This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Coming up next, Ron DeSantis and Charlie Crist face each other in their only scheduled debate in the race for governor.

Ex-President Trump schedules a rally in Miami and does not invite Governor DeSantis, the race in Pinellas to replace Charlie Crist in Congress gets a big cash infusion, and conflicting reports on why a Republican canvasser was attacked in Miami.

All this and more right now on "Florida This Week".

(dramatic music) Welcome back.

Joining us on our panel this week, Adam Goodman is the Edward R. Murrow Fellow at Tufts University, a political consultant, and a Republican.

Sean Shaw is an attorney, former candidate for Florida Attorney General, and a Democrat.

Tara Newsom is an attorney and a political science professor at St. Petersburg College, and Zac Anderson is the Political Editor for the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

Nice to see you all here.

I know you've traveled from far flung places to get here, so it's great to have you in person.

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and Democratic Congressman Charlie Crist debated for the first and only time in the Florida governor's race on Monday.

It was a lively exchange, featuring a boisterous crowd and a slew of culture war issues.

Among the topics, transgender surgery for minors, COVID masks and Black history.

But there were also discussions about the economy and the high cost of living in Florida.

- We have a housing crisis in our state.

Good luck buying a home, good luck renting an apartment.

And it's because Governor DeSantis has taken his eye off the ball.

He's focused on running for president in 2024, and as a result, we have lost things in our state budget, specifically a housing trust fund that has hundreds of millions of dollars that he, along with the legislature, have cut.

I would restore it.

- You know, Charlie Crist has voted with Joe Biden 100% of the time to give us these inflationary policies and to drive up the cost of everything that we're doing.

And the fact of the matter is, over the last two years we now have record inflation all across this country, at 40 year highs.

- The real problem is that according to Forbes Magazine, Florida is the most expensive state in the country to live in, more than California, more than New York, and why is that the case?

Because you've taken your eye off the ball, as I said before.

Look at utility rates in the state of Florida.

Since you've been governor, every utility rate increase has been granted for Florida Power and Light, Duke Power, TECO, you name them.

Property insurance.

(audience cheering) Property insurance under you has doubled in the state of Florida.

Doubled, Ron.

That's not good for the people of this state.

- Why are fuel and natural gas prices up?

Because of the Biden/Crist energy policies.

They're waging war on American energy.

They are not producing what we need to do.

They're begging Maduro and OPEC for more oil.

That's why your costs are going up there.

Here's what we're gonna do.

One, we have the fifth lowest gas prices in the country right now because we did do a gas tax holiday.

We're proud of that.

What we're gonna do for Floridians who commute, we're gonna reduce tolls by 50% statewide for all commuters in the state of Florida.

We are gonna make all baby items, diapers, cribs, wipes, you name it, tax free permanently in the state of Florida so you can raise kids and get by.

You know, we have a five and a four and a two year old.

Our two oldest are out of diapers.

My wife asked me, why didn't you propose that your first year in office?

Well, you live and you learn.

- Ron, we know you love to bully people, and the little name calling you just exchanged, I can take it, but you shouldn't do it when children are standing behind you at a press conference and they're wearing a mask and give them hell.

(crowd cheering) That's interesting.

I would agree with your wife.

You should have done that the first year you were in office.

I mean, aren't you supposed to be helping us all four years instead of just the last year?

(crowd cheering) And Ron, Ron, you talk about Joe Biden a lot.

I understand.

You think you're gonna be running against him.

I can see how you might get confused.

But you're running for governor, you're running for governor, and I have a question for you.

You're running for governor.

Why don't you look in the eyes of the people of the state of Florida and say to them if you're re-elected, you will serve a full four year term as governor.

Yes or no?

(crowd cheering) Yes or no, Ron?

Will you serve a full four year term if you're re-elected governor of Florida?

- Is it my time?

- It's not a tough question.

It's a fair question.

He won't tell you.

- [Moderator] We did not agree on the candidates asking each other questions.

- Is it my time?

- [Moderator] Governor, it's your turn.

- Well listen, I know that Charlie's interested in talking about 2024 and Joe Biden, but I just want to make things very, very clear.

The only worn out old donkey I'm looking to put out to pasture is Charlie Crist.

(crowd cheering) - So Sean, who do you think won that debate, and do you think the Governor was right not to answer the question about whether or not he's running for president?

- Well, I ain't running for president, but I don't know, but the silence was deafening.

