The Florida state legislature moved this week to permit Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and different officers to cover their journey information from the general public.
It’s simply one in every of a number of strikes made in latest weeks and months by the state legislature that seem to help DeSantis’ 2024 marketing campaign. Final week, the Republican-controlled physique handed a handful of latest voting restrictions and adjustments to state election legislation, together with tweaking the state’s “resign to run” provision, paving the way in which for DeSantis to function governor and marketing campaign for the White Home on the similar time.
On Tuesday, the legislature handed the journey information invoice, which might exempt “sure safety or transportation companies” from public information necessities.
The Republican governor’s latest use of personal chartered flights to shake fingers and kiss infants in key main states like Iowa has sparked questions on what seems to be like marketing campaign journey—and who’s paying for it. However Sen. Jonathan Martin (R-Fort Myers), who sponsored the invoice, claimed to the Tampa Bay Occasions in March that the invoice needed to do with defending the governor’s security and privateness.
“There was a rise in public information requests relating to our governor and his journey merely due to his notoriety and his place for the previous few years,” Martin mentioned.
DeSantis echoed this reasoning at a Titusville occasion on Monday: “With the safety state of affairs, the way you do patterns of actions, should you’re any person that’s focused, which sadly I’m… that might be one thing that might be useful for individuals that won’t wish to do good issues,” he mentioned.
State legislation does enable him to make use of authorities planes for political and private journey, however complaints have risen about DeSantis utilizing taxpayer-funded transportation for his personal acquire.
That is the road of inquiry the Trump marketing campaign seized on to go after the governor.
“In latest months, Governor DeSantis has used taxpayer {dollars} to journey across the nation for his 2024 presidential marketing campaign, together with to the early voting states of Iowa and Nevada,” they mentioned in an announcement final month. “DeSantis’s gubernatorial workplace, nonetheless, refuses to inform reporters—and the general public—how a lot taxpayer cash has been spent to fund these travels, or how a lot DeSantis’s April globe-trotting will value.”