For the light and dark brilliance of political theater, consider Gov. Ron DeSantis’ most excellent week of Nov. 15, 2021.
Depending on your view, it was a week that will live in glory or infamy – or perhaps both. We’ll divide this theater into three stages: Freedom Tower at Miami Dade College (MDC) in Miami Nov. 15; the Florida Legislature special session Nov. 17; and Brandon, Fla., on Nov. 18.
Freeze the week in amber chrysalis and you’ll have a fair time capsule of undercurrents at work in Miami, in Florida and in the United States at a critical moment for American democracy.
Stage One
(MiamiAndBeaches.com)
Freedom Tower
DeSantis took the Freedom Tower stage for this press announcement: A $25 million request from the Florida Legislature in 2022 to complete “urgent repairs on the historic monument where Cuban Americans first arrived after fleeing Communism during the Cold War.”
“I am proud to be standing in the freest state in the United States and at the symbol of freedom right here in the Freedom Tower in Miami,” he said. Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez chimed in, followed by MDC President Madeline Pumariega, who said, “For me, this is personal.”
(LatinAmericanStudies.org)
Cuban refugees lined up outside Miami's Freedom Tower during the Freedom Flights of the late 1960s.
Pumariega’s parents were among the 650,000 Cubans processed through Freedom Tower 1962-74.
As sheer political theater, it was brilliant. DeSantis spoke at the dais, which was inscribed: “Patria y Vida” or “Homeland and Life,” the slogan and Grammy-winning song of the Cuban freedom protests of 2021, and a deliberate inversion of the Cuban regime’s less inviting “Patria o Muerte,” or “Homeland or Death.”
Indeed, what better place or time for such an announcement? For it was here at Freedom Tower where thousands demonstrated in July, in solidarity with protesters in Cuba, concluding with the illumination of the Cuban flag on the tower. And what better day? Cubans had scheduled mass protests Nov. 15, but authorities strangled them as police, state security agents and civilians fanned across the country to prevent dissidents from leaving their homes.
The Miami Herald, no particular friend of DeSantis, could only applaud. Its editorial opened with these lines: “Few historic buildings offer Miami’s Cuban exiles a flashback to one of the most significant moments of their lives.” And it closed with these: “It was a stroke of political genius by the governor, a touching and savvy gesture aimed at the heartstrings of some of Miami-Dade’s most loyal voters, older Cuban exiles. Well played, governor. It’s a worthy cause.”
Worthy, yes. But how necessary is this?
(Miami Dade College)
What is today Freedom Tower opened in 1925 as the headquarters of the Miami News-Metropolis. Current owners, Miami Dade College, hired Kaufman Lynn Construction to complete a top-to-bottom restoration in 2010.
True, the Freedom Tower has a storied history. Opened in 1925 as the headquarters of the Miami News-Metropolis in the boom Moorish architecture of the time, its 255-foot tower – now dwarfed by condo behemoths – defined the Miami skyline for generations. Its booms and busts mirrored the city’s. For years in the late 20th century, it was a place of vagrants, broken windows and decay, punctuated by fitful investment plans, including a short-lived one by a Saudi sheik who paid $8.7 million before walking away.
Cuban American businessman Jorge Mas Canosa – a fervent anti-Communist and prominent Miami Herald enemy – bought the property for $4.1 million shortly before his death in 1997. It briefly became the headquarters of the Cuban American National Foundation, which Mas Canosa had founded.
The real turnaround came from Pedro Martin Terra of the Terra Group, who bought the property in 2004, lavished millions upon it and donated it to MDC in 2008. In 2010, the college spent millions more when it hired Kaufman Lynn Construction to complete a top-to-bottom restoration that included the exterior and interior of the building. The work covered 90,000 square feet, including art galleries and a ballroom.
The meticulous result won awards and is well worth a visit, both for the Cuban exhibition and the Museum of Art and Design, now housed within its walls.
(KaufmanLynn.com)
Freedom Tower ballroom in the former Miami News space.
Still, why the legislature? MDC is one of the nation’s most successful colleges, with an endowment of $491.7 million. To provide a bit of perspective, Florida State’s is $696 million.
There’s lots of money sloshing around South Florida already. Why exactly does the Legislature need to be involved? Miami-Dade has a deep reservoir of Cuban American philanthropists – Gloria and Emilio Estefan in entertainment, and Mike Fernandez in health care, for instance. Or there’s MDC alumnus Jorge M. Pérez of The Related Group.
This isn’t intended as sour grapes, and I’m not trying to put the touch on these people just because they have deep pockets.
