With presidential hopes teetering, DeSantis says he 'delivered' in Florida. Did he?
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
TALLAHASSEE – Struggling to compete with Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is leaning into his on-the-job performance as leader of the nation’s third largest state as a reason GOP voters should turn to him.
The second-term governor, helped by compliant, Republican supermajorities in the state House and Senate, claims a host of culture war successes that remain a dominant theme in his stump speeches across Iowa, the first state to hold a GOP presidential nominating contest.
But Florida's muscular economy, low unemployment and budget surpluses are now emerging as a key part of the sinking governor’s sales pitch to still unconvinced voters.
DeSantis makes Florida sound like Shangri-La.
“I can tell you this, as governor of Florida we cut taxes, we ran surpluses, we’ve paid down over 25% of our state debt, and I vetoed wasteful spending when it came to my desk,” DeSantis said during the second Republican presidential debate in Simi Valley, Ca.
Later, when talking about his overwhelming election victory last November, DeSantis delivered a line that may be the latest rallying cry for a candidacy which once sparkled, but now is fading deeper into Trump’s shadow.
“We delivered... in Florida,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis’ presidential hopes are teetering, with the candidate short on money, falling further back in the polls and relocating staff from Florida to Iowa in pursuit of a do-or-die strong finish in the January caucuses.
“Ultimately, the choice for Republicans is do we want somebody who’s going to produce the leadership and results that will turn this country around,” DeSantis recently told CNBC. “You ask if Florida’s success is replicable nationally? Of course, it is.”
But drilling deeper into DeSantis’ Florida paints a more nuanced picture of how his leadership has been felt day-to-day by those he serves.
DeSantis has three years ahead as governor, if his presidential run comes up short. When state lawmakers return to the Florida Capitol in January to begin the legislative session, DeSantis and the Legislature will again come face-to-face with:
Property Insurance
Floridians are paying on average the highest property insurance premiums in the nation – about $6,000-a-year. That’s 42% higher than last year and triple the cost of what it was when DeSantis took office in 2019.
The costs have loomed as an easy target for Trump.
“What’s happening in Florida shouldn’t happen anywhere,” Trump said recently, clearly relishing his chance to attack the governor over a much talked-about problem in their shared home state.
DeSantis has attempted to ease the runaway rates, calling two special sessions of the Legislature last year. While enacting a host of industry-friendly measures, including limits on lawsuits and steering $3 billion in taxpayer money toward providing reinsurance for companies, the industry-backed Insurance Information Institute projects that there is no chance of policy costs coming down soon.
“We just don’t see a path anywhere where rates are going to come down in the near term,” said Mark Friedlander, an institute spokesman.
Rising home values, higher prices for fuel, labor and construction, supply chain problems and increased costs of reinsurance – the financial backing insurers rely on – has combined to assure rates will continue to climb.
The Florida market, battered by years of industry turmoil, massive hurricanes and lawsuit costs was shaky when DeSantis took office in 2019. But it’s gotten worse during his tenure.
While nine insurers in Florida went out of business in the past three years, another three companies are in the process of leaving the state.
More than a dozen others have stopped writing new homeowners’ policies in Florida.
With the departure of private carriers, the publicly backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp., has soared to 1.4 million customers.
Citizens, the insurer of last resort for Floridians, is nearing its all-time record customer base of 1.6 million, reached in 2011. When DeSantis entered the governor’s office, fewer than 500,000 Floridians were Citizens’ customers.
“This is a governor who has made it crystal clear that he would much rather spend his time trying to divide Floridians with fake culture wars rather than trying to solve the real cost-of-living challenges that impact all of us,” state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, wrote in an Op-Ed in the Orlando Sentinel.
Health coverage
During last month’s second Republican presidential debate the governor was asked why 2.5 million Floridians lack health insurance, a much higher rate than the national average.
DeSantis attempted to blame it on inflation. But Florida’s coverage woes have little to do with the rising cost of eggs.
Floridians without insurance comprise 11% of the state’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Only Georgia, Texas and Wyoming have a higher percentage uninsured.
And it’s getting worse.
Florida has kicked another 257,901 youth aged 20 and younger off Medicaid since spring, when federal provisions ended which had allowed families with low income to retain health insurance coverage through the COVID-19 pandemic.
DeSantis did enact a measure pushed through the Florida Legislature that expanded the insurance program known as Florida KidCare, which was viewed as potentially covering those ousted from Medicaid.
But the switchover isn’t happening at anywhere near the needed pace.
KidCare only has added about 25,000 children through last month, according to state records, meaning most of those losing Medicaid are now, instead, added to the state’s uninsured population.
Florida also is one of only 10 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare. DeSantis followed his predecessor, now-U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, in opposing any proposals to take the additional federal funds that come with expansion.
While few solutions to the state’s health coverage gap appear on the horizon, the problem has drawn an unlikely ally.
Rep. Joel Rudman, a doctor and conservative, Panhandle Republican, broke ranks with leaders in his party and said it’s time for the state to end its 13 years of opposition to Medicaid expansion.
“The politics does get involved. But as a physician, I don’t believe health care should be partisan,” Rudman told the USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida.
Florida wages
Florida’s minimum wage went up $1 at the end of last month to $12-an-hour – part of an increase in the minimum wage approved by voters in November 2020 over opposition from DeSantis.
