Gov. Ron DeSantis is offering emphatic defenses of two appointed State Attorneys seeking election to office this year as they run against the Democrats DeSantis yanked from office.
During remarks at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office Operations Center, the Governor sounded the alarm about why all Floridians need to care about who holds local offices.
“It’s really important that we have uniform enforcement of the law all up and down the state, but particularly up and down the I-4 corridor,” DeSantis said.
The Governor removed Democrats Andrew Warren and Monique Worrell from office last year in the 13th and 9th Judicial Circuits, respectively, for “neglect of duty” in Warren’s case and “neglecting her duty to faithfully prosecute crime in her jurisdiction” in Worrell’s. Warren won his Democratic Primary this month with more than 70% of the vote; Worrell was unopposed in her Primary.
With Suzy Lopez and Andrew Bain — who respectively replaced the two displaced Democrats — on hand at the presser, DeSantis noted that releasing criminals creates problems far beyond the local jurisdictions.
“It’s not just an issue for whatever that one county is, because if you have a prosecutor in Hillsborough that’s releasing criminals back on the street, you don’t think that’s going to impact what Grady Judd is doing in Polk County? Of course, it will. You have somebody in Orange County releasing on the street, you don’t think that’s going to end up affecting people like Wayne Ivey over in Brevard? Yes, it will,” DeSantis said.
Lopez noted she has “righted the ship” in Hillsborough County, as law enforcement would affirm.
Criminals, she said, “now know there’s no Andrew Warren ‘get out of jail’ free card.”
Meanwhile, Bain rejected the proposition that DeSantis pressured him into leaving a judgeship for the prosecutor position.
“And some people will say, ‘Well, it’s because the Governor told you to do it.’ I’m a 6’4″, 350-pound black man. Do you believe that the Governor telling me to do something is what’s going to move me to do something?”
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