But the timing isn’t coincidental, either. For DeSantis, it’s all about politics. A few weeks before, he filed to run for governor. At last report, his war chest stood at nearly $63 million. Democratic challengers are well behind, with Nicki Fried at $3.26 million, Charlie Crist at $3.18 million and relative newcomer Annette Taddeo with $627,000.
And DeSantis’ politics lead straight to the Nov. 30 punchline, a $25,000-a-head donors roundtable in Ponte Vedra Beach.
DeSantis is staying coy about 2024. No wonder Donald Trump is as nervous as Norma Desmond about getting upstaged and deserted in “Sunset Boulevard,” as he beats on against the current, as per Gatsby, borne back ceaselessly into the past of the Big Steal of 2020. And no wonder that libertine-libertarian Trump helpmate Roger Stone has threatened to run for governor to siphon votes away from DeSantis, unless DeSantis commits steadfastly to not running for president in 2024.
Which leads us to …
Stage Two
Up the road 483 miles in Tallahassee, while the governor was extolling freedom, he had convened the Republican-controlled Legislature for a special session to rubber-stamp four anti-vax bills aimed at preventing workers from being required to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The intention was to blunt federal vaccine mandates by creating a new state vaccine policy. Private employer, government, and school COVID-19 vaccine mandates are prohibited. Small businesses with 99 employees or less face $10,000 fines, and medium and big businesses face fines of $50,000, enforced – somehow – by a new Florida Occupation Safety and Health Administration to upstage the federal one.
Here, too, the timing was fortunate for the Republicans. Most parts of Florida, a COVID-19 hot spot just a few months ago, are in a relative lull, while the northern tier from the Upper Midwest to Maine is bearing the brunt, and Austria is imposing a national lockdown across the pond.
Of course, the four anti-vax bills passed by resounding margins. Never mind that Democratic Sen. Jason Pizzo, who represents Biscayne Corridor territory, reminded fellow legislators that George Washington required anti-smallpox inoculations for his troops in 1777, or that creating a Florida OSHA would add another layer of bureaucracy.
Of course, there will be court challenges, as there have been with Florida voter-suppression and anti-riot laws.
Often, these challenges succeed. That’s not the point. DeSantis may have graduated from Harvard Law School, but this is all about politics, keeping the base and making a purple state that much more red. At the moment, it is succeeding.
Which brings us to …
Stage Three
Brandon. That’s the town DeSantis picked to sign the anti-vax provisions into law Nov. 18.
Why Brandon, of all places? Because DeSantis said it is a fine city, and he chose a local Honda dealership as the place to sign the provisions into law.
Right. By now, the whole world knows “Let’s Go Brandon” is code for “F*ck Joe Biden.” It gets the base excited. Trump is selling “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts on his Save America website, and he and Don Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle and company are sending out a good dozen emails a day, with a big spot for donations at the end.
Of course, “Let’s Go Brandon” started after an ESPN reporter evidently misheard “F*ck Joe Biden” chants after Brandon Brown’s NASCAR victory in Talladega in October.
And the DeSantis for governor website is up and running, with a picture of the governor holding son Mason. He’s included his three kids in his machinations since running for governor in 2018, reading “Art of the Deal” to them aloud and teaching them how to build a wall. Trump’s endorsement back in 2018 got DeSantis where he is today.
There’s no question that political discourse is getting coarser and Republicans have the upper hand. On Nov. 21, Republican voters outnumbered Democratic voters for the first time in Florida’s history, by 4,318 votes. In 2020, Democrats held a 134,242-vote advantage. Registered voters in both parties are down from a year ago, but Democrats are down by far more, thanks in part to voter roll purging.
The merch on sale at DeSantis’ “Keep Florida Free” site includes a yellow “Don’t Tread on Florida” T-shirt with a gator rather than a snake. And, in one clever bit of business, there’s a pair of golf balls in a red, white and blue box, with the inscription: “FLORIDA’S GOVERNOR HAS A PAIR. HOLD THE LINE.”
Such is discourse in the Free Florida Republic of DeSantistan, as the Republican Party looks to examples like Hungary for illiberal democracy. If this is freedom, it doesn’t exactly look like a shining city on the hill, even from 90 miles across the Florida Straits. There is more freedom here than in Cuba to start and build your business, make your money, and glorify or screw up your life. But it is coming, too, with growing division, tribalism and one-party rule in statehouses across the land. China’s Xi and Russia’s Vlad can just sit back and watch and enjoy their popcorn. Sure, we certainly need to be more civil and engaged but, like DeSantis – each in our own way will need to grow a pair.