Podcast: The Limits of the Culture War in Florida
John Monroe’s booth at the annual Strawberry Festival in Plant City, Florida was full of carved-antler knives and knickknacks, but he said he gets chuckles and plenty of customers for a wooden paddle inscribed with the words, “Make Kids Great Again.”
Monroe, 70 years old, said he is in line with former President Donald Trump’s agenda, but he would have supported Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid this year if the governor hadn’t abandoned his campaign before Florida’s March 19 primary. Part of the attraction: DeSantis’s laws on education, a component of an agenda that led the governor to declare that Florida is “where woke goes to die.”
I met Monroe while I was in the Sunshine State for the latest episode of Chasing the Base, a voter-voice podcast that I’ve been working on for The Wall Street Journal. Here’s a photo essay based on the trip that I put together with my colleague Ariel Zambelich, with images that photographer Zack Wittman made earlier this month. You can get this episode — and another one coming soon — by subscribing to the WSJ’s “What’s News” feed in whatever app you use to get podcasts..
Many Republican voters I spoke to haven’t had these kinds of culture-war issues at the top of their minds when choosing the party’s nominee for president. Most Republicans generally agreed with the policies and said they supported DeSantis for pursuing them. But most also said his championing of those issues wasn’t enough to dislodge their support for Trump, largely because of the former president’s handling of immigration issues and the economy.
April Schiff, a Republican state committee woman who has been running campaigns for the last two decades, said there are limits to how you can use the culture war while running for office.
“I don't think the voters are as much as the activists and the people that are involved that are pushing those issues, and for them it's very important issues, but I don't see the voters going, ‘Oh, yeah. That's a big deal,’” she told me.
Check out the full episode here, including interviews with members of the Moms for Liberty group, the owner of an Orlando restaurant that hosts drag events and an attorney who has been pushing back on DeSantis’s policies.
TRIP NOTES:
+ You can get strawberry-flavored anything at the Strawberry, where we spent the afternoon talking to voters. (DeSantis came through as well.) I had a strawberry shortcake on a biscuit that was quite nice.
+ You can feel the growth in Florida. Houses are springing up everywhere, and there is randomly bumper-to-bumper traffic on stretches of I-4 in the middle of the day. That was different from the other states that I’ve visited.
+ After traveling to Iowa, Michigan and New Hampshire, it was very nice to be in a place where it was warm enough to dip my feet in the ocean.
TERRY GOLWAY IN ALBANY ON MONDAY: I got some nice notes from folks about my good friend Terry Golway’s new book about former New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Here’s a reminder that you can hear Terry talk about it during a March 18 event in Albany sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute.
THE QUESTION: What are Florida’s top three crops, by dollar value? (I have no idea, but will look up the answer by next week!)
Know the answer? Drop me a line at jimmy.vielkind@gmail.com. Or just write with thoughts, feedback or to say hi.
THE LAST ANSWER: La Guardia cried out “no more free lunch,” in Italian, as he entered New York City Hall to being his tenure as mayor.