Today, Explained - Teflon Ron

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has hit on a winning — if possibly unethical — campaign strategy: prosecuting people who accidentally committed voter fraud. The Tampa Bay Times’s Lawrence Mower explains. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Siona Peterous, fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from Jillian Weinberger, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram, who also edited. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Tampa Bay Times released some video footage last week that ended up being a Rorschach test for the country. You either see some confused people being arrested for a crime they had no idea they committed. Let's walk over to my car. Why is y'all doing this now and this happened years ago? I don't know. Why would y'all let me vote if I wasn't able to vote?

Or you see the authorities policing one of the most consequential crimes in the country, voter fraud. I'm not voting for that voter, but I ain't committing no fraud. If you're in the former camp, you're outraged by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. If you're in the latter camp, DeSantis is your guy.

Either way, DeSantis wins. And maybe that's how he wins Florida in a few weeks, and maybe one day, the nation. That's ahead on Today Explained. Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the plateau. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs?

And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. Today Explained, I'm Sean Ramos-Firm, and this is Lawrence Maurer. I'm a Tallahassee correspondent for the Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald. Last week, Lawrence and the Tampa Bay Times published a story that was so shocking, the whole country stopped to notice.

It made international news. The video features convicted felons, people convicted of murder and sex crimes to be specific, being arrested for having voted in violation of Florida law. And these videos had a whole lot of people in their feelings about these convicted felons. We put this out there thinking that this is different. This is a different take on a different view of this topic. You know, witnessing these people get arrested for voting is not, it's just not something you see every day. I think that, you know, you look at someone like Ramona Oliver,

55-year-old woman, spent 18 years in prison for second-degree murder. She's got a job. She's been remarried since leaving prison. She's arrested on her way to work. I'm like, vote for that voter, but I ain't committing no fraud. Well, that's the thing. I don't know exactly what happened with it, but you do have a warrant. That's what it's for.

Oh, my God. Yeah, so I don't know what happened with that. She looks like a grandma. In another case of Tony Patterson, a guy who's a registered sex offender, he stopped outside of his house and police tell him you've got a warrant for your arrest. And says what for what it is it i think the agents with fdle talked to you last week about some voter fraud voter stuff when you weren't supposed to be voting maybe it was for voter fraud and he just you can see from the video that he can't really believe it i didn't so what are they talking about that's what you're we're not the case agents but what you got to do they they have reduced your bond quite a bit. It's two felony charges for voter fraud,

but they reduced it to $500 bonds. So it's $1,000 total. Oh, my God, man. What the... Yes, sir. You know, you hear him stewing in the backseat of the car, of the police car. Let's walk over to my car, okay?

Why is y'all doing this now and this happened years ago? I don't know. I have no idea, man. Why would y'all let me vote if I wasn't able to vote? And there's another telling video. A guy by the name of Nathan Hart, he's also a sex offender.

He says, hey, are you ready to vote? I said, no, I'm pretty sure I can't. He goes, well, are you still on probation? I said, no, I got off probation like a month ago. He goes, well, then you can probably vote. Hey, just fill out the form, and if you can vote, and they'll let you give your card, if you can't vote, then you won't.

I'm like, all right. You know, he was given a voter ID card even though he was not allowed to vote. The state did an initial check and cleared him. And he voted in 2020. And there's your defense. You know what I'm saying? That sounds like a good point to me.

It's not as low that you hear a police officer lending advice on a sex offender's defense while they're arresting that person. And in other cases, too, in one of the other videos, you can hear the police officer pick up a cell phone call from someone, and they're clearly talking about, in this case, Tony Patterson's arrest. Yeah, I guess they're doing like some kind of roundup thing or something for all the ones that were within the county. Yeah, I had to do one of these this morning already. Oh, really? And so local police seem maybe skeptical,

or as I write, I wrote that they seemed almost sympathetic to these people's situations here. It's not the kind of typical perception you have here when you hear murderers and sex offenders. And these people's reactions challenge the laws that they're being accused of violating. They're being accused of willfully violating the law, willfully voting when they were ineligible. And I mean, just look at the videos. Does it seem like these people knew that they were violating the law at the time? I think there's probably a real question there for a lot of people, perhaps even a jury, whether or not these people seem to have willfully violated the law.

And to understand what's going on in these videos, you have to understand Florida's Amendment 4, which we covered back on the show in 2018. But can you remind us what that amendment spelled out? Amendment 4, it allowed anyone with a felony conviction to vote if you did not have a felony sex offense on your record, if you did not have a murder on your record, and if you had completed all terms of your sentence. You know, Amendment 4, when it passed, was considered the greatest expansion of democracy in the United States since the Civil Rights Movement. We're talking up to 1.4 million people in Florida, presumably getting the right to vote back. Florida's Republican legislature passed a law to clarify the amendment.

