DeSantis Democrats

The rise of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is the political story of the year. Thus, I have followed it. And it seems to be accompanying the declining influence of President Donald Trump. Dare I say that many readers have greeted these facts with considerable chagrin, but reality is what it is. I did not engineer it.

The following analysis comes from Olivia Reingold, at the Free Press site.

By my lights, Gov. DeSantis has succeeded because he rose above ideology. He is a practical man, someone who knows his brief, who lets you know that he is in charge, and who takes charge-- like a competent executive. He allows you to believe what you want to believe. He gets things done. He governs. Thus, he is offering a home for disaffected Florida Democrats:

Williams is one of the DeSantis Democrats: Florida voters who, until recently, identified as Democrats but in November opted to reelect Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis—he who resisted the Covid lockdowns, tangled with Disney, and governed with a record budget surplus—in a landslide. 

It’s unclear how many DeSantis Democrats there are: DeSantis’ vote count jumped from roughly 4 million in 2018 to 4.6 million in 2022. Lots of those voters are presumably independents or Republicans who didn’t vote last time. 

But some are disaffected Democrats alienated from the party they once belonged to. That’s evident from the longtime Democratic strongholds that DeSantis flipped, including Hillsborough, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, where DeSantis skyrocketed from a 21-point loss in 2018 to an 11-point win in 2022—a net gain of more than 30 percentage points. 

DeSantis is attracting disaffected Democrats because he is doing the job-- in today’s America this is a novelty. Less drama; more results.

Democratic Palm Beach County Commissioner Dave Kerner says he identifies as a DeSantis Democrat, “and I can tell you I’m not the only one.” 

“As I traveled around the state and throughout my county over the past several years, at first it was quiet, you know, ‘This governor is doing a great job’—and this is amongst my Democratic colleagues,” he told me. “Then I started hearing it more and hearing it more. And then I saw my own county—which has been majority blue throughout probably its entire history—we saw more people vote for the Republican candidate over the Democratic candidate.” 

In 2022, he says, he backed DeSantis because he’s not anti-cop. And because, Kerner says, he makes things happen. “It wasn’t necessarily about partisan identity but the man himself—even if you didn’t agree with his policies, the way that he was so effective,” he says.

 Of course deSantis Democrats cringe at the ideological conformity imposed by today’s coastal Democratic elites.

Like the Reagan Democrats, the DeSantis Democrats feel condescended to, abandoned by the progressive elites who bankroll Democratic candidates and shape the party’s agenda.

Then, like now, inflation was out of control. Then, like now, the leadership in Washington seemed tired, out of ideas. Then, like now, the country seemed adrift. In 1980, America was losing ground to the communists in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, to the mullahs in Iran. In 2022, it is gripped by a polarization and economic stratification that have been building for years, with eight in ten Americans dissatisfied with how things are going, and two in five fearful a second civil war is on the horizon.

But the DeSantis Democrats, unlike Reagan Democrats, who were mostly white with blue-collar jobs and high school degrees, are not an easily identifiable species. They are not confined to any class, constituency or ethnic category—although Democratic pollsters say Latinos were more likely to flip for DeSantis. They stretch across the city, from Little Havana east to Miami Beach, and south toward Palmetto Bay, and north, to the Cubans and Dominicans and Colombians in Hialeah. DeSantis led the Latino vote by almost 20 points, according to CNN exit polling.

As the old saying goes-- actions speak louder than words:

To the two dozen Floridians interviewed for this story, the governor is more defined by his actions than his ideology: He kept the schools open and taxes low. Period. Even the culture-war bombs he’s tossed—like going head to head with the Magic Kingdom over the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill—served to squeeze tax dollars out of a massive corporation. 

While Reagan was a mythical figure, a movie star who trafficked in big, sweeping ideas, who liked to tell big, Hollywood-esque stories about himself and America, DeSantis is none of that. When you talk to people who like DeSantis, they use words like “effective” and “chief executive”—boring words, words that feel, in this moment of great national stasis, kind of reassuring. 

The thing about DeSantis the Operator is his voters don’t feel judged. No one feels like he’s wagging his finger at them, telling them to mask up, or stay six feet away, or pray, or eat vegan, or be inclusive. 

As I say, it's not about the persona or the personality or the attendant drama. DeSantis succeeds because he does the job.