Ron DeSantis’s Rough Week of Headlines

There’s been no summer respite for Ron DeSantis as he juggles bad headline after bad headline. Over the past week, DeSantis has faced major blowback, and even criticism from the GOP, for his phony election fraud performance and his coziness with Big Energy.

Take a look at some of the fallout:

Miami Herald: ‘Money talks’: DeSantis goes after small-scale voter crimes, is silent on FPL and Matrix

“While the governor and his new election police force have targeted people like Grant, most of them Black, they have not similarly condemned or taken action against complex schemes intended to manipulate Florida elections and linked to one of the state’s most powerful corporations.”

Tampa Bay Times: Florida arrested felons for election fraud. It also gave them voter IDs.

“The state’s top election enforcement officials stood in a Broward County courtroom on Aug. 18 in front of a row of green-uniformed sheriff’s deputies to send the message: If you cast a vote in Florida and you’re not eligible to do it, ‘we’re coming,’ Gov. Ron DeSantis said… The announcement grabbed national headlines, further fueling speculation that DeSantis will run for president in two years. Yet, two weeks after law enforcement orchestrated the round-up of arrests to coincide with his press conference, the case is starting to fall apart.”

Orlando Sentinel: Voter fraud arrests reveal ‘broken system’ for screening felons, advocates say

“The buck stops with the secretary of state, who is the state’s chief elections officer and should vet people registering to vote and notify them if they are ineligible, [Republican State Senator Jeff Brandes] said. DeSantis named Cord Byrd, a Republican Jacksonville-area state lawmaker, secretary of state in May. Byrd’s predecessor, Laurel Lee, stepped down to run for U.S. Congress. ‘What I want to see is the secretary of state say, ‘This isn’t going to happen again, and we are going to fix this. We own this, and it’s our responsibility,’ Brandes said. ‘That’s what leaders do.’”

Washington Post: Florida let them vote. Then DeSantis’s election police arrested them.

“Grant, a high-ranking officer in his local Freemasonry chapter, is one of 20 individuals — most of whom are Black — charged by an elections police force created by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to pursue allegations of election fraud and improper voting… Yet, in the days that followed DeSantis’s campaign-style event to announce those arrests, cracks have begun to emerge in the state’s case amid intensifying questions about whether the governor and his election police unit have weaponized their new powers for political gain.”