It’s done, he started. As of Wednesday night, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially became the 2024 US presidential candidate. What will US voters expect from this ultra-conservative Republican based on the policies that have secured his popularity? and his re-election in 2022 as head of the southern state? And what ideological programs could the man who promised to kill “Wokism” in Florida move from Tallahassee to Washington if he succeeds in winning the Republican nomination against Donald Trump? Overview.
Abortion
Last April, Ron DeSantis passed a law that aims to ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in Florida. The current 15-week limit, challenged by ultraconservative groups, is before the Florida Supreme Court. The new measure is considered extreme by defenders of individual freedoms and even by a fringe of more moderate Republicans since it is part of a temporality which, very often, does not allow a woman to know that she is pregnant. She also brings her state into the group of those who seek to limit as much as possible this right of women on American territory, such as Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi or even Georgia and South Carolina. It also risks acting as a mobilizing effect for pro-choicers across the country, dismayed by what they describe as an obvious setback in terms of women’s rights.
Fire arms
At 1er last May, nearly 14,000 people had already lost their lives in 2023 in the United States, killed by firearms, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This represents a rate of 115 deaths per day. And the Florida of Ron DeSantis sees no problem there, which, far from seeking to limit the circulation of these weapons, rather favors their free circulation on its territory. At 1er July, a new law is due to come into force. It will allow residents of the state to walk around with a concealed weapon — on their person or in their car — without needing a permit. This affects 3 million gun owners. Ron DeSantis believes that bearing a gun is a right protected by the American Constitution. He also says that Florida should go further and allow the carrying of weapons on the belt in the future, which is not currently permitted.
Death sentence
Easier might be the death penalty in Florida after Governor DeSantis ushered in two new bills there this year. The first wants to end the requirement for a unanimous jury to decide the death penalty in this state, and replace it with a decision of at least eight votes to four. Of the 27 states where the death penalty is still practiced, only three do not require the unanimity of a jury: Alabama, Indiana and Missouri.
The second opposes a 2008 decision by the United States Supreme Court that banned the death penalty in cases of child sexual abuse. Florida wants to authorize it, DeSantis deeming the decision of the highest court in the land as being “erroneous”.
Right to vote
In 2022, Ron DeSantis chose the day before the day of commemoration of the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., icon of the defense of the rights of African-Americans, to file his own demands to redraw the electoral maps of his state. The move aims to dilute the Democratic vote to benefit Republicans and reduce the influence of the African-American vote in upcoming polls in Florida. It has been noted that historically the governor of Florida does not deal with this politically self-serving redistricting, leaving it in the hands of the legislature.
The new maps DeSantis wants will cut African-American-dominated districts in half — from four to two — in addition to increasing the power of the Republican vote in Electoral College seats — from 16 to 18, out of 27 — by Florida for the next presidential election.
At the same time, the aspiring president has reinforced the campaigns of intimidation against the African-American electorate by setting up, in 2022, an election police in charge of combating electoral fraud. In practice, this police force has mainly carried out high-profile arrests of citizens, mostly black, whose right to vote has been revoked for minor criminal offenses. Through these strategies, the governor seeks in part to deter 1.4 million Floridians, who recently regained their right to vote in 2018, despite their criminal past, from actually exercising that right in the future.
Diversity and Race
In Florida, the killing of “wokism” announced by DeSantis goes through several laws, all controversial. After having succeeded in banning the teaching in classes, from kindergarten to the third year of primary school, of subjects relating to sexual orientation and gender identity, the governor now wants to extend the ban to all levels of the school system, from primary to middle school, to “protect children from sexualization”. Two other laws seek to block the use of state and even federal funds in colleges to support diversity, inclusion and equity programs, or to restrict conversations in schools. and even businesses about racism and the history of that racism in the United States.
In another register, the governor attacked by law the use in schools of pronouns which do not correspond to the sex of the person. Teachers also no longer have the right to ask students what pronoun they want to use to address them, judging this to be contrary to the “immutable biological trait” of a person’s sex.