Bill Cotterell: DeSantis Gets Last Laugh

Gov. Ron DeSantis wasn’t on the ballot last week, but he won big.

Democrats laughed at the governor early this year when his presidential campaign sank without a ripple in Iowa. His critics gleefully predicted that DeSantis had scuttled his once-promising political career by badly over-reaching in his challenge to Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. 

Ah, yes, 2024 would be the turning point, the election when the Democratic Party would begin clawing its way back from a quarter-century of accelerating decline in Florida. Surely constitutional amendments restoring abortion rights and allowing recreational pot puffing would draw vast numbers of women and young people to the polls, Democrats told us, and happy days would be here again.

Well, no.

The dimensions of Florida’s election results extend far beyond the once-and-future president’s continued dominance. In the three times Trump has carried Florida, his victory margin has swelled from less than 150,000 in 2016 to nearly 1.5 million — growing apace with membership in the state GOP, which now has about 1 million more voters than the Democrats.

And it happened, mostly, on DeSantis’ watch. He gets credit — or blame, if you prefer — as the face of the Republican Party in Tallahassee.

His biggest trophies of the night were the twin defeats of constitutional amendments that would have overturned severe abortion restrictions DeSantis signed into law last year and allowed recreational use of marijuana. Both proposals, put on the ballot by public petition campaigns, got solid majorities but fell a few percentage points short of the 60 percent total required for amending the Constitution.

True, he had the easier task in each referendum, since the opposition only needed to muster 40 percent of the statewide vote to kill the amendments. But like it or not, DeSantis took a bold position against some popular initiatives and campaigned vigorously (and largely at public expense) for what he believed.

Elsewhere on election night, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott made it look easy in winning a second term in Washington. That was mildly surprising because Scott won his three previous statewide races — two for governor, one for the Senate — by slim margins. Scott also had the advantage of running against a one-term congresswoman who’d been defeated in her Miami-area district four years ago.

So DeSantis gets no points for that, but Scott’s victory is at least partly owed to the Republican behemoth the governor was instrumental in building statewide.

One of two state attorneys DeSantis suspended from office for being too “woke” was reinstated by Central Florida voters. But the other lost to the woman DeSantis appointed to replace him.

Republicans maintained their supermajorities in the state House and Senate, so DeSantis will have a reliable rubber stamp for whatever he wants. Aside from a lot of woofing about knocking off Scott statewide, the Democrats had some hope of flipping the seat held by U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna in Pinellas County and beating state Sen. Corey Simon in the Tallahassee area, but both Republicans won.

The Democrats have to be used to losing by now, and the near miss on abortion seemed to sting the most. The marijuana amendment was bought and paid for by, mostly, one giant pot company but abortion was up for votes in 10 states, and Democrats hoped to ride the issue back to some measure of relevance.

State Rep. Anna Eskamani of Orlando, one of the governor’s most-prominent Democratic critics in the Legislature, said getting 57 percent for the abortion amendment proved that the public rejects the GOP-passed law that largely prevents abortions after six weeks of gestation.

“We must demand that the Florida Legislature repeal the ban (the six-week law),” she said. “We are the  majority, and we’re not going anywhere.”

There’s no chance the Legislature that gave DeSantis the six-week abortion law will have a sudden change of heart next year, despite the clear demonstration of public will. But Eskamani is right, for now, about the Democrats not going anywhere.

Like a car stuck in neutral, they can make a lot of noise — that’s their job — but they won’t get any traction in the last two years of DeSantis’ time in the governor’s mansion.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at wrcott43@aol.com