Ron DeSantis has begun his campaign to be re-elected Florida governor in 2022, a campaign most observers expect to presage a campaign for the White House in 2024.
At a press conference this morning, the Republican said paperwork filed regarding next year’s gubernatorial contest was simply a formality. Most polling makes DeSantis a strong contender for the Republican presidential nomination – if you remove Donald Trump from the equation, of course.
On Monday DeSantis, who has chaneled Trump and Trumpism very effectively since winning election in Florida in 2018, also previewed a key campaign theme – or, well, repeated a key theme of his everyday approach to political battle – by taking a shot at a Biden administration rule that says businesses with 100 or more employees must demand from those employees either vaccination against Covid-19 or weekly testing.
“No cop, no firefighter, no nurse, nobody should be losing their jobs because of these jabs,” DeSantis told reporters. “We have got to stand up for people and protect their jobs and protect their livelihoods.”
For the moment no cop, firefighter, nurse or anyone else will be losing their jobs because of the Biden rule, which was temporarily stayed by a conservative judge in New Orleans on Saturday. The administration says it is confident it will prevail.
Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried are among Democrats who would like to challenge DeSantis for governor in Florida.
Fried, the highest-placed Democrat in the state, as agriculture commissioner, has often clashed with DeSantis publicly, notably over posthumous honours for the conservative shock jock Rush Limbaugh.
Crist was a Republican when he was governor in the 2000s – he’s now a Democratic member of the US House.
No Democrat has won a gubernatorial election in Florida since 1994.
