSantis to Trump during the campaign. He asked for $20 million for security at Jewish day schools after the Hamas attack on Israel. Even though Fine wrote a scathing op-ed in The Washington Times attacking DeSantis for not doing enough to combat antisemitism in Florida, DeSantis, who is extremely pro-Israel, will probably grant his request as politically expedient.
Nevertheless, the majority of state legislators endorsed DeSantis and are probably now breathing a sigh of relief as DeSantis won't go after their projects and districts. Some of them even flew to Iowa to campaign for him. With Trump, loyalty goes only one way. With DeSantis, that is not necessarily the case and he could reward people who were with him when he needed it. (V)