Ron DeSantis called hypocritical over rush to fill Republican House seats [View all]

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Mon 9 Dec 2024 07.00 EST
Last modified on Mon 9 Dec 2024 10.09 EST


The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has been accused of hypocrisy over his rush to fill Republican House seats vacated by Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, as he had previously kept voters in a Democratic-held district waiting for more than nine months.

Critics say his scheduling of 28 January primaries in solid Republican districts held by the former congressman Matt Gaetz, who resigned during his ill-fated nomination for attorney general, and Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security adviser, is a hasty political move designed purely to bolster speaker Mike Johnson’s fragile House majority as soon as possible. In Waltz’s case, the primary ahead of a special election that will be held on 1 April is only eight days after his resignation takes effect.

DeSantis’s haste to fix those dates contrasts sharply with his lethargy following the death of the congressman Alcee Hastings in April 2021 that further reduced Democrats’ single-digit House majority. He did not set the primary for Florida’s 20th congressional district for seven months, and stalled the special election until January 2022, a full 280 days after Hastings died.

“Of course there’s hypocrisy. Ron DeSantis deprived residents in Broward county of representation in the US Congress and made them wait nine months,” said Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic party and member of DeSantis’s cabinet until 2023 as the most recent Democrat to win a statewide election.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/09/ron-desantis-republican-house-primaries