The rules don’t apply to fake populist DeSantis

TALLAHASSEE — The rules that everyone else must live by don’t apply to Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Florida is led by an elitist masquerading as a populist. He hopes Florida voters are too dumb to see the difference — or that they won’t figure it out until after Election Day, Nov. 8. But by then, it will be too late.

DeSantis has an Ivy League pedigree from Yale and Harvard Law School. Good for him. It’s very impressive. His higher education put him on the road to political success. What is wrong is for him to attack, demean and threaten higher education in Florida. When it suits his short-term political needs and faux populism, DeSantis demeans our universities, undermines academic freedom and accuses professors of indoctrinating students.

We just learned for the first time that it could be much worse. Proposed changes by the governor’s staff, which went nowhere in the recent session, would have further tightened his grip on universities, including requiring politically appointed trustees to approve hiring decisions. This plot was first reported by investigative reporter Jason Garcia of Seeking Rents.

There ought to be a sign at the entrance to the governor’s office that says “Rules for thee, but not for me.”

DeSantis has daily use of a publicly funded aircraft to travel the state so he can stage thinly disguised partisan campaign rallies, but they are dressed up to look like official state events — and charged to taxpayers. It’s illegal in Florida to mix state business and politics.

“An employee of the state or any political subdivision may not participate in any political campaign for an elective office while on duty,” state law says.

That sounds vague, but we all know it when we see it, and DeSantis does it all the time.

Take his signing of the state budget last week at The Villages, an hour of partisan grandstanding.

He belittled President Joe Biden, called him “Brandon,” threatened to send undocumented immigrants to Delaware — and took no questions. A state-owned $15.5 million Cessna Citation transports the governor to and from these official events. (DeSantis’ predecessor, Rick Scott, got rid of two state planes and flew his personal jet at his expense.)

But when the Legislature put $20 million in the next state budget for two more aircraft for official state travel for everybody else, from his lieutenant governor to Cabinet members to state agency heads, DeSantis vetoed it as an “inadvisable expense, especially under current economic conditions.”

Past abuses of the use of state aircraft by high-ranking state officials were exposed by newspapers, but the solution to that is stronger accountability. Forcing state officials to rely on the Turnpike in a state this size, when DeSantis has the power to fix it, looks selfish. But his phony populist narrative demands that he veto what looks like a waste of money: sleek jets for politicians.

DeSantis has his plane. Everyone else has to drive. At least Rick Scott paid his own way. DeSantis sticks it to taxpayers.

DeSantis bludgeoned the media again this week, accusing news outlets of deliberately downplaying the murder plot, foiled by authorities in Maryland, against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which quickly became a non-story in a crowded, hectic news cycle. “The silence is deafening,” he said, but it was nothing compared to DeSantis’ own silence for weeks following the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, after he repeatedly endorsed the need for an open-carry gun law in Florida.

He expects the members of the state Legislature to capitulate to his every wish, from an elections police force to a ban on critical race theory to a “don’t say gay” law. To show his appreciation, he then turns around and vetoes their budget priorities.

“Just the way it goes,” he said at The Villages, as his lemmings in the Legislature stood behind him, applauding.

That’s a blatant violation of the first rule of politics in Florida’s Capitol, which demands horse-trading as an act of mutual respect. I am not endorsing such behavior, only pointing out that it has been the norm throughout statehood. But the rules don’t apply to DeSantis.

What lawmakers should do is call a special session and override a select group of line-item vetoes as a way of cutting DeSantis down to size for a change. It would be the most refreshing thing to happen in Florida politics in a long time and would restore the credibility of the Legislature as a co-equal branch of government. But it won’t happen.

If DeSantis is re-elected in November, he will have four more years to do everything by his rules, without the annoyance of an election to worry about. Think about that.