And I thought Charlie did much better than even I expected him to do.

What I was interested to see was that DeSantis did not soften at all.

Usually on a debate stage like that, you want to be a little nicer, you want to be a little more able to be to the middle in the NPAs.

DeSantis did none of that.

To his credit, I guess, he stayed right in his lane where he usually is, aggressive, in my opinion, divisive, the same DeSantis we've seen, that's what we saw on the debate stage.

And I was interested to see that he remained right in that lane.

- Adam, do you agree with that assessment?

Was he still the tough guy and did he need to soften?

- How could I agree with that?

No, I really think the Governor had something to sell basically, or re-sell, in that debate, which I call the Florida story.

And the Florida story is one of the best, most popular stories in America, and the evidence of that is all the people that have come from all these different states in America and moved into Florida.

They moved not just with their hearts and minds, but with their families.

And so that referendum on how we've done in very difficult times, I think, has already been answered not just by the people of Florida, but increasingly by people around the country.

He needed in that debate to remind Floridians of that.

The other part is, I feel for Charlie.

Charlie was, I thought, a very good governor.

He obviously has moved across the political landscape, from Republican to independent to, I think Democrat, whatever it is now.

He is in an impossible situation, probably for no other reason at the end of the line here a category four hurricane came blowing through Florida.

The governor has received very good marks from Floridians and from people across the country.

Charlie had to confront both of these ideas, the Florida story and a category four hurricane.

I think we'll remember him fondly for his service, but I think his time has come and gone.

The debate will not change that trajectory at all.

- Well Tara, do you agree?

Do you think that the tide is rolling in favor of Governor DeSantis because of what Adam just said, the Florida story, the hurricane?

- I don't buy it, I don't buy it at all.

And you know, the framers instructed us very well.

They gave us clear direction that in public space you should have integrity and we should honor freedom.

And one of the things that was very clear about the debate was that we have some issues with integrity, especially on a debate floor like that, and that we also have very different ideas of what freedom is.

And that's why the Florida story may be different for different Floridians.

You know, are we more free, I think people were left asking themselves after that debate, since Governor DeSantis has taken over?

Are we more free with our families to do gender affirming care?

Are we more free in pursuing important conversations in our schools and having academic freedom?

Are women more free with our own bodies and the sovereignty of our decisions in health care?

And so I was left scratching my head wondering, you know, what is the Florida narrative?

Is it the one that Governor DeSantis likes to offer or is the one that most Floridians are really living?

The Washington Post got it right this week.

They said, hey, he might be aligned with the Scott Walkers and the Jeb Bushes.

He might be very popular in the state of Florida, but what he really showed on Monday night was that he's not a dynamic enough candidate to transition to the national stage.

- Let me just play a sound bite.

This is from earlier this year.

The Governor is standing in front of a group of school children, and we're at the height of the COVID crisis, and this is what the Governor did.

- You do not have to wear those masks.

I mean, please take them off.

Honestly, it's not doing anything, and we've got to stop with this COVID theater.

So if you want to wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.

- So that's the Governor showing kind of hostility toward masks, and it goes to your point, Sean, that the Governor can be a bully at times.

- That's a small and petty man that I just saw on that screen.

The Florida story is what it is, you can make an argument, but that is a small and petty man, and I think to your point, that's not someone that I think is ready to be President of the United States, and that is not someone that is palatable for most of this country.

That is a really bad look, not just because I'm a Democrat.

That's bad.

- But Adam, if you're gonna win statewide, you've got to convince some Democrats and some independents.

The Governor is doing great in the polls, he's ahead by double digits, but if you want to win statewide or even the presidency, don't you have to attract some people who are not in your party?

- Absolutely, but let me try to recast this a little bit, and this is not spin, I just really believe this, that this person, Ron DeSantis, is a very different kind of leader.

He's kind of rewriting the playbook a bit.

He's doing things that he wasn't advised to do by political advisors, by pollsters, by people in the process.

He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do at the moment.

You can disagree with that, but the people of Florida are about to show in a wave that they fully agree with that.

I mean, if he wins by double digits, you understand in the last three gubernatorial elections in Florida, the winning margin was 0.9% average, the last three elections.

If he wins in double digits, that pretty much is the referendum on Ron DeSantis in this state, and what will come after that will be following.

- Zac, you've been reporting on this.

You reported this week that Florida Republicans pulled ahead of Democrats Thursday in the number of pre-election day votes cast, and that is unusual in the state of Florida.

