With just a week to go before he’s up for reelection on Nov. 8, Gov. Ron DeSantis was on Long Island last night stumping for the Republican nominee for governor of New York, Rep. Lee Zeldin.
“I think it’s great in politics when you don’t have to choose between the lesser of two evils,” DeSantis told the crowd as he opened his speech. “You can actually support a very strong, capable candidate, and Lee Zeldin is that man.”
His speech took a predictable format: Why are all these New Yorkers moving to my state, and how can you stop it? The crowd ate it up.
His first order of business was to criticize New York Democrats for their panicky handling of COVID, contrasting that with what he had done in Florida. Then, speaking to what polls show to be New Yorkers’ biggest or second-biggest (after inflation) concern, he said Zeldin would turn New York into a “law and order state” like Florida, adding that Zeldin would remove Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“The crime problem has been totally self-inflicted,” he said. “You cut police budgets, you do things like eliminate cash bail, and you have rogue prosecutors who won’t even enforce laws that they disagree with. Of course you’re going to have streets that are less safe. Of course you’re going to have people that aren’t able to do the basics without fearing for their safety.”
This is far more remarkable than Glenn Youngkin’s planned appearance there tomorrow night, because DeSantis is actually in a reelection race right now. He’s on the ballot next Tuesday. His race was nominally supposed to be competitive, but he’s been freed up to do this because the Democrats haven’t put a serious opponent up against him.
The last four public opinion polls all show him leading former Republican and former Gov. Charlie Crist by double digits, and most of that polling was from before DeSantis completely roasted him in the debate last week. That’s quite a feat when much of the local and national media has been hellbent on destroying you — to say nothing of a certain orange-hued former president who is no longer a DeSantis fan.
Even if DeSantis really does lead by double digits, you have to think his campaign staff doesn’t like having to spare him for out-of-state causes so close to an election — not even for one night. But he’s a team player, as his efforts to strengthen his state party in low-level elections and in the redistricting process this year all demonstrated.
He isn’t New Jersey’s Chris Christie, who set himself up to win a landslide reelection by cutting deals with Democrats and left his state party a smoldering wreck.
So DeSantis went up to New York anyway on the eve of his own reelection. It helps draw attention to the fact that the New York race is genuinely close (that awareness can only help Zeldin), whereas the Florida race is not close at all. After DeSantis’s tight-as-a-tick victory in 2018 over Andrew Gillum (D), nobody expected that to be the case.
