COVID-19 vaccines for votes: DeSantis’ shotin-the-arm strategy

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis dishes out COVID-19 vaccines to voters the way Florida politicians used to serve up barbecue.

His travel schedule, typically released long after he lands someplace, shows just how deeply the state’s pandemic response is intertwined with his own political agenda.

DeSantis has been to Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center, Kings Point in Delray Beach and Sun City Center near Tampa — all home to high-priority 65-and-up residents at the front of the vaccination line who happen to be reliable voters. He has visited the Lynn Haven Senior Center near Panama City, a deep-red bastion of Trumpism. He has personally offered shots in the arm to Holocaust survivors, Bay of Pigs veterans and elderly widows in Little Havana.

This week, he was in a mobile home park near St. Petersburg as a 94-year-old World War II veteran, Vern Cummings, received the vaccine, and it was set up so “Fox & Friends” could carry it live. The way Fox’s morning crew heaped praise on DeSantis, he should report the live shot TV as an in-kind donation to his re-election campaign.

We’re witnessing Pfizer and the Friends of Ron DeSantis PAC all rolled into one with daily media events, paid for with your tax dollars, piped into your living room on TV. It may be an unbeatable re-election formula, which is why he’s doing it constantly.

Yet for some strange reason, we can’t find DeSantis on TV distributing vaccines in Opa-locka, Riviera Beach, Lauderhill, Ybor City, Jacksonville;s west side, or other places where positivity rates are higher.

The story is not just who’s getting vaccinated. It’s who’s not: Black and Hispanic Floridians, front-line health care workers, teachers and educational personnel. These Floridians have no shot at getting a shot. They don’t live in the right zip codes.

This week, DeSantis’ pop-up politics took him to 34211 and 34202, two affluent zip codes that include the high-end gated communities of Lakewood Ranch in Manatee County, near Sarasota. A real estate developer friend of the governor helped to arrange the visit. Those getting the needle were 65 and over, white and wealthy. When a few people dared to question this elitist strategy, DeSantis struck back with the combativeness that has become his trademark.

“If Manatee County doesn’t like us doing this, we are totally fine with putting this in counties that want it,” he said.

That brought widespread condemnation and accusations that DeSantis is playing politics with a life-and-death emergency.

“He’s running around with doses in his back pocket,” says Rep. Andrew Learned, a freshman Democratic legislator from Tampa Bay. “I think Floridians deserve a smart, comprehensive, well-thought-out plan. I don’t have a lot of confidence that that’s what we’re getting right now.”

Democrats are vilifying DeSantis for politicizing the pandemic and for dispensing a lifesaving asset in places where it will do him political good. That should outrage every Floridian.

U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch tweeted about DeSantis’ “red carpet for the wealthy and politically connected.” Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a likely DeSantis challenger in 2022, went on CNN to accuse DeSantis of “corruption at its worst.”

Since DeSantis is in full campaign mode, his opposition should be. Starting a “Remove Ron” following on Twitter is a start, but it’s getting old, and it won’t deliver the Governor’s Mansion to Democrats next year. They need a comprehensive full-on strategy to dismantle DeSantis’ record right now, especially on COVID-19. What the heck are Democrats waiting for?

A vaccine-for-votes distribution system is an ideal field of study for the Legislature’s new select committees on the pandemic, but it will never happen. Tallahassee won’t hold the executive branch accountable. It has reduced itself to a cheering section for America’s most Trumpian governor, who’s chasing a second term as a possible prelude to seeking the White House in 2024.

DeSantis for president? Don’t laugh. He has an excellent shot, especially if he keeps cherry-picking who gets those shots.