It's a bad omen for the Democrats.

- Yeah, Democrats have really moved a lot of their voters to vote by mail, especially in 2020 during the COVID pandemic.

And Republicans have shied away from vote by mail because former President Donald Trump has really criticized vote by mail.

So you've seen this big switch where Democrats are voting before election day, and then Republicans are voting in pre-election day in the in person early voting, and then big on election day.

So Democrats, it seems like they really need to build up a lead because they have a lot of these voters pre-loaded, and go into election day with a lead.

The fact that Republicans are leading is a bad sign.

It's one of many bad signs for Democrats right now.

Ron DeSantis is leading in fundraising, he's leading in the polls.

But this debate was interesting.

We talked about this debate that they had.

I thought this was one of the most interesting moments in the race.

DeSantis, I think, was tested like he really hasn't been tested throughout this entire race.

You know, maybe throughout his governorship in some ways, I mean obviously he's been tested with big things like the pandemic and all that, and he's had to face some pretty big tests, but he hasn't really debated since 2018, he doesn't do a lot of interviews with mainstream media.

He hasn't really been taking these sustained tough questions like we saw at the debate and you saw at that moment that he had where he kind of blinked a little bit and had a bit of a deer in the headlights moment when he was asked about 2024 and whether he would serve all four years as governor.

- And if he wants to run for president, then he's got to do a whole lot more of this than just talking to Fox and friendly media.

- Yeah, it just shows that if you are not using those reflexes, they atrophy, and if you are not going out there and defending yourself in front of people who are not 100% believers, it's gonna be sometimes hard for you to convince the great masses of what you're doing.

You have to kind of engage with the other side.

- Well, let's talk about the rumors about DeSantis and the presidency.

Former President Trump has scheduled a rally in Miami just a few days before the November 8th election.

It will feature U.S.

Senator Marco Rubio, who's running for re-election, but significantly, Governor DeSantis was not invited.

With both Trump and DeSantis widely believed to be interested in running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, the event is seen by some as a slap against DeSantis.

And Adam, is this a slap against DeSantis?

- There are three things to keep in mind when you look at this story.

Number one is the former President made it very clear in his support and endorsement of Republicans across the country, that he wanted his endorsement to count.

First judgment is gonna be how does not just Marco Rubio do, but Dr. Oz, Masters in Arizona, Laxalt in Nevada, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Vance in Ohio.

If he does well there, that's kind of what the President in the near term is focused on and wants to drive.

The other thing is that this gives the President kind of visibility during the final election week.

Obviously he doesn't want to be an afterthought.

He wants to be right there, front and center.

This gives him a chance to do that.

And the final thing is he knows that the Governor of Florida is looking very good in terms of re-election, and certainly has an eye on that ball as well.

- All right, so Tara, what do you think about the prospect of these two men, DeSantis and Trump, running for the presidential nomination of the Republican party?

- Well, I think it was clear that Rubio was all in with Trump, right, and that it seems that Trump wants to make sure that he maintains his relevance, and so he's going to align with Rubio.

But I have to tell you, what was so interesting to me is that in traditional campaigning, you'd have the top of the ticket, you'd have your U.S. senator in the same party of the governor running together, and in the last days of the campaign, going out together.

And it really did show that Trump really sees DeSantis as a competitor, and doesn't like it very much.

But it also might say that Rubio might know something that we don't know about the ability of DeSantis to capture America's heart.

Maybe not Florida, but America's.

- Roger Stone, Trump's ally, said this week, Zac, that you would show disloyalty to President Trump by even contemplating a run for the presidency.

And he said this to DeSantis.

- And this is what you hear when you talk to grassroots Republicans.

You know, I was at the DeSantis/Crist debate.

I was outside the theater, and I talked to a woman who had a DeSantis sign and a Trump 2024 hat on, and she said, I love them both.

And I asked the obvious question, well, what if they ran against each other?

And she said, well, I'd have to go with Trump.

He's my first loyalty there.

But she could not fathom the fact that they would run against each other, and she just thought that DeSantis would be more loyal than that.

So I think Stone is bringing up a point that he knows resonates with Republicans, is that they think that he would be disloyal.

And it's true, Trump did, in a lot of ways, make DeSantis.

His tweet in the primary in the 2018 governor's race was really what put him over the top with Adam Putnam.

So he does owe a big debt to Trump.