It defines all terms of sentence as more than just time served, parole and probation. It also means that felons have to pay their financial penalties. And so, out of nearly one and a half million felons who regained the right to vote, 774,000 lost the right because of debt. And Governor DeSantis comes into office in 2019. What's his relationship to Amendment 4? He was against Amendment 4, like most of the top Republicans were here. And DeSantis encouraged the legislature to draw a very hard line on the fines and fees issue. Hours before the Saturday deadline, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a controversial bill that will now limit the number of felons who will be allowed to vote in Florida. He's the one who really pushed the legislature to, you know,

require people with felony convictions to pay off all fines and fees and restitution of victims before being allowed to vote. And then DeSantis sets up a new office to investigate voter fraud, which I imagine is how we get to these arrests. And that new office, the Office of Election Crimes and Security, was something that DeSantis requested this year from the legislature. This is a first-of-its-kind office. And these were some of the concerns that some in the legislature had when this office was created. They were wondering, how is this office going to be used?

This is putting quite a bit of power into a politician's hands. The state of Florida has charged and is in the process of arresting 20 individuals across the state for voter fraud. In August, he held the press conference to announce the first actions by this Office of Election Crimes and Security. He announces 20 people getting arrested. It's no debate they were not allowed to vote. But nevertheless, they were given voter ID cards, cleared by the Secretary of State, and were not stopped from going into a polling place and casting a ballot in 2020. Nevertheless, DeSantis announces these arrests, touts that these are the first actions by this new office, you know, that these people are going to pay the price. But what's clear is that if you buy that there was widespread

election fraud in the 2020 election, so far, arresting 20 people who seem to have been confused about whether or not they had the right to vote isn't really getting at some larger conspiracy to commit fraud in elections. No, it's not. You know, DeSantis since 2020 has been under pressure from conservatives in Florida to do an audit of Florida's 2020 election, which President Trump won handily in Florida. You know, it was a blowout by Florida standards. You know, it's kind of no secret from the political class that this was a response to pressure from the right to do something about voter fraud.

And these 20 arrests don't point to any kind of concerted fraud here. It kind of points to faults with DeSantis' own office, in fact. You know, the basic question here is why were these people allowed to register to vote in the first place. Why can't the Secretary of State, again, this is DeSantis' own office, why can't they still tell you when you register to vote whether or not you're eligible to vote? What is DeSantis after that he will indulge the people who really want to see him police elections this way when you admit that he doesn't even seem to really care that much about it? Yeah, well, the answer is pretty simple,

is that this is a popular issue and an important issue for his base. You know, he has faced criticism from Roger Stone and others that he would not do an audit here. He needs to appear strong on this issue. It's no secret to anyone in Florida, much less nationally, that DeSantis wants to run for president. And of course, he's running for re-election this year.

And so this is an issue in which he may be perceived as vulnerable. And it's something that he has some control over. You know, he can create an election security force and make arrests, which gets headlines, which makes it look like he's doing something. More with Lawrence on Governor for now, DeSantis in a minute on Today Explained. digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an Aura frame for himself.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The press don't like it, but it sure does get my business. GM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Today Explained, still here with Lawrence Maurer from the Tampa Bay Times, talking about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has national ambitions, but before he gets there, Lawrence, he's still working on a re-election bid in these coming midterms. That's right. He's running against former Republican governor Charlie Crist, who's since left the Republican Party. He ran as an independent after one year in office, and now he's a Democrat. I trust the women of Florida, and you can trust me,

to defend your freedom to choose, to take on the big insurance companies, and lower costs for you. Ron DeSantis won't do it. I will. He kind of pushed out the other Democratic contenders in the race. He's somebody who, in many ways, is DeSantis' opposite. Somebody who likes to kind of kill you with kindness, so to speak. But nevertheless, Charlie Crist faces a real uphill battle here.

I mean, not just with money. I mean, DeSantis has been raising money for years now from billionaires across the country, also grassroots. He's got, I mean, a ton of people sending him money. He has probably a 10 to 1 advantage now, at least, over Charlie Crist in fundraising. And most polls have him with a healthy margin of victory, even though Florida is traditionally a very neck and neck state. I think most people are kind of acknowledging that Charlie Crist is in for a defeat. A new poll shows Governor DeSantis has opened an 11-point lead over Democratic challenger Charlie Crist in the race for governor. And meanwhile, DeSantis seems to be burnishing his national credibility. When exactly did he start doing that? Because he's only been governor for a few years.

