3 Takeaways From Ron DeSantis’s Blowout Win For Every GOP Governor In America

Ron DeSantis won the Florida governor’s mansion by fewer than 33,000 votes. No, not today, when he trampled former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to win a second term (with, as of election night with 85 percent of precincts reporting, a nearly 20-point lead). When the Republican — whose handy reelection victory was all but decided long before Election Day this year — ran just four years ago, the contest was decided by less than half of a percentage point, fewer votes than the population of Florida’s 19th-smallest county.

What changed?

Yes, DeSantis has the incumbent advantage. And yes, he was lucky enough to ride the Trump wave after 2016 (and smart enough to adopt what worked). But his decisive victory should also signal to Republican state leaders across the country: In today’s political climate, voters are rewarding competent governance and tactical culture war offensives.

Too many Republican governors have taken office only to reject the concerns of the people who voted them in. Republicans, from Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to Arkansas’s Asa Hutchinson to South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, have opposed bills by their state legislatures to keep sexually confused males out of girls’ sports. (DeSantis signed the Florida legislature’s bill to do just that, signaling that Florida is “going to go off of biology, not ideology.”)

Holcomb shuttered church buildings and limited services to 10 people or fewer during the Covid panic. Cox defended excluding white kids from a basketball scholarship program based on their skin color. Noem refused to call a special session to allow her legislature to pass a bill banning Covid vaccine passports. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland compared people (including many of his constituents) who chose not to wear a mask during Covid to drunk drivers. The office of Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee refused to condemn the politicized Justice Department’s prosecution of peaceful pro-life demonstrators in his state and the FBI’s raid on the home of one pro-lifer, 73-year-old Tennessean Chester Gallagher.

It shouldn’t be hard for red-state governors to stand against boys in girls’ sports, the sterilization of sexually confused kids, the killing of babies in the womb, porn in school libraries, or racist school curricula. By latching onto the fringe depravity in their own party, Democrats have made Republicans’ jobs of opposing them easy! Republican politicians watching DeSantis turn Florida from a purple state that voted for Obama twice into, this year, a reliably red state that elected its GOP incumbent by certain double digits, should take note.

1. Pick Culture War Fights

For too long, Republicans have played defense, relying on economic talking points while failing to win or even preserve ground in the culture war Democrats have waged from preschool classrooms to abortion facilities. Republicans who don’t know what time it is allow left-wing activists to target unsuspecting students with racialized curricula and transgender propaganda, even in deep-red states such as Idaho.

Instead of rolling over for corporate interests or worrying about criticism

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