Look beyond DeSantis’ culture wars. He’s playing dangerous politics with who represents us | Opinion

With Iowa Republicans’ looming Jan. 15 caucuses less than six months away, America’s seemingly endless obsession with presidential politics is already heating up — as is the nation’s curiosity about what’s going on in Florida.

Despite polls indicating that most Americans would rather not see a repeat of 2020’s presidential race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, other polling within the respective political parties indicates that’s the choice we may well get.

At first glance this may seem odd, but GOP voters seem unfazed by Trump’s mounting legal troubles. Meanwhile, incumbent presidents rarely face challenges from within their own party, and — notwithstanding Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s longshot candidacy — Joe Biden has arranged the Democrats’ nominating processes on a schedule that virtually guarantees that he’ll be atop the ticket.

However, despite the growing sense of inevitability, it’s instructive to recall where we stood four years ago in the run-up to the 2020 election. Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders was on his way to winning the popular vote and lots of convention delegates in the first three contests. The eventual nominee, Biden, finished a distant fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire and a distant second in Nevada before Black voters rescued his candidacy in South Carolina’s Democratic primary.

So, despite the recent polling, there’s still no assurance that Donald Trump will get the GOP nomination. There are currently 14 other announced candidates, and a lot can happen during the debates, which are scheduled to begin on Aug. 23.

At this point, however, the leading challenger is Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s in the process of rebooting his stalled campaign, but is nonetheless polling better than any of the other GOP challengers.

DeSantis’ ranking second in this multi-candidate field has made him a prime target of criticism by Democrats across the country. They apparently sense that he could still become GOP nominee if Trump falters.

If DeSantis’ out-of-state critics more closely followed what’s going on within the state rather than looking for issues such as race, abortion, gender and “book bans,” all of which might resonate more widely, they’d find that there’s plenty to criticize.

For instance, DeSantis’ hyper partisanship is on display concerning two vacancies in the Florida House of Representatives. In those situations, the state Constitution requires governors to schedule special elections to fill the vacancies. The voting for the safe Republican seat will occur well ahead of the 2024 legislative session.

In contrast, voting in a district near Disney World — for a seat formerly held by a Republican but now perceived as likely to flip to the Democrats — won’t occur until Jan. 9, when the 2024 session will have been under way for a week and when all the pre-session committee work will be wrapped up.

The stalling denies representation for residents of that district. It also leads one to wonder if Republicans are feeling insecure when, if the two special elections result in a split decision, they’d still have an 84-36 majority in the House.

Stalling is also evident in the governor’s long delay in appointing a successor to fill the vacancy that occurred when Leon County Circuit Judge Kevin Carroll died on March 15. If DeSantis had acted promptly, his appointee would face the voters in 2024. If he waits until after Aug. 20, as now seems certain, his appointee wouldn’t face the voters until 2026.

This very liberal circuit based in the state capital is arguably more important than other circuits because many cases involving state constitutional issues are initially filed here. Then they move up on appeal to a Florida Supreme Court now stacked with DeSantis appointees perceived as unlikely to rule against him — unless a circuit judge’s ruling is so persuasive that it’d be deemed difficult to justify overturning it.

A key test will come when the state’s highest court hears the inevitable appeals concerning DeSantis’ aversion to open government and his recent assertion that he now has a newly discovered right of “executive privilege” that entitles him to refuse to divulge information that the state’s government-in-the-sunshine policies had previously held was public.

If DeSantis’ quest for the White House fails and he continues as Florida’s governor, will the Florida Supreme Court be his rubber stamp, like the Florida Legislature? If no checks and balances remain, will he continue to reshape higher education by ignoring the well-established search procedures and, instead, keep installing his political cronies as college presidents via searches shrouded in secrecy?

Worse, will Florida’s business climate — once rated as among the nation’s best thanks in part to DeSantis’ pandemic policies — take another hit now that DeSantis’ has picked a fight with the “woke” brewer of Bud Light?

There’s a lot for Floridians to ponder before the state’s presidential primary on March 19, 2024, if it comes down to a choice between whether they’d rather have DeSantis continue as governor or move to the White House and do for the United States what he’s been doing — sometimes good, sometimes worrisome — in Florida.

Meanwhile, it’s almost certain that Americans will at least get one kind of controversial sequel in 2024.

This story was originally published July 27, 2023 at 6:41 PM.