Please Stop Referring to Him as the “Popular” Governor of Florida

Dear Members of the Media,

The governor of Florida is a bigoted authoritarian. He ran as a bigot and strongman. He governs as a bigot and strongman. He subverts and undermines democratic institutions, illegally punishes his political opponents, and signs patently unconstitutional bills into law. His response to the COVID-19 crisis was an objective disaster. His administration has been an objective failure for Florida.

The governor is a grave threat to democracy, yet headline after headline and tweet after tweet insist on referring to him as the “popular” leader of Florida. Please stop.

Before we break down why this line of dialogue is dangerous and inaccurate, it is worth going through a laundry list of the governor’s most egregious offenses against democracy and fundamental freedoms.

• The governor’s top legislative priority in 2021 was a law he called “anti-riot” but is more accurately an unconstitutional restriction on the right to protest his agenda. (A federal court struck down this law.)
• In that same legislative session he signed into law an enormous restriction on voting rights aimed at suppressing Black votes.
• Florida now has an election police force to investigate, by the governor’s own admission, almost non-existent voter fraud. So far the force has punished people who were told by their local government that they could legally vote.
• The Florida legislature’s racist, gerrymandered electoral maps were not racist enough for the governor so he redrew them himself.
• He punished school districts that defied his ridiculous ban on mask mandates in schools at the height of the COVID-19 crisis.
• Disney was stripped of its self-governing authority because it issued a tepid pushback against the governor’s unconstitutional “Don’t Say Gay” law.
• Speaking of “Don’t Say Gay,” that law prevents teachers from supporting their LGBTQ students and opens up civil liability for doing so.
• Another of the governor’s more outrageous initiatives, the “Stop WOKE Act” (his words, for real) prevents discussion of racial and cultural diversity in workplaces- including private businesses.
• The governor’s attack on education stretches from Kindergarten through high ed. Last year he signed a law that surveys the ideology of university faculty and students and threatens to cut funding if he finds the results of those surveys objectionable.
• In addition to punishing Disney and the “Stop WOKE Act,” the supposedly pro-business governor of Florida through executive order forbade cruise ships and private businesses from protecting their staff and clients with public health measures.
• An elected state attorney was removed from duty and replaced with one of the governor’s lackeys for writing that the state’s looming abortion ban was unconstitutional and unenforceable.
• State attorneys are not the only ones who are unsafe from the governor’s unconstitutional wrath. Elected school board members in Broward County are being removed and replaced with MAGA cult members.

The above list only includes the governor of Florida’s most outlandish crimes against fundamental rights and democratic principles. It is an enumeration of offenses straight out of a dictator’s playbook. The governor likes to refer to The Sunshine State as the “free” state of Florida and such rhetoric plays well with Floridians. They are an independent bunch.

From the outside, Florida is often viewed as a lawless place drunk on Florida Man tropes. The presence of the former president, who is a staunch ally of Florida’s governor, adds fuel to this narrative. In the case of the former president, the term popular applies. He is on billboards and signs around every turn. One can go scarcely a block without seeing a flag with his slogan or face on it.

The forty-fifth president of the United States can do no wrong in Florida. He polls well versus any potential challengers for the Republican nomination. If he is not in prison, there is a very good chance he wins the state in the 2024 presidential election. But, he is an anomaly.

Florida is a purple state. Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by about 200,000 in a state of fourteen million voters. Almost four million Floridians are independents. The current governor of Florida was elected in 2018 by a margin of 0.4%. That was before his mishandling of the pandemic led to Florida having the highest number of COVID deaths in the nation.

Every Floridian knows someone who was hospitalized or worse due to COVID-19. The governor mocked people for wearing masks, berated kids on camera for protecting themselves, and punished schools and businesses for taking care of their people.

He is in a statistical dead heat with former Republican Charlie Crist, a man who has fallen twice in statewide races, including his own attempt at being a two term governor. Crist is no firebrand but he looks like the oratorical lovechild of Barack Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. compared with the current governor and he has a very good chance of beating the incumbent.

Florida’s wannabe dictator was thoroughly waxed on the debate stage in 2018. Andrew Gillum landed jab after jab while his opponent winced, whined, and retreated. Like all bullies, he shrinks from an actual fight. He possesses none of the carnival barker charm or comedic timing of his MAGA king.

At the end of the day, in a close race, the candidate voters would most like to have a beer with wins. The governor loses that competition against any politician in the country. He’s a smarmy cry baby who speaks more like a serious joyless judge than a candidate for public office.

The harsh reality is that the current governor was elected in the middle of the racist MAGA movement by running a bigoted campaign against a Black man. It was a perfect storm in his favor but the storm is passing. The forty-fifth president is under investigation for several serious crimes. The Democrat party is riding a wave of victories. The child who occupies the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee is poised to lose.

Members of the media, the next time you sit down to write a headline, or in any way describe the governor of Florida, think twice before calling him popular. Referring to him this way without basis advances the idea that America’s most dangerous elected official has the broad support of his constituents. This is false. Like all incumbents he has some support but to assume he is going to win this thing running away is to ignore the facts while stoking dangerous fires.

Sincerely,

A Lifelong Floridian