Ron Desantis agrees to take on Gavin Newsom in Fox News debate

After a year of taunting and sniping, Republican presidential hopeful and rightwing Florida Gov. Ron Desantis has agreed to finally meet California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom on the debate stage.

Fox News host Sean Hannity will moderate the live debate, pitched as a showdown of Red vs. Blue policies at the state level.

Hannity on Wednesday played a clip from his June interview with Newsom where the governor said he was “all in” to debate his Florida counterpart before cutting to a smiling Desantis, who appeared remotely.

“Absolutely,” Desantis said in response to the challenge. “I’m game. Let’s get it done. Just tell me when and where.”

According to a letter sent last Friday, Newsom proposed a 90-minute debate moderated by Hannity and focused on “the impact of representation at the state level.” The Fox News-hosted event will have no live audience and will air live on Nov. 8 or 10 in a battleground state, either Georgia, Nevada or North Carolina.

The two governors have been locked in an escalating feud for the past year, taking shots at one another on topics such as immigration, abortion, gun rights and education, each portraying the policies and conditions in the other’s state as an indictment on their respective parties’ politics.

While President Biden, who is seeking reelection next year, has often tried to strike a tone of unity in a divided country, Newsom has emerged as a Democratic leader willing to take the fight for high-stakes policies such as abortion and LGBTQ rights to Republicans. He has openly expressed frustration that Republican leaders like Desantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have dominated the national discourse with their attacks on reproductive rights and education reform without a powerful rejoinder from liberals.

In June, he called Desantis a “small, pathetic man” and suggested that the Florida governor ran afoul of kidnapping laws after a Florida official confirmed that the state had transported migrants from Texas to Sacramento - a move for which Desantis’s administration later took credit.

A representative for Newsom did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday morning.

Speaking to Hannity on Wednesday, Desantis framed the forthcoming debate as already settled, citing Florida’s booming population as proof that citizens are “voting with their feet” and flocking to his state while fleeing from Newsom’s. In 2021, California lost a congressional seat for the first time in its history after population growth was outpaced by other states like Florida, Oregon and Texas. The state faced a steep population decline amid the coronavirus pandemic, due in part to migration from population hubs like San Francisco.

As a presidential contender, Desantis is hoping to woo national voters with the promise he can export his vision of Florida to the rest of the country. The governor has highlighted Florida as a success story while contrasting it with states such as California - a state whose Democratic policies has made it overtaxed, lawless and on the decline due to “woke-ism being the law of the land,” according to an email the Desantis campaign circulated to donors Thursday morning.