Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Dems blast DeSantis, demand masks
Federal representatives call for South Florida shutdown
As the coronavirus pandemic worsens, the state’s congressional Democrats insisted Friday that Gov. Ron DeSantis issue a statewide order telling people to wear masks in public and implement targeted shutdowns in South Florida and other Covid-19 hotspots.
In a letter to DeSantis and later in a video news conference, the Democrats were unsparing in their criticism of the governor’s handling of the coronavirus, depicting him as a politician who’s more devoted to President Donald Trump than in protecting the health of Floridians.
“Death and sickness is lying at the feet of Ron DeSantis,” said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Broward/MiamiDade county Democrat. “The governor needs to do his damn job.”
U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, a Broward/Palm Beach County Democrat, said DeSantis and Trump have failed. “Just like the president. Governor DeSantis is trying to spin the data and ignore the health experts, and it’s producing disastrous results for Floridians.”
As of Friday, at least 327,241 people in Florida have been infected with coronavirus, and at least 4,912 people from COVID-19 related illness. On July 1, the state reported 158,997 infections and 3,650 deaths.
“Florida is now the global epicenter of this pandemic,” U.S. Rep. Donna Shalala of Miami, along with all the other South Florida Democratic members of Congress wrote in their Friday letter to DeSantis.
Later Friday, at an appearance in Apopka, DeSantis was asked if he takes responsibility for coronavirus deaths.
“Every time you have fatalities for any reason, I think it’s a tragedy. We certainly have seen fatalities in Florida, particularly recently we’ve seen fatalities particularly in places down in Miami-Dade and it’s a terrible, terrible thing,” he said.
DeSantis said steps taken by Florida, such as prohibiting admission of people with coronavirus to nursing homes, saved many lives, and said the surge in cases isn’t
a Florida-only problem, noting increases have also been seen from Southern California to South Carolina.
People need to look at the full context, the governor said. “Would you rather have our case fatality rate, our deaths per million, which are lower than many of these other states which many of them are hailed as successes, just because the virus is burned out there?”
What they want
The members of Congress repeated their previous calls for a gubernatorial order requiring people to wear masks when they leave their homes.
They also want the governor to issue stay-athome orders in parts of the state where coronavirus is especially prevalent. That includes South Florida, Wasserman Schultz said.
Shalala, a former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said a stay-athome order needs to close down everything except the most essential services.
Countering the argument that a stay-at-home order would damage the state’s economy, the members of Congress said the continued spread of COVID-19 would have the effect of shutting down the economy, causing great economic harm and sickness and death.
Depicting it as a choice between the economy and public health “is a false choice,” Deutch said.
Deutch, Shalala and U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel of Palm Beach County warned that as long as Florida is known as a world hot spot, visitors won’t return to the state, depriving the state of a critical engine that drives the economy.
“Nobody’s going to want to come to Florida if we’re the epicenter of this disease,” Frankel said.
DeSantis said cases wouldn’t be as bad if people — especially younger people — were better at compliance with recommended precautions. “When people followed the guidelines, you never had any problems. But obviously there was a problem with compliance.”
Running disagreement
Wasserman Schultz said the order from DeSantis’ education commissioner to reopen schools for inperson instruction would prove disastrous if implemented.
“School reopenings? Are you kidding me? In a few weeks we’re supposed to start school? Thank God that we have superintendents like Robert Runcie [in Broward] and Alberto Carvalho [in Miami-Dade] who have ignored the ridiculous so-called emergency order from the Department of Education,” she said.
DeSantis said decisions on school attendance would ultimately be up to parents.
He said the education commissioners order is “not exactly mandatory,” and said state officials would be sensitive to local needs.
Since the early days of the pandemic, Democrats — led by lawmakers from South Florida, the most affected area of the state — have pushed DeSantis and Trump to take stronger action to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The governor and president have generally favored fewer restrictions, and the Democratic elected officials have generally favored more expansive government action.
On May 8, South Florida Democrats wrote to DeSantis to express “grave concerns” for what they saw as the governor’s plans for a “rushed reopening” of the state.
Florida had a stay-athome order for most of April. It ended for 64 of the state’s counties at the beginning of May with Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties starting their reopenings later that month.
On June 24, after coronavirus cases began spiking, all 13 Florida Democrats signed a letter telling DeSantis to impose a statewide mask order, something he has consistently said he won’t do.
Though DeSantis hasn’t ordered masks statewide, he hasn’t prevented local officials from ordering them, which the three South Florida counties have done.
In Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is attempting to block local mask-wearing orders.
There was a notable difference between the June 24 letter calling for a mask order and Friday’s letter calling for a mask order and targeted shutdowns. The first was signed all the Democrats in the Florida congressional delegation. Friday’s was signed by only 12.
Not signing was U.S. Rep. Val Demings of Orlando, who is under consideration to become Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s running mate.
To drive home the criticism of DeSantis, Frankel held up her phone during the video news conference to play what’s become Florida Democrats’ favorite videos: DeSantis in Orlando on May 20 when he mocked people who had criticized Florida’s response to the coronavirus and touted what then looked like the state’s success in dealing with the virus.
Wasserman Schultz likened the situation to “the horror film version of Groundhog Day. It would be funny if it were not so dangerous and terrible. We keep waking up every day and expecting a different result from a governor who is allowing Rome to burn around him and continues to do nothing. He does the same thing every day: nothing. The results have been devastating.”