Florida Democrats Pledge To Help Stop DeSantis From Getting Anywhere Near Presidency

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With Ron DeSantis, the current Republican governor of Florida, expected to formally announce his campaign for president on Wednesday in what looked set to be a conversation hosted on Twitter’s onsite audio platform with Elon Musk, Florida Democratic Party chairperson Nikki Fried released a statement outlining her organization’s unsurprising ambitions to help shut that down.

Fried herself was a candidate for governor in the 2022 Democratic primary in Florida, though she lost to Charlie Crist — who then lost to DeSantis in the general election by a massive margin. DeSantis, though, has seen signs of struggle in any efforts to expand his political reach beyond Florida. He remains mostly well behind Donald Trump in surveys amid the Republican presidential primary for the 2024 race, and in surveys pitting DeSantis against Biden, he sometimes is able to notch a win, but there’s nothing in the realm of some kind of consistent landslide victory. He’s generally pretty close to exactly where Trump finds himself in many polls against Biden, who — barring some calamity — will probably be the Democratic nominee again in 2024. Biden already confirmed he’s running for another term.

In Florida, DeSantis has led policy initiatives like restrictions on discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, new limits on abortion, tight rules around key parts of elections like the usage of drop boxes for mail-in ballots, attacks on the ability to discuss issues like white privilege in educational and workplace environments, and even a bathroom bill, meaning restrictions on the restrooms that transgender individuals can use. Though some clamored for extending those restrictions to private businesses, the framework DeSantis signed covered locations like government buildings and public schools.

“DeSantis has spent his entire career using Floridians’ lives as a stepping stool to cater to the MAGA base,” Fried said in her statement. “We’ve already seen how catastrophic it is for working families when DeSantis is in office, with Floridians facing unaffordable housing, health care, and property insurance costs… [We] will fight tooth and nail to make sure he doesn’t take his extreme thirst for power to the White House.” Check out the full remarks below: