Teen Vogue’s Red Tide series explores what it’s like for young Floridians living under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s conservative policies. No 2024 presidential candidate has championed the right’s crusade against young people, especially the marginalized, quite like him. We traveled to Tampa, Tallahassee, and Sarasota – plus western Massachusetts – and spoke to over twenty Floridians fighting to make the state one that is equitable and safe for everyone.
In summer 2022, a few weeks before Roe fell but a few weeks after the SCOTUS leak, I was traveling with someone from Miami. At some point, we started talking about the 2024 elections. Suddenly turning somber, she shared that she was feeling paranoid that Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, was going to win the Republican nomination — and that Americans didn’t know what they were in for.
He’s not a better Trump, she added, a talking point that was already beginning to circulate in coverage of DeSantis; he’s his own kind of bad. The moment had a strange prophetic quality.
In the last few years, for those covering the intersections of policy, government, identity, and movements, it’s been impossible to avoid what’s been happening in Florida. In March 2022, I suggested that the DeSantis administration’s focus on anti-LGBTQ+ policies and young people, exemplified by the passage of his “Don’t Say Gay'' law, was part of his soon-to-be-announced presidential campaign strategy.
In November 2022, I cited DeSantis and his ilk for creating the societal furor that spurred record-bursting state legislative bills against LGBTQ+ life, and placed a target on LGBTQ+ youth. In December 2022, I wrote thousands of words to combat the notion that DeSantis could be a less-bad, or more palatable, version of Trump.
DeSantis is proud of his “war on woke,” despite his current hesitancy to bring it up. Talking with organizers working on abortion care, LGBTQ+ rights, policing, protest rights, and more, I have been told more than once that they’d be more afraid of a DeSantis White House than a Trump redux. Even as that seems increasingly unlikely, DeSantis returning to the governorship after losing in the primary would still be an issue for Florida, the third-largest state and the fastest-growing population in 2022.
Read on to find out what young people in Florida want you to know about DeSantis’s 2024 run.
In Florida, even though you have two different sides — really right leaning and really left leaning — back a long time ago, we were cool with just being separate. We agreed that everyone has a human right. But now, everything's being stripped away.
I'm so confused because I'm like, Does the world not see what's going on right now? If you see what's going on in Florida, you can see from a very wide view that okay, we hate him, cool. Do you know why, specifically? If they're seeing all these bills, if he's getting these passed in Florida, what makes you think he's not going to try to do that across the United States?
I've been telling everyone who asks that I want to get the hell out of Florida. Florida, just as a whole, academically and all of the -ly's — it's going down the drain.
I was born and raised in Broward County, one of the bluest parts of the state. Even there, it's getting worse: The visibility of these QAnon, Let's Go Brandon, and MAGA people has been growing over the past few years. As a person coming into my identity and wanting to express myself the way I express myself, it gradually gets a little scarier. And the more stories you hear — especially after I was already considering leaving the state, way before all this happened — then fascism hits and it's like, Okay, now I think I really need to go. Once fascism starts coming in, I don't think I need to stick around for this anymore.
I get the whole “Florida, man,” “Florida is crazy, all the crazy stuff happens in Florida," which is true — there's a different thing every day, every hour. But when it comes to the political landscape of Florida itself, DeSantis really does give us a pretty bad rep. He's also been actively, if not the catalyst for all of the bad sh*t that's been happening. More recently, I guess, because Rick Scott. Eh, we can go down the list, but…
We're all still here. There's still a huge chunk of Florida trying to fight against all this Christofascist, super right-wing ideology. All of this nonsense about us, specifically — as progressives, as Dems, as libs, whatever they want to call us — all that representation that we get in the media isn't quite good. I don't know…. We're still here, we're still fighting the fight.
I mean, this is our state. I was born and raised here, and I would live out the rest of my life here if I could. But the way in which these political figures, or people that I quite literally have never seen their faces or know their names, are impacting my daily life, it's enough to push me out of the state.
And if DeSantis does run, and God forbid, win the presidency, I'd have to look outside of the country. I'm applying for a visa in Spain. I will do my damnedest to get out of here if that's the case, because if someone who has done so much bad — not necessarily even bad, because in some people's eyes, it's great, it's amazing, even, but — someone who has enacted so much change that has negatively impacted people's lives, and we've been very outspoken about how it's been happening, if someone like that gets elected into the highest possible position in the United States, for me, that's the end.
I think DeSantis is losing. I think he's starting to lose. I don't know how fast that process is gonna take place, and I would need more investigation into the politics to make a clear analysis, but he's losing.
