Letters from a Floridian is a new newsletter by Dr. Richard Thripp of Volusia County, Florida, modeled after Professor Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American, with a focus on the corruption and authoritarian ambitions of Republicans in Florida—most notably Governor Ron DeSantis. Dr. Thripp was born and raised in the Daytona Beach area and is an accomplished educator, former Republican, husband and father, former congressional candidate, and former Chair of the Volusia County Democratic Party.
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The rising tide of dictatorship in Florida
May 18, 2022
Today, Governor Ron DeSantis' control of the legislature is so complete that the body basically functions as a rubber-stamping puppet of the executive branch. At the same time, decades of Republican appointments have resulted in state courts, including the Florida Supreme Court, being packed with friendly judges and justices unlikely to exert their powers of judicial review against the Republicans. In the spring of 2022, DeSantis has demonstrated this remarkable power by inducing the legislature to abandon their congressional redistricting powers to instead pass an extraordinary gerrymander directly provided by the governor's office. Florida circuit judge J. Layne Smith, a DeSantis appointee, struck down a small part of this map on May 12, 2022, pertaining to the elimination of congressman Al Lawson's majority-Black district in northern Florida. However, the DeSantis administration hopes to win on appeal.
Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, has identified Governor DeSantis' rhetoric and actions as imitative of authoritarian leaders throughout modern history. With the help of Fox News, DeSantis has been heralded as "America's governor," and Florida has been branded "the Free State of Florida," becoming a purported oasis for right-wing Trump supporters from the entire country—particularly New York and other New England states. This rhetoric was amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, where DeSantis and Republicans in the state legislature successfully pushed for mask "freedom" and banishment of other mitigation measures, leading to thousands of additional deaths particularly among like-minded COVID deniers, such as right-wing Daytona Beach radio host Marc Bernier.
Florida's history as a previously Democratic state was moored in the party's demised racist wing, predominant in the south prior to the 1960s civil rights legislation. After this, Florida has slowly trended more and more Republican, although Democrats remain competitive in statewide elections but repeatedly come up short. The 2000 election of George W. Bush was a turning point for Republican domination of Florida and of our national discourse. Aided by his brother, Governor Jeb Bush, President-Elect Bush won a questionable victory over Al Gore that hinged on being declared the winner in Florida by only 537 votes. Today, thanks to extreme gerrymandering and enormous corporate backing, Republicans manage to control 78 of 120 seats (65%) in the Florida House of Representatives and 24 of 40 seats (60%) in the Florida Senate, despite only recently surpassing Democrats in terms of voter registration and despite having won two statewide races in 2018 by less than half a percent (Governor Ron DeSantis won by only 0.4% and Senator Rick Scott by even less).
Professor Ben-Ghiat has noticed that the strongman persona of Governor DeSantis includes replicating Trump's language and hand gestures, but that it goes far beyond this. The Republican legislature of Florida has supported DeSantis' creation of a special police force that reports directly to him to investigate and prosecute purported voter and elections fraud—a hallmark of budding authoritarian regimes. The spouse of DeSantis' newly appointed Secretary of State Cord Byrd, whose department will oversee the upcoming August and November 2022 elections in Florida, is affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy movement and Capitol insurrection. Moreover, DeSantis has been enabled to dole out rewards and punishments to friends and enemies and to commission new laws and new programs of study to indoctrinate and subjugate students and educators, such as the "Stop W.O.K.E. Act" and the "Civic Literacy Excellence Initiative." Twelve school districts that previously required masks have been punished by a withholding of eligibility for additional funding that 55 other districts can apply for. This punishment includes the Volusia County School District, which during the delta variant’s surge only mustered a scantly enforced mask "mandate" for less than 2 school days. In March–April 2022, the school boards of Alachua and Volusia counties terminated their superintendents. Although the school boards had other reasons to do so, it should be noted that both superintendents were targeted by right-wing groups such as Moms for Liberty, which included chants of "Fire Fritz" (the former Volusia superintendent) at board meetings.
Thus, it is no wonder that so many Floridians feel oppressed and at risk of damaging their careers and putting a target on their backs by speaking out. Future letters in this newsletter will continue to explore these issues in an effort to stop Governor DeSantis' plan to become a future authoritarian President of the United States—a dream that his predecessor, Donald Trump, was unable to fully execute.
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Notes:
https://jaxtrib.org/2022/05/11/judge-strikes-down-part-of-florida-congressional-redistricting-map/
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/16/history-shows-trump-personality-cult-end-00024941
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/537_Votes
https://www.fldoe.org/academics/standards/subject-areas/social-studies/civics-lei.stml
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/16/governor-ron-desantis-florida-trump-410244
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/22/politics/governor-desantis-imperial-governorship-analysis/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/us/politics/ron-desantis-florida-politics.html