Gov. DeSantis boasts about reshaping Florida’s political electorate to conservative state lawmakers

DALLAS — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ keynote speech Friday at a dinner at the State Freedom Caucus Network summit sounded a lot like a stump speech of someone running for president.

“Looks like [Mr. DeSantis] is running for president again,” one dinner guest from Florida said.

An attendee from Louisiana agreed that the remarks sounded like a campaign pitch but noted the governor has a tough hill to climb in 2028 against Vice President J.D. Vance, who seems like President Trump’s political “heir apparent.”

Mr. DeSantis, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, made no explicit indication of his ambitions for 2028. But he boasted to over 100 lawmakers from 13 state legislatures representing their own freedom caucuses and their guests that he had made Florida a conservative powerhouse.

Since he was elected governor in 2018, he said, the state has welcomed more registered GOP voters as he has instituted a more aggressive conservative agenda.

“When I got elected, there were 300,000 more registered Democrats in Florida, and we had never had more registered Republicans in state history,” Mr. DeSantis said. “That’s 2018. Today, we have 1.3 million more registered Republicans than Democrats. 

“That’s because people respond to results, and it’s important. But what we’re doing in the states is we are proving that these principles work, and we are showing how a Republican form of government can be preserved and how freedoms can be protected for future generations.”

Mr. DeSantis, who is term-limited and so won’t run again next year, recalled Florida being one of the most competitive states politically in the country for decades, but that has changed since he entered the governor’s mansion.

“Every race last decade, 2010, ’12, ‘14, ‘16, and then my election in ’18. One-point races sometimes. Mine was even less, and Florida was like, ‘Oh, it’s a delicate balance,” he said.

“And I’m here to tell you we then said, we win this big, 20-point victory [in 2022]. What that shows you is that bold conservative policies work.”

Mr. DeSantis cited his accomplishments, including his recent victory in an appeals court that lets Florida continue operating the state’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” a first-of-its-kind detention facility in the Everglades that houses and deports illegal immigrants rounded up under the Trump administration’s push to boot migrants.

“We just had a leftist judge say, ‘You can’t do that because you didn’t do an environmental impact statement.’ First of all, state government doesn’t have to do that. And so the media was like, ‘Oh, they built this, and now it’s closed.’ I’m like, ‘It’s not closed. We’re still doing it. … Deportations are continuing. … We’ve been through this song and dance before,” Mr. DeSantis said.