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| Florida Governor Ron DeSantis spoke before a group of local citizens on Tuesday, May 10th at Jackson's Steakhouse in Downtown Pensacola |
Yesterday morning I had the opportunity to attend a breakfast event featuring Governor Ron DeSantis.
I was invited to attend the event-- and the room was filled with about 50 other invitees-- consisting of locally elected officials, several state representatives, several political candidates, local and regional business owners, law enforcement officers, community leaders, individual citizens, and several college presidents.
After some brief socializing among the attendees, host Collier Merrill, owner of the event venue Jackson's Steakhouse, gave a warm welcome to the folks in attendance. He began by introducing the event's host committee and several attendees including the mayor who was seated up front. Upon being introduced first, Mayor Grover Robinson rushed up front to shake Gov. DeSantis's hand.
"Okay, no one else do that when I introduce you!" Merill quipped after Robinson returned to his seat to some chuckles in the room.
Then Governor DeSantis took the mike and began giving a very well timed, fact and data-filled stump speech to the assembled group lasting about 25 minutes or so. I was surprised at the amount of time from the twenty-five minutes the governor spent on issues of education and school boards. I was glad to hear that. It was also interesting to watch literally everyone stop eating and put down their foks and knives when he started his speech.
He began with The Walt Disney issue that has been all over the press lately.
"Listen, Disney wishes they could get a mulligan on some of their statements about our legislature and our state--they've lost about $60Billion in Market Capitalization since we passed the [Reddy Creek] law." He went on. "They're a California company and they think they can tell us how to run our Florida schools?--that's not happening!" He also mentioned some of the Zoom meetings among Disney Executives held in the lead up to their very public statements vowing to support overturning Florida's Parental Rights in Education Bill--urging folks who hadn't yet seen these videos to watch them. "Everyone who hasn't seen those should watch them" DeSantis stated.
Then he transitioned to the election, discussing his assessment of the 2018 election, in which he defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum by a slim margin. "Look, we dodged a bullet in 2018--imagine if we had not won that election? We would have been locked down with the rest of the other Democrat states in the COVID Pandemic and we would have lost jobs and businesses. In this [2022] election we have the opportunity to win and not just win but to win big--which is not just a win for me but also a win for the state and other Republicans and conservative candidates in the election all across Florida. Congress, the state legislature, and local school boards--this election is an opportunity to win all of this-and win big"
He talked about the growth of the state, particularly from Blue states. "Listen, a lot of people have asked me about people moving here from Democrat states, and the concern is this will somehow change our state to a Democrat state. What we are seeing is the opposite of that, conservative people and businesses are moving here because they like our tax structure and they like the fact that we are the beachead for freedom during the pandemic when other states--even nearby Republican states--were locked down. He continued "What we are seeing with voter registrations is that there are fewer registered Democrats now and more Republicans --meaning like-minded citizens are coming to Florida in bigger numbers. And we are also getting some Independents and Democrats to switch to Republican as they like the way we are running things here in Florida."
He took a good bit of time touting Florida schools: "Look, our schools never locked down when other states' schools did. We kept schools open and we kept kids in schools and as a result our perfomance compared to every other non-rural state puts us at #1. It's because we kept our students in school where they need to be to learn."
He also touted Florida's fiscally austere stewardship. "We are doing a great job with our budget compared with these Democrat states." he stated flatly. "We have a $100 Billion Dollar budget--a state like New York has 3 million fewer citizens and budget that is double ours, double, $200 Billion. No, Florida is doing it right and we also have reserves coming out of this session that total nearly $20 Billion Dollars." He continued "Look, we might go into a recession. I hope we don't, but with this crazy inflation coming down on us from Washington, we could. If we do, we have reserves and we can plug the hole and carry on."
After he completed his speech to a room that was literally silent and hanging on every word, he took a few questions.
The Mayor thanked him for his leadership and discussed NW Florida's need for the state's continued assistance with infrastructure.
One gentelman behind me shouted out to the governor his approval. "I'm one of those transplants Governor. I brought my company down here two years ago from Louisville"
Another question came from an attendee asking about the 2024 Presidential election. DeSantis didn't take the bait on that loaded question, though, instead pivoting back to 2022's election and the recent legislation Florida has passed tightening security at elections and establishing an election integrity unit.
"Florida will have fair elections--we won't be like those other states that take two weeks to count the votes after election night" he continued "We counted 99% of all the votes on election night by midnight. Other states take weeks. And if you take that long, and a candidate is winning on election night and then after weeks of additional votes being counted that candidate loses--it calls the election into question" He went on "We've done away with unattended ballot boxes and 'ballot harvesting' in Florida, we're not having that. In other states they have these boxes all over the place and people stuffing ballots into them in the middle of the night. You've got other states mailing out ballots to people who didn't request them, we're not going to do that here. And we are going to require a photo ID to vote and out elections are going to be secure" he concluded
After the questions the Governor concluded his remarks to sustained round of applause. He spent a little time speaking with some attendees and taking photos with others. It was a very short time later that he was whisked out of the venue and the room cleared out. It was good to hear from the governor in person in Pensacola. I suspect there will be many more stops here prior to the general election in November.
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