Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tells Peoria crowd that Biden’s reelection would leave U.S. ‘unrecognizable’

Ahead of the expected launch of a bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned a central Illinois audience of GOP faithful Friday night that if President Joe Biden is reelected and other Democrats also win office, “the country is going to be unrecognizable.”

In a speech of about 40 minutes inside an airy ballroom at the Peoria Civic Center, DeSantis blamed Democrats for “obliterating communities throughout this country,” including Chicago, while promoting his own policies in the areas including education and criminal justice that are meant to counter a “woke ideology.”

He boasted about his landslide reelection win last year against a Democratic challenger, and proclaimed his policies superior to those in other states, especially Illinois.

“We have no state income tax. You should try it sometime,” DeSantis said to applause from the more than 1,000 attendees at the annual Lincoln Day fundraising dinner of the Peoria and Tazewell County GOP organizations. He did not note that Florida’s lack of a state income tax long predated his administration.

Outside the Civic Center, dozens of protesters gathered before DeSantis’s speech, with some holding signs calling him a “racist” and a “fascist,” while others hoisted gay pride flags as an apparent criticism of what they view as his anti-LGBTQ policies.

Inside the arena, the Florida governor rallied fellow Republicans to have “the courage to lead”

“Where we find ourselves I think is at a major crossroads. Things are going in the wrong direction. I think we all know that. But they could get a lot worse. If the left is able to win and sweep in 2024, I think the country is going to be unrecognizable,” said DeSantis. “I believe if 2024 is a referendum on Joe Biden, his policies and his failures, and if we as Republicans offer a positive vision going forward in a better direction, Republicans will win across the board.”

DeSantis did not mention his prospective challenge to embattled former President Donald Trump, who has already announced his GOP bid for the White House. Trump has comfortable leads in early polls against DeSantis, whom he’s publicly rebuked in Trump-speak as “DeSanctimonious” and “DeSanctus” among several other nicknames.

But DeSantis did take digs at Illinois’ Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker, who gave a keynote speech to Florida Democrats last July and called DeSantis “really just Donald Trump with a mask on.”

Pritzker ordered far stricter COVID-19 mitigations for Illinois than DeSantis imposed for Florida during the height of the pandemic, and DeSantis poked fun at the Illinois governor for sending his family members to Florida as the virus was worsening in March 2020.

“When the world lost its mind, when common sense suddenly became an uncommon virtue, Florida stood as a refuge of sanity, as a citadel of freedom for people not just in our state, but in all of the United States, and even for people around the world, including your governor’s family who sent people down there because we were living in freedom,” DeSantis said.

On the eve of the Florida governor’s visit, Pritzker said in a statement that “In Illinois, we reject the cruelty he espouses and stand firmly against his hateful agenda.”

DeSantis’ return to Illinois — he spoke to a law enforcement audience in Elmhurst in February — adds to what has become a running feud with Pritzker over their vastly different takes on culture war issues including abortion, education, immigration and gun rights.

While Pritzker has supported efforts to promote diversity teaching and prevent efforts to ban materials from schools and libraries, DeSantis has put limits on educational instruction and materials dealing with race and LGBTQ rights. In Peoria, DeSantis condemned the teachings of critical race theory — an academic analysis of how racism has persisted in long-standing policies and institutions — as a way to shift to a more nationalistic message.

“We’re going to put an emphasis on American civics, having them understand the (U.S.) Constitution, having them understand what it means to be an American,” he said.

While Pritzker has championed Illinois as a Midwest beacon for abortion rights following last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, DeSantis last month signed into law a measure banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Some observers warned that could hurt his chances at the presidency as he tries to campaign across a country that largely favors abortion.

Pritzker has supported the elimination of cash bail and other progressive criminal justice reforms.; DeSantis on Friday said those ideas as “being driven by woke ideology” and talked about the need to reject the “weaponization of the criminal justice system.” He accused Democrats of tolerating “rioting and looting and disorder.”

He also denounced what he views as a “weaponization of our immigration system to advance an open borders agenda.” DeSantis signed legislation that would add $12 million to his “Unauthorized Alien Transport Program” to “relocate illegal immigrants to sanctuary jurisdictions.”

In Chicago, outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot has declared the migrant issue an emergency and is seeking increased funding to house asylum-seeking immigrants, including those being shipped to the city over its sanctuary status by Texas and Florida officials.

“They consider us, American citizenship to be not a big deal,” DeSantis said in Peoria. “They consider us to be citizens of the world. And I can tell you I am not a citizen of the world. I am an American and I am proud of that. And I think that means something.”

More than 1,100 tickets were sold for the event at various levels, starting at $85, and an estimated $240,000 was raised by the two county organizations, organizers said. The ticket sales eclipsed last year’s event, when 700 people attended a speech by another potential 2024 presidential contender, former Vice President Mike Pence.

DeSantis is expected to formally launch within days his bid for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, even as he has seen interest in his potential candidacy dissipate among some Republicans in the face of Trump’s candidacy.

The former president continues his hold over the party base and is seeing strong polling despite continued controversies that include a jury verdict finding him liable for sexual assault and defamation; pending charges of business fraud; and continued investigations into his attempts to reverse the outcome of his 2020 loss to Biden.

Appearing in a Town Hall on CNN on Wednesday night, Trump made only one reference to DeSantis, saying, “I think he ought to just relax and take it easy and think about the future, because, right now, his future is not looking so good.”

Polling averages compiled by Real Clear Politics from April 18 to May 3 shows Trump with an advantage of more than 31 percentage points over DeSantis, 53.5% to 22.2%. Pritzker on Thursday put a statement on Twitter mocking the central Illinois Republicans by saying they “could only get a would-be candidate who is running a distant second for the GOP nomination.”

The central Illinois Lincoln Day gathering represents fertile ground for Republican aspirants. Tazewell County has routinely gone Republican in major races, with at least 60% support for Trump in the last two presidential elections. The larger Peoria County has gone narrowly Democratic in recent contests with Pritzker winning reelection over downstate GOP candidate Darren Bailey by only 1,031 votes there last year.

Whatever his political ambitions are, DeSantis made it clear to the Peoria crowd that he intends to expand his influence.

“Decline is a choice. Success is attainable. And freedom is worth fighting for,” he said as he was concluding his speech. “I’m proud of what we’ve done in Florida. But I can tell you this: I have only begun to fight.”

Pearson reported from Chicago.

jgorner@chicagotribune.com

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