For one thing, he lacks any and all talent when it comes to charisma; he just doesn't have it. Trump has it. He's a bastard, he's a racist, he's a misogynist, yada, yada, we know — but as a politician, he has charisma, that talent to mobilize people to fight for him because they see him as their hero. He can connect with the most reactionary parts of the sentiment or ideology in America. And he's funny, and that works.
DeSantis doesn't have any of that. But also, he has to realize that what people want is a diet Trump who has Trump's personality. So not only does he not have Trump's personality, but what the Republicans misunderstand — and, in my opinion, this shows the internal contradictions in their party. Everybody thinks they're so unified and perfect together, but no; we saw two factions during the January 6 riot…. Ultimately, DeSantis can't be diet Trump. He's trying to push these further-right policies, and the effects of them — how they're not working — they're starting to show up.
As a Black trans person living in Florida right now, I don't want to leave. I have a good job here. I like living here, and I like my friends here. My only problem is that DeSantis continues to pass policies that f*ck me over and f*ck trans people over and Black people over and everyone over, really.
But my hope is that he takes a hit soon. I think the Republicans will eventually get probably some position of power back in Florida, but I think he could take a serious hit soon. And I think ultimately, his power, his ability to establish dominance in the state of Florida, it's nothing to the power of the majority of people in Florida and what they have to give.
Whether you're in Florida or not, if you think Florida isn't coming to you, guess what? It will. If you think the contradiction between the state and the federal government is something that people in the South really care about, or it's only in our states, guess what? These people are running for president. This time it's Ron DeSantis, and thank God, he sucks, so it's probably not going to happen. But what happens if next time it's someone with a little bit more charisma, or the [next] Democrat in office is just even more milquetoast than Biden?
The amount of times that people have pushed the story of our suffering to the side because of some news about the Trump indictment? Enraging. As a direct victim of this terrorist legislation that DeSantis is doing, it's so insulting.
As someone who's now viewing from a little bit of the outside, I have very little hope for the future of Florida, especially if legislators like those associated with the DeSantis administration continue to do what they're trying to do.
God, I would love to go back to Florida. I would love to be in Florida right now. But I can't. I couldn't raise my children there, not now, not with the environment.
DeSantis went from a month ago saying “Black people benefited from slavery" and dadada to “I love Black people.” That made me so mad when I saw that. Sir, you literally passed bills and laws to make it more difficult for Black children to even learn their history because you're scared that maybe the white kids might not be vibing with y'all and y'all's ideas anymore, once they realize, “Hey, the current system is corrupt.” For him to literally just show up — which I think everyone with common sense would know this — he's only doing this because he wants to look good for polling.
Like I always say, Fort Lauderdale was flooding, and he was out signing books. He came back to sign the abortion ban into law, and then dipped again. Nothing was done.
People see Florida as this red state, and the entire time I've lived here, I think it is still deeply purple. Especially with Covid, we've had a lot of people move here from very, very blue areas, like New York. Sarasota, especially, has always had New York and New Jersey transplants, but now we're getting people from California, Colorado, from big cities in Texas, and not all of them share the same beliefs as the governor. I think Florida is still very deeply purple.
But what DeSantis is good at doing is, he's good at de-motivating people. He's good at making people feel hopeless because he just does things. He's like, “Oh, well, this is the will of the voters because they elected me,” but he doesn't talk about it that much on his campaign trail. He does it now because he wants to have a platform to run for president. He's good at making people feel like we are a red state.
He [won] an election that we were not excited about. And people still hate him. And there's a lot of people in Florida that still just don't vote, so it tends to be the actual winning majority is people who don't even vote in the election. And then there's just so many disenfranchised people who can't vote.
I have a lot of friends in other states that I go and visit. When I'm like, “Oh, I live in Florida,” [it's like,] “Oh, I'm so sorry for you.” Can you be angry for me as well? That would help a lot. But people are leaving, which also makes it hard for me to stay there. I don't necessarily want to leave.
Florida, for the longest time, was a very queer, friendly space, or at least relative to other parts of the country. A lot of the big cities here, including Sarasota, have a sizable LGBT population where we have our own Pride events, and we have a city that cares a lot and will recognize Pride month…. To have that many marginalized people with a governor that just makes it even worse, it's scary. But you have people who just feel like they can't go outside anymore, like there'll be targets.
I just hope people pay attention. Everybody is saying [Florida] gets so much coverage, but I don't always think people pay attention to it in the way that they should. So many things in the news are like, “Oh, my God, this is so horrible,” and not like, “This is gonna happen everywhere.” I don't think it will happen absolutely everywhere, but DeSantis is running for president — he is already influencing other states.
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