TALLAHASSEE — While Gov. Ron DeSantis barnstorms the country campaigning for president, a growing chorus of Floridians are urging him to come home to deal with the state’s soaring housing costs and other problems.
On the stump, DeSantis declares he’s managed Florida well and the economy is booming. Any signs that contradict his view, especially rising inflation, he blames on what Republicans call Bidenomics.
“Governor, come home and take care of your state,” state Sen. Tracie Davis, D-Jacksonville, implored during a recent news conference. ”We all know that he’s running for president, but we have real problems, real issues, and the crisis with property insurance.”
DeSantis Watch, a political committee that monitors the governor’s movements and campaign finances, said he spent 60% of June and almost half of July outside the state campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination.
“But Florida’s governor couldn’t care less,” said Natasha Sutherland, DeSantis Watch’s constituencies director. “Floridians deserve a governor who will show up for his job and fix the crises his corporate, donor-driven policies have fueled back home, instead of one worrying about his cratering poll numbers in Iowa or New Hampshire.”
Even former President Donald Trump, who leads DeSantis by double digits in most polls, said it’s time for DeSantis to fix the insurance crisis.
“We want him to get home and take care of insurance because you have the highest insurance in the nation,” Trump said at a Turning Point USA conference in West Palm Beach on July 15.
Two sides to economy
There are two ways to look at Florida’s economy.
One is that Florida has the best one in the nation, robust with 2.6% unemployment, and a growth rate of 3.5%, according to a recent CNBC report. The same report said job growth is “white hot” at 4.9%.
The other is that it has the highest inflation in the nation and policies that discriminate against the LGBTQ community and minority groups, the same report said. The Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach county area has the highest inflation rate in America at 9%, and the Tampa Bay area is third highest at 7.3%.
“We’ve got a dumpster fire here in Florida, and we have the highest inflation in the country,” said Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party and the last Democrat to hold statewide office, as commissioner of agriculture.
“It’s humanly impossible to campaign for president across the country and perform your duties as governor at the same time,” said Fried, who ran for the Democratic nomination for governor last year but lost to Charlie Crist, a former governor and congressman.
Many teachers, firefighters, nurses and other middle-class workers in Florida can’t afford the price of a new home, and those who have homes can’t afford the rising insurance costs, even for folks who live far from coastal zones that are prone to hurricanes and flooding.
“They’ve had three special sessions and still haven’t fixed the insurance crisis,” retired Leon County teacher Susan Parsons said as she walked at the Governor’s Square Mall with her husband just minutes from the state Capitol in Tallahassee.
The Legislature passed several insurance reform bills over the past three years that were mainly an attempt to stabilize Florida’s insurance market with the hope that eventually it would begin to lower rates for homeowners. Lawmakers warned it was expected to take at least 18 months to occur.
Last year, the insurance on Parsons’ 1,400-square-foot home in Tallahassee went from $1,600 a year to $2,500 a year, and this year she was notified the insurance was going up again to $4,000 a year.
She and her husband were told they needed a new roof, even though they had paid extra to have their old roof replaced with one rated to last 30 years before the state passed a law allowing companies to deny insuring homes with roofs older than 15 years.
And she laughed when they were told their house was considered in a coastal area even though Tallahassee is a good 40 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico. “Yeah, I’m enjoying my waterfront view,” she said.
Parsons said DeSantis should be in Tallahassee taking care of the people of Florida, but “but he’s never here.”
Debbie Gibson, another retired teacher from Leon County who has also seen her insurance nearly double, was of a different mindset about DeSantis.
“The further away he is from Florida, the better off we are,” Gibson said.
Although the governor blames President Biden for higher prices and other economic woes, the overall U.S. economy is showing signs that his administration’s policies are working.
The national inflation rate is down to 3% and the labor market has recovered to a level not seen since 2001, the New York Times reported. The employment-to-population ratio is at 80.7, the highest it’s been since pre-pandemic 2019 levels, according to the Times.
Political vulnerability
The insurance crisis is real in Florida, and poses a serious political vulnerability for DeSantis, said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida.
It’s a bread and butter issue “that hits across the entire political spectrum of homeowners, Republicans and Democrats,” Jewett said, noting that he was forced to switch to Citizens Insurance, the state-subsidized carrier of last resort to insure his Central Florida home.
It is especially true of the Republican voters DeSantis needs to win the GOP primary – median-income, suburban voters, Jewett said.
“People could come after him for this, and the TV ads practically write themselves,” he said.
It’s more than just homeowners insurance, he added. Housing costs are going through the roof.
“The idea of my kids buying a house in Central Florida today is daunting,” he said.
The property insurance crisis was brewing long before DeSantis became governor nearly five years ago, but it’s grown exponentially since he took office, Jewett noted.
Property insurance has more than doubled since DeSantis was first sworn into office in 2019, from $1,989 in 2019 to $4,231, or nearly three times the national average of $1,544. Reports are that it is expected to increase by as much as 40% this year.
About 14 companies have gone into receivership or been liquidated even after accepting state aid, raising insurance rates and dropping policyholders by the thousands, state insurance records show.
And at least 10 companies have departed Florida in the midst of the woes.
Most recently, Farmers Insurance Group decided to cut its policyholders by about 30% or close to 100,000 homeowners. AAA Insurance also said it would not issue or renew a small number of policies.
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, a fellow Republican and DeSantis’ predecessor as governor, said at a conference in Orlando on Tuesday that Farmers’ decision should be a wake-up call that action on insurance is needed.
Focus on national politics
“DeSantis is ignoring the growing pronouncements to come home to Florida and do his job,” said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Tampa who served with DeSantis in Congress and ran against him for U.S. Senate in 2016.
But “due to the raw transactional nature of politics, Florida is the last thing on his mind,” Jolly said
“If he doesn’t win Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina his campaign is over,” Jolly said. “That’s more important to him than anything happening in Florida. It’s hard to accept that as a Floridian.”
His 19-point reelection victory over Crist last November has earned him huge loyalty points with his fellow Republicans in the Legislature, and they will cover for him, Jolly said.
As a Floridian with a real estate investment portfolio, Jolly sees an even larger affordability crisis for millions of Floridians, which is why he’s divesting all of his property but his primary residence to pay off his home’s mortgage and self-insure it.
Two years from now, DeSantis will either be in the White House or completing the rest of his term as governor, Jolly said.
“Ron DeSantis is going to get out right in time and leave the state with a crisis,” Jolly said. “The insurance crisis is going to crater Florida’s economy.”
