Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been actively showcasing his state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, aiming to create some distance between himself and former President Donald Trump.
This shift in strategy has garnered the attention of individuals like Hank Miller, a 64-year-old Iowa farmer, who began following Governor DeSantis during the pandemic. DeSantis was frequently featured on Fox News, emphasizing the reopening of his state.
Despite voting for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020, Miller now intends to support DeSantis. He cites disappointment with Trump’s reliance on Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, whom DeSantis has criticized and suggested should be prosecuted.
“I appreciated DeSantis’ pandemic response,”
Miller expressed at a coffee shop in Grundy Center, Iowa, where DeSantis campaigned.
“He didn’t resort to sweeping shutdowns.”
Although Governor DeSantis lags far behind Trump in Iowa and national polls, he is clearly banking on the prevalence of such sentiments among Republican primary voters. His record on Covid-19 stands in stark contrast to that of the former president, whose administration played a pivotal role in developing the now-unpopular coronavirus vaccines within the Republican base. The virus could potentially become a significant wedge issue for DeSantis, who has at times struggled to make a compelling case for why he would make a superior president compared to Trump, the current Republican front-runner. However, there are uncertainties about whether a pandemic that many Americans perceive as over will resonate with the electorate in 2024.
Recent spikes in Covid-19 cases offer DeSantis an opportunity to reinforce his argument. In response to the increase, a handful of schools, universities, and hospitals have reinstated mask mandates for students, patients, and employees. DeSantis and other Republicans view this as evidence that the Covid-19 debate, framed as a civil rights battle, is far from concluded.
During his visit to Iowa, DeSantis emphasized this point, telling reporters outside a coffee shop in Grundy Center, “When you have people returning to restrictions and mandates, this demonstrates that this issue is far from resolved. If we don’t establish accountability with my administration, they will continue to attempt this.”
Since resuming his campaign trail activities after Hurricane Idalia struck Florida last month, DeSantis has made Covid-19 his primary focus. He has made numerous appearances on conservative media outlets, praising his pandemic policies and conducting interviews with local news media in Iowa and New Hampshire. He even held a news conference in Jacksonville, in his role as governor, to highlight his handling of the virus.
“In Florida, we have not allowed the dystopian visions of paranoid hypochondriacs to dictate our health policies or our state,” DeSantis declared during the Jacksonville event, which had the atmosphere of a campaign rally in the absence of formal policy announcements. DeSantis is capitalizing on a perceived shift in the national mood regarding the virus, even among Democrats. According to an August poll by Yahoo News and YouGov, only 12 percent of Americans say they typically wear masks in public. President Biden, after First Lady Jill Biden’s recent Covid-19 diagnosis, made light of not wearing a mask at the White House, even though he had tested negative. He was advised to continue wearing a mask for 10 days.
As DeSantis elevates the Covid-19 issue once again, the Trump campaign has accused him of hypocrisy, pointing out that he did implement shutdown orders and praised Dr. Fauci at one point. However, while many Republican governors initiated state lockdowns at the outset of the pandemic, DeSantis was among the first to fully reopen.
Trump, who was consistently skeptical of mask-wearing and other public health measures, has also begun discussing Covid-19 restrictions during his campaign appearances.
“The radical Democrats are aggressively trying to revive Covid hysteria,” Trump stated at a rally in Rapid City, South Dakota, on Friday. He has downplayed Dr. Fauci’s role in his administration.
Nevertheless, as Republican candidates attempt to resurrect the pandemic as a political issue, they may encounter a sense of exhaustion among voters.
During DeSantis’s Saturday bus tour in Iowa, several voters conveyed in interviews that the pandemic was not a top concern for them as they headed into 2024, even if they admired the governor’s record. Dave Sweeney, a retired farmer considering support for DeSantis, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina, or entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, remarked, “We don’t need to hear about it. It’s not really an issue anymore.”
It’s possible that audiences in states like New Hampshire, which imposed stricter public health measures than Iowa, may be more receptive to this message.
Leading up to his presidential campaign, DeSantis signed a series of public health laws in Florida, including ones prohibiting mask and vaccine mandates. He also initiated a state grand jury investigation into potential “misconduct” by scientists and vaccine manufacturers, though no charges have been filed.
Despite criticisms that his Covid-19 policies resulted in a disproportionate number of coronavirus deaths during the Delta wave in 2021, after he ceased promoting vaccines, DeSantis maintains that his approach protected Floridians from government overreach and sustained the economy. Such criticisms are unlikely to carry much weight in a Republican primary where many voters downplay the severity of a virus that has claimed over a million American lives since 2020.
“I think it’s just like a common cold,” opined Roger Hibdon, a 32-year-old engineer from Grundy Center. “I’m not concerned about it.”
