Super-spreader Ron DeSantis is the new Mini-Trump

Maskless spring breakers riot in the streets of Miami Beach

Did you see the news footage from Miami Beach on Saturday night?  Thousands of maskless spring break partiers packed Ocean Avenue in South Beach trashing restaurants and battling with police, who fired pepper balls into the crowds and arrested more than 100.  Spring break party-hearties apparently responded in force to Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ bragging that Florida was open for business, with no state-wide mask requirements, social distance rules, or limits on capacity for businesses like bars, restaurants, and gyms.

 “If you look at South Florida right now, this place is booming,” DeSantis told the New York Times last week.  “Los Angeles isn’t booming. New York City isn’t booming.”

In fact, Miami Beach has been forced to declare a state of emergency and impose an 8 pm to 6 am curfew trying to control the crowds. 

And no wonder:  Florida has lost 32,700 of its citizens to the COVID virus and has a death rate per 100,000 about the same as New York and California, the two states mocked by DeSantis in his gloating interview with the Times.  Additionally, Florida is believed to have the highest concentration of B.1.1.7, the highly contagious COVID variant first identified in the United Kingdom.  The state had more than 5,000 new COVID cases on Saturday, and Miami-Dade county, where the spring breakers are most highly concentrated, has averaged more than 1,000 new cases per day over the last two weeks.

But the Republican Party seems to be celebrating DeSantis like a second-coming of the Super-spreader In Chief, Donald Trump.  Politico reported on Thursday that the latest polling shows DeSantis is, after Trump, “the favorite to be Republicans’ nominee for president in 2024.”  “He’s in the catbird seat,” a powerful lobbyist with strong ties to Trump told Politico.  “He’s the future of the party.”  Referring to the way DeSantis has handled the pandemic, Orlando lawyer John Morgan, described as a “megadonor” to the Republican Party, told Politico, “As of this writing, he won.”

Which seems curious, given that Florida’s vaccine roll-out has been so slow it’s in the bottom third of states, and distribution of the COVID vaccine has been uneven, at best.  DeSantis was criticized two weeks ago when the state opened a vaccination pop-up spot in Lakewood Ranch, an affluent and mostly white neighborhood developed by a major contributor to DeSantis and the Florida Republican Party.  The Miami Herald reported that the vaccination site had been chosen by a Republican county commissioner who put together a VIP list for vaccinations which included herself and Rex Jensen, the developer who is a large contributor to both DeSantis and the Florida Republican Party.  The population of Florida is 17 percent Black, but only five percent of whose who have received at least one vaccination have been Black.  The two zip-codes chosen for the vaccination pop-up are overwhelmingly white.

But not to worry!  The governor says Florida is open for business!  Throw away your masks and come on down!  They’ve still got beds in the ICUs in Miami…for now.  We’ll see, however, after the DeSantis super-spreader spring break is over.