By Gray Rohrer, The News Service of Florida<\/p>\n
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday hit the campaign trail to support U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee to replace him, but later in the day he also urged GOP voters not to be lethargic about heading to the polls.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Republicans, I don\u2019t necessarily want to be the bearer of bad news, but I don\u2019t think the turnout has been as strong as we would like to see. I think people need to get out and vote,\u201d DeSantis told reporters at an event in Crystal River to highlight environmental grant funds he was awarding throughout the state.<\/p>\n
DeSantis was asked about the early voting numbers for Republicans, which show GOP voters have cast more ballots than Democrats through in-person early voting and through the mail, but the lead is smaller than it was at this time in the last midterm election in 2022. As of Tuesday afternoon, Republicans had cast more than 1.4 million votes, or nearly 35,000 more than Democrats had cast, according to state data.<\/p>\n
He said he doesn\u2019t think Republican parents in their 30s and 40s are turning out in the same numbers as they did for his reelection because the urgency isn\u2019t the same when the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic was still fresh.<\/p>\n
\u201cFour years ago they were all coming out because we were doing parents\u2019 rights, we were fighting Disney on gender insanity \u2026 keeping schools open during COVID, making sure the kids didn\u2019t have to wear masks \u2013 all these things were so sensitive for parents that I think people in that age group really turned out well,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cBecause of the changes in the overall atmospherics I think you\u2019ve seen some of them have withdrawn from being involved in the political or electoral process to a certain extent. Now that can change between now and the election, but I definitely think Republicans have some work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hours earlier, DeSantis was in Brooksville with Donalds, recounting his highlights during his two terms as governor and warning voters the Democratic nominee, former U.S. Rep. David Jolly, was opposed to most of it. He especially hit on his approach to COVID-19, reopening the state earlier than other states, ensuring schools were open and children weren\u2019t forced to wear masks.<\/p>\n
\u201cByron\u2019s running against a guy who opposed us every step of the way on having Florida opened,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201c(Donalds) has made it very clear that Florida did it right, especially during COVID when his opponent would have done precisely the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even in his speech during the Donalds rally, though, DeSantis acknowledged the dynamics of the current election cycle aren\u2019t what they were in 2022. Inflation has hit household finances hard, but frustration with the national economy shouldn\u2019t discourage Republicans from getting to the polls, especially because they could vote for Amendment 3, the property tax cut DeSantis has championed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of stuff going on in the world, there\u2019s a lot of stuff going on in Washington, D.C. A lot of people aren\u2019t happy with all that, but don\u2019t let that color your opportunity to keep things going here,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cDon\u2019t let it cause you to sit on the sidelines and not go vote to reduce your property taxes on Amendment 3.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gray Rohrer, The News Service of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday hit the campaign trail to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-444604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}