Yeah, I would say probably with COVID. DeSantis is someone who he was kind of contrarian to his own party in some ways in Florida. But with COVID, he really took it to another level. If you saw DeSantis at the beginning of the pandemic, he was not someone who was really bucking the national experts. He did shut down the state. He may have been late to do it, but he did shut down Florida. However, you started to see him come into his own by bucking the national experts. You know, he was all about the vaccines. He was quick to get the vaccines distributed here and then quick to ignore them. Monday, Governor DeSantis made his position clear,

vowing to protect workers who refused the shot. People that have put in 10, 15, 20 years, and now they're just going to get cast aside by some onerous mandate. That is wrong. He was somebody who reopened the state sooner than a lot of experts thought. There's Florida is only one of a handful of states in the country where 100 percent of the parents have the ability to send their child for in-person instruction. That was pretty popular

here. It was popular with other Republicans in other states. And he became kind of a national leader for bucking Anthony Fauci. Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac. He's someone who quickly recognized that some Americans, at least, did not have much patience for lockdowns and COVID restrictions and embraced that. Do we get any sense from his time in office where he wants to take the party if he does, in fact, become its leader one day? Not particularly. You know, DeSantis is someone who has characterized himself as a Teddy Roosevelt Republican in the environmental sense in particular. In Florida, water, the environment is instrumental to our identity as a state. People come here for the beaches. And DeSantis did buck his own party here by actually acknowledging climate change.

The sea rise may be because of human activity and the changing climate. You know, maybe it's not. I don't know. But what I do know is I see the sea rising. I see the increased flooding in South Florida. So I think you'd be a fool not to consider that an issue that we need to address. He's an opportunist in many ways, not unlike Trump. They both have kind of hardened instincts. DeSantis would certainly think of himself as, you know,

he's very different than Trump in the sense of, talk to people who have worked for him and DeSantis will memorize pages of a three-ring binder and be able to say, now on page 25, the third paragraph, it says this, and you just told me something different. He is willing to get into the weeds on details that Trump never showed even the remotest interest in. But DeSantis is someone who it's not exactly clear where he wants to take the party. It's clear that he wants to make it in his own image, but it's not exactly clear what his identity is. And since COVID, we've had, don't say gay, we've had famously him flying Venezuelan migrants to Martha's Vineyard and creating this new office of election fraud and going after people who don't seem to have been trying to commit election fraud. How is this strategy going for him? Well, by all accounts, it's going well. I mean, of course, if he loses in the re-election, that'll say something.

But he's got a message that certainly some people like, but really it's about getting attention. You know, this is a candidate who is in office because he got Trump's attention. When DeSantis was in Congress, he was a, for lack of a better term, a backbencher congressman who never got a single bill passed of his own accord. He's somebody who frequently voted no on stuff. He's part of the Freedom Caucus. And he did virtually no campaigning in Florida for the governor's office until Trump endorsed him. And in Congress, he went after the Mueller investigation. He was on Fox News all the time trying to get Trump's attention and Trump's endorsement.

And in the race for governor in 2018, that's what he got. And you saw him overnight turn into the front runner in that race. And DeSantis went all in on Trump. Everyone knows my husband, Ron DeSantis, is endorsed by President Trump, but he's also an amazing dad. Ron loves playing with the kids. Build the wall.

He reads stories. Then Mr. Trump said, you're fired. I love that part. And how does the former president who endorsed him and essentially made Governor DeSantis, feel about him now? Well, there's been quite a lot of media coverage of that. I mean, it seems to be no secret that Trump is not thrilled with DeSantis' rise. As Trump flirts with another presidential run in 2024, he is reportedly upset that DeSantis refuses to rule out a run against him, feeling the Florida governor is not showing enough gratitude towards him. Trump is right. Trump did make DeSantis. Without Trump's endorsement,

DeSantis would almost certainly not be governor of Florida. The odds were well against him, and he had put in virtually no effort into his campaign until Trump's endorsement. And there's been a lot of reports of Trump behind the scenes, you know, denigrating DeSantis in various ways, saying he has no personality and whatnot. And yeah, like all of Trump's insults, there's some truth to them. Deep down in some weird, distorted way, there's some truth. DeSantis is a very insular guy. He's someone who trusts his own instincts, and he's not someone who's easily pushed over, even by someone like Trump. This is, I mean, DeSantis' best chance of running for president is when he's a sitting governor. He's got the attention now.

He's obviously shown to be adept at occupying the national attention of Republicans for all kinds of policy issues in Florida. And that's obviously the ideal springboard to the presidency. So what I'm getting from you is Ron DeSantis was a highly forgettable congressional representative. Then he makes his entire identity about trying to get the former president's attention for a gubernatorial endorsement. Then he gets it, has literally no other platform,

then I got the endorsement of the sitting president, becomes governor, and has made some minor policy adjustments to Florida, but has chiefly pulled all these stunts in order to garner more national attention. And now he has it, and very may well be a successful presidential candidate one day who most of us will still not really have any understanding of. Is that the deal? That's right. And, you know, he's still someone we don't really know much about.

But if he sees a political opportunity for himself, he has been willing to seize it. Lawrence Maurer, Tampa Bay Times, sometimes the Miami Herald too. Check out his journalism on convicted felons being arrested for voter fraud at TampaBay.com. Our program today was produced by Siona Petros and Miles Bryan. They had help putting it together from Paul Robert Mounsey, Jillian Weinberger, Laura Bullard, and Matthew

Collette? I'm not sure. I'm Sean Ramos for him. You've been listening to Today Explained.