Many people moving to Florida are registering as Republicans because lockdowns in blue states caused them to reevaluate being a Democrat, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Wednesday.
“So it’s interesting with Florida, like, the media at the beginning of this said, ‘Florida is bad,’ and I think it’s because they wanted to damage Trump in Florida, wanted to damage me, so they just kept saying it was bad, even though the facts didn’t say it,” he said during a town hall event on Fox News Channel’s Hannity:
Like, literally last April, they’re saying Florida’s doing worse than New York. New York was like, ten times worse. And so I think what it did is, the people that buy those phony narratives for these media, they probably aren’t coming to Florida. But most people see through it, but the people that see through it, they think like us. And so I think a lot of these people are coming. I think they’re registering as Republicans overwhelming. And I also have come across a lot of people who quite frankly were Democrats.
The lockdowns turned them into Republicans because they say ‘I cannot fathom,’ people say, ‘I was a Democrat because of education, and I’m in California and they’re locking my kids out of school. I come to Florida, they’re in school, people are free, people are happy.’ So I think this whole process has caused some people to reevaluate some of their prior commitments. And if you have a political party that puts the interests of teachers unions over the interests of kids being able to just access an education at all, that tells you all you need to know about the modern Democrat party.
In April, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd warned intending Florida residents not to “vote the stupid way you did up north” while standing beside the governor during a press conference, Breitbart News reported:
“We’re a special place, and there are millions and millions of people who like to come here. And quite frankly, we like to have them here. So we only want to share one thing as you move in hundreds a day: Welcome to Florida. But don’t register to vote and vote the stupid way you did up north, you’ll get what they got,” the sheriff added, prompting applause from the group of law enforcement officers, lawmakers and state officials gathered.
Last week, DeSantis made it clear he did not plan to submit to leftists and fake news narratives, telling Republicans at Allegheny County’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner he had “only begun to fight” and warned the GOP must not go back to “the days of the failed Republican establishment of yesteryear.”