Feel-good Phase 3, DeSantis as Trump’s emissary, and the politics of Florida’s always-close margins

It’s Monday, Sept. 28, a day ahead of the first presidential debate and do you know where your mask is — or does it still matter now that we’re in Phase 3?

We’ll get to the politics of the pandemic shortly. Let’s first acknowledge that, as much as it pains Joe Biden-leaning political pundits to admit it, the former vice president’s presidential campaign appears to have decided not to make Florida’s ground game a priority. (However, other left-leaning organizations and Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, tell us they are focused on that. Follow the Herald’s David Smiley and Bianca Padro Ocasio for those details.)

For President Donald Trump, however, Florida and everything about it is elemental to the president’s Electoral College strategy if he is to win re-election in the face of another popular vote upset. That means energizing the base, mining votes in the narrow niches, and voter registration.

WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

Gov. Ron DeSantis, the president’s reliable emissary, went all-in on those priorities last week, aggressively echoing the Trump campaign’s messaging and amplifying it with a Florida focus.

Energizing the base: First came the call on Monday to have Florida enact a series of new felonies for anyone involved in “disorderly assemblies,” such as blocking traffic without a permit and participating in gatherings that result in injury or property damage. The governor acknowledged that Florida has not had violent demonstrations, but he said “reports of unrest” in other parts of the country as part of protests against racial injustice prompted the call to action.

Democrats called it an “election stunt,” and suggested that hyper-criminalizing disorderly conduct violated the Constitution. Check the box for a creative way to inject the president’s “law and order” messaging into non-disorderly Florida.

Mining votes: Then, came the governor’s “roundtable” with three experts in the field of medicine who have become favorites of conservative media during the pandemic. None of them are trained epidemiologists but all three advised against lockdowns, against penalizing college students for partying — despite an uptick in cases among young people in college towns — and advocated for the reopening of businesses and schools.

That evening, Trump arrived in Jacksonville on a beautiful floral-colored evening, stood before a mostly maskless crowd at Cecil Air Field and declared: “We want to get back to normal life. We’ll fully resume.’’

Feel-good about COVID: And on cue Friday, the governor delivered the full-blown, feel-good message: He lifted all remaining COVID-19 state restrictions on businesses such as bars and restaurants and pre-empted any local government that imposed fines and fees for violations of social distancing or mask mandates. Then, to undermine any effort at enforcement, he said “as an act of executive grace,” he would suspend all outstanding social distancing-related fines.

Of note: Also Friday, Florida added 2,847 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, reporting more that day than any other state and bringing the statewide total to 695,887, the third-highest number of cases in the country, after California and Texas.

Politics of registration: Finally, when it comes to the voter registration themes on the Trump checklist, came the ruling related to Desmond Meade, the 53-year-old Orlando law school graduate who led Florida’s Amendment 4 initiative on felons’ rights. He appeared before the governor and Cabinet last Wednesday, asking them to restore all of his civil rights so he could participate on a jury and possess a firearm. DeSantis and the two other Republican members of the Clemency Board rejected it.

Meade’s story was featured on “60 Minutes” on Sunday. He ended the interview with Lesley Stahl, tearfully recalling how his ancestors were lynched as they were denied their rights. “We’re still fighting,’’ he said.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

Miami-Dade and Broward push back: Meanwhile, the response to the reopening edict was greeted by surprise and disappointment in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, as local officials scrambled to modify their rules to accommodate the DeSantis order.

Broward Mayor Dale Holness responded to DeSantis with an announcement that restaurants would be allowed to reopen bar counters, but there would be new rules, such as masks required in all restaurants. Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez announced that the county’s 11 p.m. curfew will remain, and said restaurants will continue to be limited to 50% capacity, unless they can keep a six-foot separation between tables.

Schools squeal: And on Friday Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran sent the latest ultimatum to the Miami Dade County School Board: Open schools by Oct. 5 or detail exemptions for why specific schools should stay closed. The letter appears to be an effort to pre-empt a Monday vote for a delayed start to a “soft and conditional opening” of schools Oct. 14.

Payoff or good will? Also last week, DeSantis asked Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to investigate “potential violations of election laws” over Bloomberg’s decision to help pay Florida felons’ fines, fees and restitution to be eligible to vote.

The idea isn’t exactly new. The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition started collecting money to help people with felony convictions pay off court fees and fines after voters passed Amendment 4, collecting nearly $6 million from celebrities such as NBA star LeBron James. But after Bloomberg said he’ll put $16 million into the effort, Republicans called it vote buying.

Cash-strapped courts: Attorneys for the coalition say paying off fines doesn’t guarantee a person will register to vote by the Oct. 5 deadline, and if they do register to vote, there’s no guarantee they’ll vote for Biden. Either way, it’s a pretty nice injection of funds into Florida’s cash-strapped court system.

Lagoa’s vote: For a while last week, it looked like Barbara Lagoa, the Miami native on President Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court shortlist of nominees, had a shot at becoming the first Cuban-American woman on the nation’s highest court. DeSantis hinted at the Trump rally Thursday that the nominee would be Amy Coney Barrett, a federal judge in the 7th Judicial Circuit instead, and on Saturday the president proved him right.

But the attention brought new scrutiny to Lagoa’s role in the ruling that upheld the law preventing an estimated 800,000 Florida felons from participating in the presidential election this November.

Latin love: Remember it’s about the margins in Florida, and both Democrats and Republicans see opportunity in the Hispanic vote.

At the White House last Wednesday, Trump received the backing of Brigade 2506, a group of Cuban exiles backed by the U.S. government who fought against the regime of Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. By Friday, Trump was at his Doral golf resort, accompanied by entrepreneurs from Nicaragua, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Honduras — the groups that do not identify as strongly with Republicans as Cubans. He promised economic prosperity to a crowd of about 150 people and reminded them of his “love” for American Latinos. “I will never forget our Hispanic American community,” Trump said.

Bloomberg, however, is also targeting Florida’s Hispanic vote, using his election cash to attempt to counter the Trump messaging. Last week his organization announced that Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA and Latino Victory Fund will team up to air Spanish-language radio and TV ads worth $6 million in Miami, Tampa and Orlando to target Hispanic voters.

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