During a debate this week, Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis, who’s running for re-election against Democratic pick Charlie Crist, wouldn’t directly answer Crist’s question of whether he would commit to serving a full term of four years if he wins in November.
Serving that term in full would preclude running for president in 2024, suggesting DeSantis is keeping his options open — although he could also point to the debate rules, to which the candidates agreed, as an excuse. Rules specified they wouldn’t ask each other questions. From there, Crist tore into DeSantis’s record in heated, direct terms — and members of the audience loudly piped up in the Democrat’s favor. Among other issues, the candidates discussed the migrant flights DeSantis’s administration recently orchestrated taking dozens of vulnerable people from Texas to Massachusetts with Florida taxpayer dollars under deceptive pretenses. Migrants were presented with prospects of help with housing and work. The DeSantis administration doesn’t appear to have set up anything. They didn’t even alert authorities where the migrants later arrived.
“I thought what the governor did was a horrible, political stunt,” Crist said. “We have an immigration problem. We have a problem at the border. We need to secure the border. I agree with all of that. But it doesn’t mean that you use Florida taxpayers’ dollars to charter two jets, go to Texas, lie to people to get them onto planes, fly them up to the northern part of our country, and one of them’s a one-year-old baby. Another is a pregnant woman. You’re willing to use people like that — in this case, they were Hispanics, Venezuelan in particular — and have them as props for your political game?.. You can change policy and do what’s right to secure the border by having comprehensive immigration reform. That’s what I voted for in Congress. When you were in Congress, you wouldn’t do it, because you want to keep this issue alive. You want to have it as a wedge issue.”
Members of the crowd loudly applauded for Crist when he finished his comments. As people kept cheering, DeSantis began trying to tie the situation at the border to actions of the Biden administration, to which he also sought to closely associate Crist, who until recently was a Democratic Congressman from southern Florida, which was just the latest stop in a political career that also includes a previous stint as Florida governor, a post he held as a Republican.
In that particular answer, DeSantis only mentioned a single specific policy, pushing for the re-implementation of a program from the Trump era under which individuals seeking asylum waited in Mexico, in sometimes dangerous conditions. The Department of Homeland Security announced an imminent end to the program in August after a federal judge lifted his injunction forcing its continuance. After that judge first demanded the program remain despite officials moving to eliminate it, thousands more migrants “remained in” Mexico throughout roughly the first half of this year.
DeSantis’s comments also received cheers. As could be expected, the candidates also discussed abortion. Ron presented a remarkably shortsighted argument in favor of limiting access to reproductive healthcare. “I understand, not everyone’s gonna be born in perfect circumstances, but I would like to see everybody have a shot,” DeSantis said. Although it’s unclear precisely how far DeSantis is willing to go on abortion restrictions, a pregnancy at six weeks simply doesn’t feature a fetus that scientifically even is “somebody.” What about cases involving rape, incest, otherwise abusive relationships, potentially dangerous health complications for parents, a complete lack of the financial resources to care for a child, or something similar? To DeSantis, are these struggling people simply suffering from imperfect circumstances?
“I don’t want to ban abortion,” Crist said. “I want to make sure we keep a women’s right to choose available to the women of the state of Florida. I want to make sure that we don’t have a governor in the future who wouldn’t even allow exceptions for rape or incest.” He also mentioned a recently discussed case of a young girl who was a victim of incest and was pregnant. “Because of the bill you signed, Governor, she had to go two to three states in order to take care of this issue,” Crist added on Monday night. “That’s not compassionate leadership. That’s not doing the right thing. That’s not even having a heart. That’s callous. It’s barbaric, and it’s wrong, and Florida deserves better.”
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