Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has bungled his response to the coronavirus every step of the way, allowing his fealty to Donald Trump and the state’s far-right fringe to put the 21 million Floridians in harm’s way. As a result, the state has surged past 35,000 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 and 1,300 deaths directly attributed to the virus, numbers that are likely far below the actual toll. Florida har over 1000 new diagnosed cases on Friday, a spike that shows the virus isn’t slowing down.
(Note: Statistics updated and corrected)
And yet, DeSantis has decided to start opening up the state, with the first phase beginning tomorrow. Instead of listening to scientists, he’s listening to Donald Trump; yesterday, DeSantis justified re-opening state parks by citing the finding that sunlight that will COVID-19, without taking into consideration that people who carry the disease will be in those parks. Remember, this is the guy who kept beaches open for spring breakers.
The problem is that DeSantis is not being held accountable in Florida because Republicans control both chambers of the legislature. That could change this fall, with Democrats needing to flip just a handful of seats to take back the State House of Representatives. And by no challenging DeSantis or working for their constituents, Republicans statewide are condemning themselves to plenty of well-earned campaign criticism. Some of them are far-right Republicans, like Rep. Anthony Sabitini (HD-32), but there are also some very vulnerable Republicans.
One of those Republicans is Mike Caruso, who is a prime target for Democrats this fall.
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Caruso won his race to represent the 89th district in the state legislature by just 32 votes in 2018, making him the most endangered legislator in the most flippable seat in the nation. You’d think a guy in his position — especially because he’s facing a rematch with his Democratic opponent, Jim Bonfiglio — would be voting like a moderate and trying to protect his vulnerable community during the pandemic, but he’s done neither of those things.
In mid-March, the Republican lawmaker went into quarantine after growing concerned that he’d contracted the coronavirus. He tested negative, thankfully, but since then, Caruso has stayed in hiding. Caruso has been absolutely useless, and as such has left Floridians and the people he’s supposed to represent in the Palm Beach area fully exposed to a deadly pandemic and the disastrous decisions being made by Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.
Palm Beach County has had over 3000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and over 195 deaths thus far, making it one of the hardest-hit counties in Florida.
This is the standard operating procedure for cowardly Republicans now, with a little extra twist in Caruso’s case. Let’s review the ways that Mike Caruso has failed every test of leadership both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, paving the way for this ongoing tragedy.
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Trump’s global pandemic party raged in his backyard and Caruso stayed silent.
Donald Trump’s corruption castle, Mar-a-Lago, is located in HD-89, which means it’s right smack inside Caruso’s district. Back in mid-March, with the virus beginning to consume the country, the president ditched his responsibilities to go party with a bunch of far-right wing foreign leaders and super-rich fundraisers — one fancy shindig for his campaign hosted over 1000 people, well after sports leagues and other big events had made the decision to shut down.
Soon afterward, a whole lot of people who attended the parties — and then went elsewhere in Palm Beach County and other parts of Florida — tested positive for COVID-19. Mar-a-Lago was literally its own coronavirus infection hot spot, an epicenter of illness, and what did Mike Caruso, the man elected by people of the community to vouch for their interests, do about it?
Absolutely nothing. He didn’t say a single word, but instead just let Donald Trump and his cronies infect the community he is supposed to represent. There was no special action taken afterward to make sure people were safe. And that’s become a deadly pattern.
Ron DeSantis took forever to close Florida and its beaches. Caruso did nothing.
At the same time that Mike Caruso missed a crucial budget vote because he was self-quarantined, he let Floridians go endangered by Gov. DeSantis’s irresponsible refusal to shut down Florida’s beaches or issue shelter-in-place orders. Caruso got to stay at home and skip work, but still apparently thought it was fine for people in his community, in some of the hardest-hit areas of Florida, to go out there and risk their health.
Meanwhile, his Democratic opponent, Jim Bonfiglio, has been a leader in fighting for the community. An attorney who has spent his career trying to save working people from foreclosure, he called for a rent freeze for residents and small business owners in April — and stepped up to do it himself, waiving the rent of the one tenant as a landlord.
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