How Florida blueprint can work for the whole US

In November 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis made history in Florida: winning by nearly 1.5 million votes in a state known for its “razor thin” election margins.

His platform was equally historic and, contrary to what is going on in other parts of the United States, focused on freedom. By enacting policies to keep progressive politics and woke ideology out of the classroom, taking back Disney’s self-governance and tax breaks, and keeping his state open during the pandemic, the Yale-educated former Naval officer has gained national attention and hundreds of thousands of new residents to Florida.

In this exclusive excerpt from his new book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Survival,” DeSantis explains how he’s preserving liberties in Florida — and just might save the US.

My first term as governor was a whirlwind. I rejected using polls as a guide for governance because leadership is about shaping public opinion, not merely reacting to it. I made sure to be an active, energetic executive who leaned into issues and was consistently on offense.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, I consumed the data myself and made decisions that bucked conventional wisdom. We also refused to bow down to the woke mob and fought ideological capture of our schools and fought back against big corporations that pursued a leftist agenda.

We were met with fierce opposition from legacy media outlets every step of the way. But we stood our ground. We did not back down. Clearly, our administration was substantively consequential. How effective, though, was this as a political matter? We in Florida can lead the way on important issues and deliver historic results, but this might not be a blueprint for others to follow if it led to electoral failure.

The November 2022 election provided the answer. While winning reelection was not something that was guaranteed, the odds seemed good at the outset. After winning roughly half the vote in 2018 as an unknown commodity, it was obvious, based on four years of interactions with Floridians from all walks of life, that my support had only grown since then, especially after our battles to protect Floridians from mandates and school closures during the coronavirus pandemic.

At the same time, major Florida elections had typically been decided by razor-thin margins. Prior to me becoming governor in 2019, the state’s marquee races during the decade — gubernatorial elections in 2010, 2014, and 2018 and presidential elections in 2012 and 2016 — had all been decided by a single percentage point, or less. Winning by 5% would represent a “landslide” victory for a top-of-the-ticket candidate in Florida.

The political complexion of the in-migration to the state during my administration, especially after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, was positive. Prior to my becoming governor, Republicans had always had a voter registration disadvantage vis-à-vis the Democrats in Florida, yet by the November 2022 election Republicans led Democrats by 306,000 voter registrations — a 2% registration advantage. Many of these new voters moved to Florida due to our policies.

As we came down the stretch of the campaign, publicly released polls showed me with a double-digit lead. Because this seemed out of character for Florida, political insiders assumed that I would win, but only in the range of 6-9% — a significant victory margin given recent history, but not quite the double-digit margin that would be historic. As election day arrived, my campaign was optimistic that we would earn a big victory. In fact, we amassed the greatest Republican gubernatorial victory in Florida history, a near twenty-point landslide the likes of which had not been seen in Florida in a generation.

It was a dominating performance that saw us winning independent voters by more than 15 percentage points, winning nearly 60% of Hispanic voters, winning a majority of women voters, and winning the highest percentage of black voters of any Republican gubernatorial candidate in modern Florida history.

We notched an 11 percentage point win in Miami-Dade County, which is 70% Hispanic and which Hillary Clinton carried over Donald Trump in 2016 by a whopping 30 percentage points. We were the first Republican to win the county in a governor’s race in 20 years.

While there had been chatter leading up to the election that Miami-Dade was in play, few were talking about the possibility that we could win the traditional Democrat bastion of Palm Beach County. Yet, we ended up being the first Republican to win Palm Beach in a governor’s race in nearly 40 years.

We also garnered unfathomable margins in rural Florida, winning at least 80% of the vote in 16 rural counties — the best rural performance by a Republican governor candidate in state history. Whereas we had won in 2018 by just over 30,000 votes, in 2022 we won by more than 1.5 million votes — the largest raw vote margin of victory in Florida gubernatorial history. 

We were able to accomplish these great electoral triumphs by taking the political road less traveled. We spent four years ignoring polls, setting out my vision for the state, successfully implementing that vision, and producing tangible results. From day one, I was fully prepared to let the political chips fall where they may. That we not only succeeded electorally, but did so in dramatic fashion, demonstrates that doing good policy can lead to good politics.

The Florida Blueprint is a simple formula: be willing to lead, have the courage of your convictions, deliver for your constituents, and reap the political rewards. This is a blueprint for America’s revival. We’ve shown it can be done.

From the book THE COURAGE TO BE FREE: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival by Ron DeSantis. Copyright © 2023 by Ron DeSantis. Reprinted by permission of Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.