How Ron DeSantis is turning Florida into a right-wing laboratory

How has DeSantis succeeded in this environment? The typical formula has been to act as a moderate, but DeSantis has openly embraced the hard right.

He has long been a Trump supporter and was a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus when he was in Congress. He got elected governor in 2018 by winning Trump’s endorsement and running a tongue-in-cheek ad with a jaunty tune and DeSantis exhorting his oldest child to “build the wall” with toy blocks.

But he governed his first year by trying to lie low.

Then came the pandemic. He tried to keep the state open, and he seemed to take criticisms of his looser pandemic policies personally. He started to score political points by portraying himself as a foe of the “corporate media” that conveyed virus restrictions endorsed by public health experts.

You can talk to independents, even Democrats, who may not necessarily vote for him, but they remember the lasting impact DeSantis’s policies had on their children, that they could go to school. They are happy they were able to keep their businesses open.