In his time as governor, Ron DeSantis has routinely sided with the insurance, real estate, and utility companies, doling handouts and allowing them to excessively raise rates on working families, all at the expense of everyday Floridians.
Property insurance
Floridians have been pleading with the governor and Republican legislature to address the property insurance crisis, but DeSantis has ignored the emergency all year, opting to focus on divisive culture wars instead of lowering rates for homeowners. DeSantis’ failed special session did nearly nothing to help residents and homeowners and left Florida’s property insurance market in free fall. Now, with criticism coming from Republicans and Democrats alike, DeSantis is promising yet another special legislative session that is more likely to yield another handout to the insurance industry, or even additional abortion restrictions, than it is to help Floridians.
Housing crisis
DeSantis’ special session also missed the mark by failing to address Florida’s housing affordability crisis. At one point, parts of Florida overtook New York City as the least affordable housing market in the country. As rents reached insane levels this year, Miami became the epicenter of the housing crisis.
Energy and utilities
President Biden and Democrats have fought hard to ease the burden of Putin’s price hike on working families. DeSantis, however, was caught purposely delaying a statewide 27-cent gas tax holiday, originally pitched to Floridians as six months of relief, to just the month of October in an attempt to boost his reelection campaign. Even then, Floridians are only getting a third of the relief promised to them from DeSantis’ gas tax holiday. DeSantis also gave FPL the green light to raise energy rates by a record $5 billion while receiving $3 million in campaign donations from FPL’s network of dark-money organizations.
“DeSantis has utterly failed to look out for Floridians’ pocketbooks or tackle simple kitchen table issues. In fact, he’s made them worse,” said Florida Democratic Party spokesperson Kobie Christian. “DeSantis cares more about delivering favors for his special interest buddies and corporate executives than he does making Florida affordable for Floridians.”
