Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appears to be in lockstep with President Trump in response to the coronavirus outbreak by refusing to order residents to stay at home and casting blame at Democratic-led states for the crisis — positions that frustrate critics calling for an immediate lockdown of the state.
“It sounds like Gov. DeSantis is listening to Trump, which is not good for any of us,” Democratic state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith said Tuesday in an interview. “The reality is we need sober, Winston Churchill-style leadership in this state and country, and we don’t have it. What we have is wishy-washy policies that will have minimal impact on transmission of COVID-19 and may ultimately cost lives.”
On Tuesday, several cities and counties, including Orange and Leon counties and Tampa, issued stay-at-home orders of their own, without waiting for DeSantis.
The response to the outbreak has been largely patch work from state to state, with DeSantis and other governors holding back on ordering shutdowns while others, like New York’s Andrew Cuomo and Ohio’s Mike DeWine, have issued strict shelter-in-place orders.
Within Florida, the responses have been what Democratic state Rep. Sen. Lori Berman called a “piecemeal approach.”
There are shutdowns for nonessential workers in heavily affected areas such as South Florida, nightly curfews in Central Florida and few restrictions at all in many parts of the state. Some beaches stayed open for days as others were closed, and restaurants had to comply with a confusing “half capacity” order until dining rooms were ordered closed on Friday.
On Tuesday, DeSantis issued a new health advisory to encourage, but not order, all those 65 and older and with underlying medical conditions to stay at home for the next 14 days.
“The virus is impacting parts of the state differently,” DeSantis said Tuesday. “A tailored approach, a surgical approach works best for Florida.”
But Berman said DeSantis was “leaving vulnerable large swaths of Florida’s population to the spread of the disease as seemingly healthy individuals who may be unaware they are even carrying the virus continue, to move freely about the state.”
DeSantis’ trip to The Villages on Monday to kick off their testing site, only the third such drive-through location open in the state, was to a community that has been a bedrock of Trump support and a county, Sumter, that gave Trump 69% of its vote in 2016. It was also a county with just 10 cases as of Tuesday.
While there, DeSantis cited counties with low numbers like Sumter, as well as the 21 mostly rural counties where there were no recorded cases, as one of his reasons for not imposing stricter measures beyond closing restaurant dining rooms, bars and gyms.
He also cited relatively low rates in Central Florida, where as of Tuesday there were 163 cases in Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Volusia, Lake, Polk, Sumter and Brevard combined, compared with 623 in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
“Maybe the social distancing in Central Florida, maybe people are doing a pretty good job with that,” DeSantis said. “I would just encourage people to continue to do it.”
While he acknowledged there would be more cases as testing expands, “I thought even amongst whatever tests have been done, I thought we would have seen higher rates just because you have everybody In the world that comes to Central Florida.”
But while DeSantis praised social distancing working as a key reason for not shutting down the state, Trump’s rhetoric was starting to shift to ending the practice.
Trump pivots
Trump told a town hall Tuesday he wants “the country opened up and just rearing to go by Easter,” and earlier tweeted, “Our people want to return to work.”
He said people should just go to work, wash their hands five times more than usual and not shake hands.
“This cure is worse than the problem,” Trump said of the economic impact of efforts to stem the outbreak, despite health experts, including his own advisor Anthony Fauci, urging social distancing efforts to continue.
DeSantis spokeswoman Helen Ferre said he was “following the president’s 15-day plan for social distancing and then we will see where the state is at that time.”
Trump also attacked Cuomo at his town hall, asking about the surge in cases in New York, “Do you blame the governor for that?”
In Florida, even though the cause of infection for the vast majority of cases was still unknown, Desantis also cited foreign or domestic travel for much of the cases, singling out that one state in particular.
“A lot of that is maybe someone came back from New York City or some of the hotspots inside the United States,” DeSantis said at The Villages.
That state’s shutdown order has led to streams of people fleeing the city, he said, and he would later double down on his remarks by issuing an order anyone flying into Florida from the New York City area be self-isolated for 14 days to contain the disease.
He again targeted New York in his press conference on Tuesday, saying he was signing an additional order mandating that anyone who was in the New York City area over the past three weeks should self-isolate and report all contacts they’ve had in the meantime.
More woes to come
Smith blasted DeSantis for his reasoning.
“We may have [about] 20 counties in the state with no confirmed positives due to lack of testing,” Smith said. “But very, very soon, every county in the state will have coronavirus … If DeSantis is not going to issue a stay-at-home order, counties and cities will have no choice but to act on their own.”
State Rep. Shevrin Jones, D-West Park, said now is not the time to take shots at DeSantis.
“My opinion is that the governor is not following marching orders from the president,” Jones said. ‘There are areas where the governor has distanced himself from the president.”
But, he said, “there are similarities …They are both on these same talking points, which I believe are malpractice to Floridians and to Americans.”
Republicans, meanwhile, praised DeSantis and Trump and attacked those criticizing them.
“I think he’s doing a damn good job, considering there’s no playbook for this,” said state Rep. Chip LaMarca, R-Lighthouse Point. “This governor campaigned tremendously differently from how he is governing. He’s governing as Governor Ron DeSantis, not a supporter of any other person on the planet.”
But Robert Pacheco, of West Palm Beach, had a plea for DeSantis.
“As a look around the last week, I still see people doing some things as if there was no pandemic,” Pacheco said. “There are still places open for dining, people out acting like nothing’s happening. “I voted for DeSantis. I think he’s done a good job as governor. But on this, he’s missed the boat completely.”
Sun Sentinel staff writer Anthony Man contributed to this report. slemongello@orlandosentinel.com
