DeSantis on Gillum: The last thing we need is to ‘monkey this up’
Republican gubernatorial nominee Ron DeSantis said Florida voters should not “monkey this up” by embracing the agenda offered by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum.
Gillum would be the state’s first black governor. References to AfricanAmericans as monkeys have a long history as a racist slur.
Democrats quickly criticized DeSantis.
U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat who represents most of Palm Beach County, said it was worse than a coded message. “That was more than the dog whistle. That was absolutely a racist disgusting statement,” she said in a telephone news conference.
On Wednesday afternoon, in a Fox News interview, Gillum didn’t directly answer a question about whether he thought the comment was racist or a figment of speech. “In the handbook of [President] Donald Trump they no longer do whistle calls, they’re now using full bullhorns and what I’ve got to say about that is that we’ve got to make sure that we stay focused, I think, on the issues that confront everyday people. I’m not going to get down in the gutter with DeSantis and Trump,” he said.
Stephen Lawson, communications director for the DeSantis campaign, said the comment had nothing to do with race.
“Ron DeSantis was obviously talking about Florida not making the wrong decision to embrace the socialist policies that Andrew Gillum espouses. To characterize it as anything else is absurd,” Lawson said by email. “Florida’s economy has been on the move for the last eight years and the last thing we need is a farleft Democrat trying to stop our success.”
DeSantis made his comments in a Wednesday morning interview on Fox, the cable channel preferred by Republicans.
Here is what DeSantis said about Gillum:
“Florida elections are always competitive, and this is a guy who although he’s much too liberal for Florida, I think he’s got huge problems with how he’s governed Tallahassee, he is an articulate spokesman for these far left views, and he’s a charismatic candidate.
“I watched those Democrat debates and none of that is my cup of tea but he performed better than the other people there so we’ve got to work hard so that we continue Florida going in a good direction. Let’s build off the success we’ve had with Governor Scott. “The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state. That is not going to work. That’s not going to be good for Florida.”
The use of “monkey” and “apes” to describe black people are “by far the best-known racist references to African-Americans in our national folklore,” the NAACP Florida State Conference said in a statement. “It’s only equal in racial semantics to the ‘N-word.’ ”