The governor has additionally taken steps to shore up his political standing round his dealing with of the pandemic, summoning reporters to the State Capitol on Wednesday to blast — full with a slide-show presentation titled “FACTS VS. SMEARS” — a report in CBS Information’s “60 Minutes” that didn’t have adequate proof to show a pay-to-play dynamic between Mr. DeSantis’s administration and Covid-19 vaccine distribution for white and rich Floridians.
His file on the virus is, in reality, blended. By some measures, Florida has had a mean efficiency in a pandemic that isn’t but over. But his selections helped preserve hospitals from turning into overwhelmed with coronavirus sufferers. He highlights that he helped companies survive and allowed kids to go to high school.
What his critics can not overlook, nonetheless, is how he resisted some key public well being pointers. An op-ed article endorsing masks that his workers drafted beneath his identify in mid-July was by no means authorised by the governor for publication. The restrictions he now dismisses as ineffective, corresponding to native masks mandates and curfews, which specialists say in reality labored, had been imposed most often by Democratic mayors with whom he hardly speaks.
Given the methods folks admire or despise him, nonetheless, the nuances appear irrelevant.
He infuriates passionate critics who imagine he operates shrewdly to are likely to his personal pursuits. They concern that method contributed to complicated public well being messages, vaccine favoritism for the rich and the deaths of about 34,000 Floridians. “DeathSantis,” they name him. (Mr. DeSantis declined repeated interview requests for this text.)
However at virtually each flip, Mr. DeSantis has seized the criticism as a chance to grow to be an avatar for nationwide conservatives who relish the governor’s combativeness. He can rating factors that his potential Republican rivals within the minority in Washington, together with Mr. Rubio and Senator Rick Scott, his predecessor as governor, can not.
“He’s taken the improper method on a few of our most important points, Covid being at the start, but inside Republican political circles, he’s thought-about to be the front-runner for the White Home,” mentioned former Consultant David Jolly, an ex-Republican who’s flirting with a doable run for governor. “He’s labored his hand completely.”