Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis brings his culture war to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s turf
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won’t need much of an introduction at Saturday’s Dallas County Reagan Day Dinner.
They know his name. They know his work.
DeSantis is a top cultural warrior for conservatives in Florida and across the country. He’s pushed or copied a cavalcade of GOP policies and legislation praised by conservatives as common sense and blasted by critics as extreme.
“Florida is where woke goes to die,” DeSantis has said.
Now he’s bringing his fighting words to Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott has been the leader of his own highly publicized cultural war. Abbott is not expected to attend any of the events featuring DeSantis.
The Saturday banquet is billed as a fireside chat in front of conservative activists, donors and elected officials who are not only interested in his ideas, but his standing in the 2024 Republican race for president. As his appearance in Dallas indicates, DeSantis has used hard-right stances to catapult himself as the leading alternative to former President Donald Trump in the Republican primary.
The Dallas trip follows a similar event DeSantis will headline for Houston-area Republicans.
“He’s made that work and he’s put skins on the wall,” said Plano-based GOP political consultant Vinny Minchillo, who’s worked on the presidential campaigns of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney. “He’s gone to war with woke people regarding education, so he is drilling down on some of the really hot topics that primary voters are interested in.”
Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said DeSantis “engages in these culture wars issues to increase support in the right wing base of the Republican Party because he wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party for president.”
“That’s why you see DeSantis in Dallas,” Hinojosa said. “He wants them to know that no matter how bad their governor is on these cultural issues, he’s worse than the governor and he’s their man.”
CULTURAL WARRIOR
Abbott and DeSantis have been in an undeclared competition: Which governor can implement the most legislation that appeals to the far right? Both were reelected last year, with Abbott easily defeating former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke. And DeSantis made a bigger statement, trouncing former Gov. Charlie Crist en route to winning Democratic Party strongholds in Miami-Dade County.
DeSantis has impacted Texas politics and public policy, and some of his “anti-woke” policies are being considered by the Texas Legislature.
Texas and Florida have been political twins.
The states reopened during the 2020 pandemic roughly at the same time, though DeSantis got more publicity and Abbott’s initial shutdown and mask mandate were criticized by far-right voices in the Texas GOP.