California governor Gavin Newsom took a page out of former president Donald Trump’s playbook during a debate against Ron DeSantis on Thursday, attacking the Florida governor from the right on issues from Covid-19 lockdowns to immigration.
Newsom falsely accused DeSantis of being a “lockdown governor.”
“Donald Trump laid you out on this dead to rights – you followed science, you followed Fauci, you were promoting vaccines, you even wore a mask in September [2020],” Newsom said.
“He did all of that until he decided to fall prey to the fringe of his party and as a consequence of that tens of thousands of people lost their lives because of your policies,” the Democratic governor added.
This despite the death rates in California and Florida being nearly identical: Florida reported 252.6 deaths per 100,000 people, while California reported 248.4 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the CDC. Both states came in lower than the national average of 289.1.
Nonetheless, Newsom claimed Florida’s death rate was 29 percent higher than California’s.
DeSantis shot back, saying Newsom “did huge damage” to Californians and ruined livelihoods by closing businesses.
Trump has previously accused DeSantis of “trying to rewrite history” on his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in the Sunshine State.
“There are Republican governors that did not close their states; Florida was closed for a long period of time,” Trump said.
However, Florida returned to “normal” more quickly than most other states during the pandemic, despite Trump’s claims.
DeSantis waited longer than many other states to declare a stay-at-home order, which he officially issued on April 1, 2020. By contrast, California, the first state to issue a stay-at-home order, did so on March 19. Only a handful of states, with more rural populations, never issued such an order, including Arkansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
By April 20, DeSantis had already appointed a “Re-Open Florida Task Force,” which he tasked with quickly forming a plan to reopen the state. The stay-at-home order expired in early May, and by late September, DeSantis had lifted all restrictions on restaurants and businesses.
During the debate on Thursday, DeSantis noted Newsom’s children were in private school receiving in-person instruction while other students in the state were subject to remote learning during the pandemic.
Newsom also sounded a lot like Trump in attacking DeSantis from the right on immigration.
The California governor claimed Republicans have “played politics” with the U.S. southern border and suggested DeSantis “lacks credibility on the issue” because he supported amnesty during his time as a congressman.
However, in 2018, when the House considered a bill to grant amnesty to 1.8 million illegal immigrants, DeSantis voted against the bill.
The two also went back and forth over their respective records on China, with Newsom telling DeSantis, “Donald Trump himself today called you ‘red Ron’ for a reason.”
After exhausting his borrowed attacks from Trump, Newsom moved on to claim Nikki Haley had DeSantis “dead to rights” on the issue of fracking.
Haley claimed during a GOP presidential primary debate that DeSantis has “opposed fracking” and accused him of being a liberal in disguise. The Washington Post fact-checker gave the pro-Haley PAC Stand for America “four Pinocchios” for its ad on the topic.
However, DeSantis has opposed fracking and offshore drilling in Florida because of its geological makeup, but has expressed support for the practice at the national level.
On the subject of violent crime, Newsom skirted responsibility for his state’s abysmal record by instead drawing attention to the 2018 Parkland High School mass shooting in Florida, which occurred one year before DeSantis took office.
In 2022, California recorded a crime rate of 499.5 per 100,000 people, higher than the national average of 380.7. Meanwhile, Florida came in below the national average at 258.9.
Newsom also dodged comparisons of outmigration between the two states, falsely claiming more Floridians moved to California than the reverse.
In 2021, an estimated 469,577 people moved out of Florida, while 674,740 people relocated to the state. Meanwhile, 841,065 people moved out of California, while just 433,402 moved to the state.
DeSantis said Florida counts Newsom’s father-in-law among Californians who have moved from the progressive state to Florida.
Newsom claimed working people pay more in Florida than millionaires and billionaires pay in California, despite Florida not having a state income tax.
He also defended “Bidenomics,” claiming Biden has created 14 million jobs – ten times more than the last three Republican presidents combined.
But DeSantis cut in to correctly note that the jobs figure is skewed because of the pandemic-era job losses.