One of the biggest losers during Tuesday's primary elections was Governor Ron DeSantis. He lost at least 11 of the school board races he endorsed, won six with six more headed to a runoff two years ago, 25 of his endorsed school board candidates won. WFSU spoke with Nate Monroe, Florida columnist with the USA Today Network. He recently wrote an op-ed about DeSantis’ his political standings after the primaries.
Q: So Nate, what does Tuesday's results mean for DeSantis?
A: I mean, I think in some ways, it confirms what a lot of us had already suspected about his tenure as governor, which is that he is a lame duck. This is a guy, as you said in the intro, who had enormous political potency after his reelection two years ago, and heading into a presidential campaign, that presidential campaign flamed out, he has ended up endorsing Donald Trump.
He really emerged from that campaign, I think, a very diminished figure that coinciding with kind of entering the back half of his governorship, I think what we saw was, you know, again, a political figure who just really lacks the potency he did not so long ago.
Q: How do you think his current diminished status, like you're saying, will impact his sway during the legislative sessions that remain in his tenure.
A: You know, that is a really good question. The legislature has been surprisingly timid towards the governor's office for several years, and this really, even goes back to Rick Scott. The legislature just does not buck at the governor's office the way that it did in kind of a different era of Florida politics. But certainly, one lesson that they should be taking away from from Tuesday's results.
I mean, you touched on the school board races, which you know for good reason that those have become cultural battlegrounds, but DeSantis is losses extended beyond school board races. There were appointees of his who lost reelection in Florida. There was a judge in Baker County. He appointed Baker County as a rural, deeply red County just outside Jacksonville, Donald Trump won this county with like, more than 80% of the vote. It's one of the most Republican areas in the state. DeSantis’ appointed judge lost the election to an assistant public defender. In St. Johns County, another deeply red part of Northeast Florida, a former official in the DeSantis administration, running with DeSantis endorsement, lost a Republican primary for a state House seat.
I mean, this kind of stuff happened all across Florida, which is a very long way of saying legislators can certainly take away from this that DeSantis imprint on a race is, I would say, at best, kind of a non-factor. There is no political reason to be afraid of the governor.
Q: There are some education related stories in Florida recently, specifically the books being thrown out at New College of Florida and former University of Florida President Ben Sasse doing exorbitant spending before he resigned, that have garnered national attention to DeSantis higher education appointees. What's your main takeaway from those situations?
A: You know Richard Corcoran at New College and Ben Sasse at the University of Florida, they shared commonalities as university presidents, the obvious one being, these are politicians. Although that's not unprecedented, it signaled a kind of change in the way that the college system under DeSantis was looking at who had wanted to run these schools. It felt like a real turn away from the kind of traditional, deeply experienced higher education administrators to politicians.
Not surprisingly, politicians do politician things. Corcoran and Sasse have been lightning rods for criticism. Sasse was greeted by protests the day he arrived at UF. He wrote caustic op eds in the Wall Street Journal, and sort of seemed to really relish presenting himself as a kind of alternative to the leadership at Ivy League schools. Richard Corcoran kind of does much of the same at New College. He has been proudly converting that liberal arts school into a very kind of explicit conservative learning institution.
So, they've just been lightning rods for criticism. And these two story lines, I think, kind of illustrate the perils of appointing politicians to these kinds of jobs.