By now, a certain critical mass has been achieved; transplanted New Yorkers or Californians find themselves able to have in-person meetings with colleagues who have also moved to Florida. Bill Carmody, the head of the New York office for the law firm Susman Godfrey LLP, has been in Miami since January. “I came down here to get access to the same people I had access to in New York,” he says. “I love the energy down here, and the atmosphere—it’s as if the pandemic never happened.” I’ve talked to Democrats who’ve moved to Florida during the pandemic; they give DeSantis almost as much credit as Republicans. One of them told me that when the pandemic first struck, he was convinced the governor’s strategy was crazy. “Now it looks like he’s the one who got it right,” he said.
Which is exactly what DeSantis is likely to tell the nation in 2024 should he run for president. This may seem awfully premature, given that Joe Biden’s presidency is only four months old—and Donald Trump may decide to run again.
But there is no question that DeSantis is hoping to capitalize on Florida’s pandemic record to make the case that his policies, which were embraced by the right and scorned by the left, actually worked. He’ll point to the failure of remote learning in Democratic strongholds, the deaths and hospitalizations in states that insisted that people wear masks outdoors and the closings of thousands of small businesses that resulted from long lockdowns. Like Trump, he wears the criticism from the left like a badge of honor.
DeSantis has also taken political positions aimed at endearing himself to Trump partisans. He championed a voting bill that included many of the same restrictions as the one that passed in Georgia, and then proudly signed it into law earlier this month. He signed a bill banning vaccine passports. He has called for a continuation of Trump’s harsh immigration policies. He has described himself as the head of “the free state of Florida.” In Florida, the criticism has been muted, presumably because people are satisfied with his pandemic results.
It could have turned out much differently, of course. Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota took the same approach as DeSantis; more than 20% of her state’s population caught the virus. Why was South Dakota hit so much harder than Florida? Was it the chance of geography? No one knows definitively yet. In charting Florida’s pandemic course, DeSantis took an enormous gamble. It’s paid off for his state. And for better or worse, it’s paid off for him as well.
Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. His latest project is the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast "The Shrink Next Door."