Democratic gubernatorial candidates Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried blasted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during a rally that was held at 12 p.m. Wednesday at Orlando City Hall. Crist and Fried want DeSantis to be removed from office.
“This Governor is out of his mind,” Crist, the Congressman from St. Petersburg said of DeSantis.
“Evil,” he added.
“Authoritarian dictator,” Agriculture Commissioner Fried insisted.
Crist and Fried joined other Democratic candidates and office holders, and progressive activists at a “Remove Ron” rally, organized by Gen-Z for Change, on a rainy afternoon on the steps of Orlando City Hall.
One speaker after another, including congressional candidates Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Orlando and Rebekah Jones of Gulf Breeze and state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani of Orlando, slammed the Sunshine State Governor’s policies on gay rights, guns, abortion, race relations, voting, women, health care, mental health funding, climate change, environmental protection and other issues.
They also — especially Crist, Fried and Jones — attacked the Governor personally, condemning both his mental state and character. Rivals Crist and Fried applauded one another while they did so.
“He’s out of his mind. He lost his mind,” Crist said. “Or, it may be worse.”
DeSantis, he suggested, appears to be smart enough to know what he’s been doing, in Crist’s words, trading Florida’s well-being for a White House run.
“That makes him evil,” Crist said. “This is good versus evil in this election.”
Not to be topped, Fried claimed to be the first to call DeSantis an “authoritarian dictator” the way he forced his political agenda onto the Legislature, the Supreme Court of Florida and Floridians. She said she’s sticking to that assessment after this year’s Legislative Session and Special Sessions.
“He may be our problem today. But he is the country’s problem in 2024 if we don’t stop him here today,” Fried said.
“A Governor is supposed to bring people together, not divide us; talk about the issues that impact the people of our state, not create these ‘culture wars,’” she added. “We know we can do better than that.”
Jones had personal scuffles with DeSantis — which are currently ongoing in many ways— after she was terminated from the Department of Health in 2020. She accused DeSantis and his appointees of attempting to manipulate COVID-19 data to downplay the pandemic. That allegation led to a long, vicious war of words and actions in and out of court between Jones and DeSantis and his team.
Last week, the state Inspector General wrapped up an investigation concluding that Jones’s allegations against DeSantis were “unsubstantiated” or “unfounded.” Jones dismissed that finding as an expected and meaningless result of an inside investigation.
She’s now running for Congress in Florida’s 1st Congressional District. She joined the Gen-Z For Change rally in Orlando, and let loose on the Governor and what she called “a corrupt regime.”
“DeSantis is going to answer for what he did to us, when I take his lying a** to court to answer to all of his crimes under oath,” she vowed. “He won’t be able to run and hide. He won’t be able to threaten his way out. He will lose.”
“Together, we’re going to take down the son of a b*tch,” Jones said.
