Loren Lippincott
The contentious presidential election of 2024 is now behind us and anyone who was old enough to have been politically aware 24 years ago, has probably thought at least once in the last few weeks about the election of 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore. How could we forget? The outcome of that election was not known until Dec. 12, and the “Florida recount” became a thing of legend, entering the term “hanging chad” into the American lexicon forever as the symbol of a close race for president.
Looking back from the perspective of this year’s election, especially where Florida is concerned, one can only say “My, how things have changed!” In 2024 the Sunshine State is no longer a swing state but voted solid red for Donald Trump. He defeated Kamala Harris in his adopted home state by 56-34 percent. It represented the biggest margin of victory for a presidential election in Florida since George H.W. Bush’s 1988 win over Michael Dukakis.
How did this happen in just a few short years in a long-standing swing state populated with
thousands of former New Yorkers? The credit goes to just one man — Gov. Ron DeSantis. In his six years as governor, the Navy veteran and former U.S. congressman has transformed Florida into a conservative paradise, where, as he said after winning re-election in 2022 by nearly 20 points (the highest margin ever), “woke goes to die!”
The record of his successes as a champion for conservatism is long and impressive, but I’ll cite just a few: When DeSantis took office in 2018, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the state by nearly 300,000. By 2020 that margin had narrowed to 100,000, but after DeSantis’s stellar performance during the COVID crisis and after numerous legislative victories, today there are a million more registered Republicans than Democrats in the state.
With those numbers it’s no surprise that he was able to hand Donald Trump such a stunning victory in the land of the hanging chad. Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida also won his re-election bid by a similar margin.
In addition to those victories, DeSantis crisscrossed the state in the weeks leading up to the election to rally voters to defeat two initiated measures that would have changed the face of the state forever. Despite a massive $250 million advertising campaign mounted by forces supporting the legalization of recreational marijuana use statewide (Amendment 3 and Amendment 4) which would have created a right to abortion until natural birth, through DeSantis both measures were resoundingly defeated.
And all this on the heels of steering the state through two horrific hurricanes in the weeks leading up to the election. Because DeSantis had thousands of electrical line crews staged and ready even before the Category 5 hurricanes made landfall, he ensured the power would be back on in record time. In fact, Florida was in such good shape and recovered so quickly from the hurricanes that DeSantis sent resources to western North Carolina to help those who were also devastated by Helene.
DeSantis’s chief executive and administrative skills are beyond compare and his conservative street savvy is unmatched by anyone since Ronald Reagan. He has thrown out Soros backed soft-on-crime prosecutors in his state and took on the powerful Disney corporation and won. And don’t forget that earlier this year he devastated the political future of California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a debate silencing the liberal darling by smilingly holding up a “poop map” of San Francisco.
Why is he so effective? Because he’s more concerned about results and serving the people of Florida than he is with his own personal political success. But in the end, as they say, nothing succeeds like success.
It’s been said if there were 49 other governors like DeSantis in the U.S. the occupant of the White House would become virtually irrelevant. And if the conservative movement is to survive it will be leaders like Ron DeSantis who will lead the way. For GOP politicians everywhere the message is clear — if you want to really make a difference and truly make America great again be more like Ron.
Loren Lippincott represents Legislative District 34 in the Nebraska State Senate. Read his column in the Nance County Journal.