When it comes to causing hardship for Florida residents, LGBTQ advocacy organization Equality Florida says there’s an “even more destructive force” than hurricanes: Gov. Ron DeSantis.
On Wednesday, the group is debuting a new TV ad sharing that message, a list of divisive policies he’s enacted and calling on residents to join its resistance efforts.
The ad is titled “DeSantis Failed Us.” Equality Florida is spending a five-figure sum to run it on NBC 6 South Florida before, during and after the third GOP debate, and during prime time hours on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.
Equality Florida Executive Director Nadine Smith told Florida Politics the group chose to run the ad Wednesday because “it was when we knew DeSantis would actually be in Florida” — a dig at the Governor’s presidential campaign that frequently takes him out-of-state.
She said the hurricane comparison is fitting: “We’re going to be cleaning up the mess he’s left us long after he’s out of office.”
Equality Florida fits several complaints with the job DeSantis has done into the TV spot’s 30-second runtime. All stem from his war on “woke” ideology, including a ban on LGBTQ-inclusive education, offensive changes to Black history curricula, policies that have resulted in Florida having more books pulled from public school libraries than any other state and a pending law prohibiting abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.
Those and other issues, the group said in a press note Tuesday, have led to at least a dozen conventions planned in the state to be canceled or moved elsewhere, declining faculty staffing at state colleges and universities, and an advisory in May from the NAACP urging people to avoid coming to the Sunshine State.
Meanwhile polling shows DeSantis ranking among the least popular Governors in the country.
“Gov. DeSantis launched an all-out assault on the core values of freedom, equality, and democracy,” Smith said in a statement accompanying the press note. “We will continue to sound the alarm about the deep damage (he) has inflicted on basic freedoms in Florida.”
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