And he hasn't been criticizing Trump directly, but he does seem to want to leave the door open to run for president, and that seems to be really annoying Trump.

- Sean, does this seem like a slap in the face to Ron DeSantis?

- It definitely does.

I think we're all kind of agreeing that.

I've been a participant in these types of rallies before, I've been on the stage, I've been in the background.

These things are so tightly coordinated.

There are a thousand people deciding who's gonna appear with what, and with a governor as popular as DeSantis, it doesn't make any sense for him not to be there.

Now, I've been in rallies where we've had presidents and governors and people who weren't popular, and so they weren't included, but under this circumstance, it seems pretty purposeful.

And I don't know why, we can all guess that it's because Trump wants to be the star of the show, but it's certainly on purpose.

- All right.

Well, in Pinellas county, the race to replace Democratic Congressman Charlie Crist in District 13 might be getting more competitive.

The district was redrawn by the Governor this year to give Republicans a 6% advantage.

But a new poll of 600 likely voters shows Democrat Eric Lynn and Republican Anna Paulina Luna are tied at 47% each.

The same poll shows independents are slightly leaning toward Lynn.

Lynn's campaign has benefited by almost $5 million donated by a relative from Chicago to Progress Pinellas PAC.

That's a political action committee which has been running TV ads and sending mailers attacking Luna.

Luna's campaign had raised only $2.7 million as of the end of last month.

Several prominent Republicans in Pinellas county have endorsed the Democrat, Eric Lynn, in that race.

But it is drawn to give Republicans an advantage is District 13.

- Let's remember how this district all came to be, right?

We had a special session called in by the Governor at the cost of the taxpayers to redraw the lines and then bifurcate Congressional District 13, which used to be one big Pinellas county district and now has actually hurt Pinellas county quite a bit.

And I think when the Governor did that, he thought he was really advancing his candidate.

What I don't think he anticipated was the primary to reveal that Anna Paulina Luna is more akin to a Marjorie Taylor Greene, and is running on an extremist agenda.

And Pinellas county's incredibly moderate.

It's a purple county and it has voted that way for a number of elections.

And Eric Lynn is incredibly moderate.

He's a moderate Democrat.

He runs along the parkway, I see him, we wave.

You know, his kids are in the schools.

And quite frankly, the fact that he got an infusion of cash from a relative to a PAC is really a nothing burger.

I mean, you know, Republicans get lots of PAC contributions and many of them are self-funded.

So I wish him he best and I think he's a very strong candidate.

- Adam, you have some experience running campaigns in the old District 13.

- Billy Young, David Jolly, yes.

- Billy Young's wife has endorsed Eric Lynn in this race.

- I saw Beverly did.

Beverly's always been a very independent minded woman.

- [Rob] Susan Latvala, former county commissioner.

- Susan Latvala, who used to be a Republican, yes.

- Is that district though moderate, or is it more Trumpian?

- It absolutely flips back and forth.

It is the ultimate swing district, I think, in Florida.

It really is, which is good.

I think the politics are more interesting there because you really have to earn it.

The question here is is this such a nationalized race that the local personalities and the local issues are gonna be trumped by that?

The Cook Political Report is rating this as a likely Republican pick up in a district that's very drawn to be very competitive.

Don't know, and I think that's what we're gonna find out.

Do the people of Pinellas make this a local idea or is it a nationalized referendum on the biggest issues of the day?

- And Sean, I guess the question is if somebody injects $5 million and your Republican candidate only has half that, now there's money coming from other sources pouring into these races, but one guy, the Democrat, has $5 million to use.

- In an R plus six seat, it's probably gonna take something like that.

It's an R plus six seat.

It's not the old Charlie seat, so I don't know if it's moderate anymore.

And listen, I'll say this about polls at this time of the year.

Everyone's winning.

Every poll tells me that everyone running for office everywhere's winning.

So I don't know what to believe, but it's an R plus six.

That's a tough, tough seat in a cycle like this with DeSantis running so strong at the top of the ticket.

But a $5 million injection, that might be what it takes.

- Okay, Zac.

- And the Cook Political Report still lists it, non-partisan handicapper, they still list it as a likely Republican seat, but it is one of just three seats in all of Florida that are considered competitive at all this year, so it makes sense that Democrats are giving it everything they've got.

- Okay, well on Monday, U.S.

Senator Marco Rubio tweeted that a paid Republican canvasser had been attacked last Sunday in Hialeah by "four animals" who told him that Republicans weren't allowed in their neighborhood.