He’d warned the measure would “close small businesses, kill jobs and reduce wages.”
By contrast, new data from state economists suggests the increase is actually helping pad the pockets of Floridians. Economists recently reported that Florida wages now are 91.1% of the national average, the best level this state has reached this century.
The 2020 constitutional amendment has the state on target to hit $15 an hour by 2026.
Last year’s 91.1% level compares with the 87.3 percent of the national wage average that the state was at in 2020, right before the minimum wage constitutional amendment was passed by voters.
DeSantis fuels conspiracies for GOP base DeSantis fueling conspiracies in fight to overtake Trump, analysts say
Culture wars and economy linked DeSantis touts corporate culture war in economic plan as poll shows message falls flat
The findings are considered preliminary, with the national average wage for 2022 not yet officially set. But the national average wage was $60,575 in 2021, so that’s the ballpark Florida’s annual wage is closing in on.
Job sectors with the biggest wage gains are in the hotel and food services industries, a big employment market in Florida and probably one where that minimum pay increase is having a potent impact.
No doubt, a lot of people, including DeSantis, are squawking about inflation and politically, it remains an albatross for President Biden. But Floridians are getting a little closer to meeting the national average when it comes to pay.
Unemployment
The state’s unemployment rate was 2.7% in August, about a percentage point better than the national average, a trend which has remained consistent for almost three years. That’s giving DeSantis plenty to crow about in challenging Biden.
“Florida’s success is the direct result of freedom first policies that support business owners and job seekers,” DeSantis has said.
Florida’s jobless rate is near a record low of 2.4%, reached in February 2006. But it also has made it tough for some companies to find workers.
These businesses, along with consumers, also are wrestling with higher-than-the-national-average rate of inflation in key parts of the state. The Miami-Fort Lauderdale area had the steepest inflation rate in the nation this summer, among large metropolitan areas, with Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater having the third worst.
A new, strict immigration law DeSantis pushed through the Legislature intended to keep undocumented workers from coming to Florida also is sparking labor shortages among farmers and growers now entering harvest season.
Restaurants, along with the tourism and construction industries, also are dealing with a shortage of workers caused, at least in part, by the state’s immigration law.
Elder care
Second only to California as the state with the most people age-65 and older, Florida ranks a dismal 43rd for availability of affordable and easy access to long-term care services for seniors, according to a new report by AARP.
The state hovers near the bottom when it comes to financial support for caregivers, quality and access to nursing homes and home-care services for elder Floridians. A shortage of nursing home workers has compounded an already difficult landscape for people seeking quality care in Florida, the report found.
In Florida, nursing home wages average $2.50 lower than other entry-level jobs, AARP found.
USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida has frequently reported on how the Legislature annually covers only several hundred more Floridians out of the thousands awaiting state help for home or community-based care.
Twenty-one percent of Floridians are seniors, behind only Maine for having the highest percentage of older residents.
“It’s time to accelerate our efforts for the sake of saving more lives,” said Jeff Johnson, AARP’s Florida director.
Education
U.S. News & World Report earlier this year gave Florida the nation’s top ranking for higher education and placed it 14th best for grades pre-K through 12, a placement DeSantis has been able to promote in his presidential bid.
“Our school system should be about educating kids, not indoctrinating kids, And that means we have gone on the offensive against toxic ideologies,” DeSantis said after kicking-off his campaign in May. “I can tell you this, I have only begun to fight.”
State rankings vary, based on the kind of organization weighing such factors as preschool enrollment, high school graduation rates, college readiness and test scores. Critics of the governor say Florida’s tumultuous last couple of years of battles over parental rights and book bans in public schools and diversity and LGBTQ rights especially at the university levels may have contributed to a recent downward shift in U.S. News' individual university rankings.
New College of Florida, which DeSantis has targeted for transformation into an ideologically conservative school, tumbled 24 spots in the rankings for liberal arts universities in the latest university rankings released last month.
Rental costs
Florida’s well-established high cost of home ownership filters down to the rental market – hurt by a shortage of affordable apartments made worse by the state’s Airbnb growth.
These short-term rentals take a lot of potential units off the market for working families. The Florida Policy Institute recently reported that a study showed 23% of the annual rent increase in South Florida, from Miami to West Palm Beach, could be attributed to Airbnb growth.
In Miami-Dade, many low-to-middle income families have been forced out of the county amid the rise in housing and rental races brought on by wealthier residents buying up dwellings and investors flooding the area.
In Sarasota and Manatee, where Airbnbs also flourish, the average cost of rent has swelled 31% and 34% since 2019, the report said. The counties also are seeing a doubling in the number of homeless families with minor children, which some analysts say is tied directly to the lack of affordable housing.
Crime
A centerpiece of DeSantis’ campaign is his claim that the crime rate in his home state is at a 50-year low, a standard backed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement but questioned by a host of other analysts.
The Marshall Project, along with other research organizations, have pointed out that data from less than 60% of the state’s law enforcement agencies were included, leaving out results covering about 40% of the Florida population.
FDLE insists that a sophisticated estimating system was used to round out the figures. But the disputed claim remains a central part of the governor’s push to cast himself as tough-on-crime.
John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @JKennedyReport
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Fact check: DeSantis' Florida record on insurance, crime, education