The case has sparked outrage in conservative media, but it's not clear what actually happened.

The victim, Christopher Monzon, did not say that the attack was politically motivated when police officers first interviewed him last week.

And an initial police report about the incident said nothing about politics.

When Hialeah police re-interviewed the canvasser hours after the Rubio tweet, he then told them that he did believe politics played a role in his beating.

Two men have been arrested for the brutal attack.

One is a suspected gang member with a history of arrests, including for armed robbery.

The other alleged assailant is described as being apolitical by his mother.

The victim, Christopher Monzon, himself has been arrested in the past for violence towards people who wanted to take down a confederate statue in south Florida.

He has a long association with a white nationalist group called The League of the South, and he attended the violent right wing rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

So Zac, on Friday we got the news that Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked by a man who appears to lean towards the conservative side, he's a conspiracy theorist.

He thinks that COVID is an effort to undermine the entire world by an elite conspiracy.

There's a lot of threats of political violence, but now we're seeing it happen.

- It's pretty scary, really.

I mean, I can't think of a time in my lifetime when the threat of political violence has seemed so real.

You know, I didn't grow up in the '50s and '60s when you had assassinations of major political leaders, so I don't have that as a reference point, but for the last few decades, it does seem like this moment now is really things are on edge like they have never been in recent times.

You see the January 6th riot, you see a lot of really heated rhetoric, and I think these are things we have to take really seriously.

- All right.

Well, before we go, what other news story should we be paying attention to?

And Adam, let's start with you.

- This will surprise you.

The question is whether it's gonna be a true red wave or not.

I think that's the big question.

In Senate District 18, Janet Cruz is seeking re-election.

She's a fourth generation Tampa native, former businesswoman who is tremendous in terms of working across the aisle, great character, great bearing.

She actually had seven of her bills that were signed by Governor DeSantis as a senator.

So the question is does someone like that who is the right kind, if she ends up still in the minority, the right kind of player to kind of work across the aisle.

If those kinds of players do not succeed because a wave has taken them out, what does that really say about the whole process?

I think actually in this case, I think Republicans in Florida are strengthened when they have others across the aisle of great merit and character who have ideas to bring to the table.

- You're right, that does surprise me.

All right, so Sean, your other big story.

- It surprised me too.

I appreciate that.

I think he's right.

Democrats on the verge of losing Miami-Dade.

And that would be catastrophic.

That would make it nearly impossible for Democrats to win statewide office going forward, and we've really got to look at ourselves in the mirror and figure out what's going on here.

That is really hard to fathom.

- Do you blame the party chair?

- I blame everything, quite frankly.

When you have done as badly as we have done over the years, there's not just one answer to it.

And quite frankly, I don't think plugging in Michael Jordan as chair of the party's gonna fix it anyway.

You know, we've got comms issues, we have infrastructure issues, registration problems, messaging.

We've got all kinds of problems I think we need to get our arms around.

- All right, Tara, your other big story.

- I think it's actually Lieutenant-Governor Nunez.

We have not talked at all about the would-be governor if DeSantis actually pivots to the role of the presidency.

And I think we also have to look at our resign to run laws in Florida and wonder if the Republican-controlled legislature is encouraged by Governor DeSantis to change the rules so he can maintain his seat as governor while running for president.

- Do you think Nunez would make a good governor?

- I think I have to get to know her.

- Okay.

All right, Zac, your other big story.

- I'm gonna do a shameless plug for my own story which dropped today actually.

It was a collaboration with U.S.A. Today.

Their documentary video team, States of America, came down to Florida and they did a 30 minute documentary, and I also wrote an article that really looked at the extremely polarized education politics that we've seen in this state over the last few years, going from COVID all the way to CRT and LGBTQ issues.

And DeSantis is really right at the center of it.

It's involved local school boards, and it's been pretty divisive, and I think it's a big issue in this governor's race and in politics in general.

I hope people will go check it out at www.heraldtribune.com.

Thank you.

- The Sarasota school board has been ground zero for a lot of that.

- It really has, and it's drawn in some really interesting politics, some pretty extreme politics, Proud Boys, Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security advisor have been involved.

- Yeah, all right.

Well, thank you all for a great show.

Thank you for making it to the studio, too.

It's wonderful to have you here.

Well, thank you for joining us.

Send us your comments at ftw@wedu.org.

You can view this and past shows online at wedu.org or on the PBS app.

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From all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend.

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