‘I think it’s important that the Governor hit the ground running and have everything in place that they need.’
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Gov. Ron DeSantis says his administration will make onboarding easy for Gov.-elect Byron Donalds’ team, noting that it is more than he got from his predecessor, now-U.S. Sen. Rick Scott.
“So we will have a very smooth transition. I met with the Congressman when he won the Primary and I said, ‘Pick someone to lead your transition. Don’t worry about it while you’re running, but let them start putting the pieces together. We’ll have contacts in our office, you work with them, and let’s do it,’” DeSantis said at Polk State College.
“You know, this is just a fact. Eight years ago, I didn’t have a cooperative transition. I mean, it is what it is. People are going to do what they do. But we’ve already been working on that with them, and we’re prepared to do what we can do to be helpful. I think it’s important that the Governor hit the ground running and have everything in place that they need.”
The conflicts between DeSantis and Scott persist to this day, but seem to have their genesis in the roughly two months between the 2018 election and Scott leaving for Washington, D.C., where he serves as a U.S. Senator.
DeSantis ended up retracting 215 appointments Scott had made, including his last-minute picks as a lame duck. Scott also left the inauguration ceremony early because he had to be in Washington for his own swearing in, after throwing a “thank you” party for EOG staff in the Governor’s Mansion the day before DeSantis was sworn in.
Before that, then-U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a co-Chair of DeSantis’ transition team, said Scott frustrated the DeSantis team’s efforts to set up shop in the Capitol to interview agency heads.
That kind of drama won’t be happening this time around, DeSantis said Wednesday.
“We hit the ground running, and I think made a big splash. But because we were so bold in some things, people didn’t know behind the scenes that we were really working to make sure it all held together for those first few weeks. But we did do it. And so I think he’s going to have an opportunity to do something similar.”
Scott has taken shots at DeSantis’ agenda numerous times over the last eight years.
He threw shade at DeSantis’ proposal to repeal homestead property taxes, which culminated in Amendment 3.
He also faulted DeSantis’ stewardship of the property insurance market.
Scott objected to money being routed through the Hope Florida Foundation for political ads, saying “tax dollars for poor kids have no business funding political ads.”
Scott criticized DeSantis’ call to repeal so-called vaccine mandates for school kids, saying parents could already opt out according to state law.
While running for re-election to the Senate in 2024, Scott backed away from the Heartbeat Protection Act, a law signed by DeSantis that bans abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy with some exceptions, saying the 15-week ban was “where the state’s at.”
In 2023, after Scott endorsed Donald Trump for President while DeSantis was still a candidate, DeSantis said it was an attempt to “short circuit” the voters.
That same year, during DeSantis’ conflict with The Walt Disney Co. over parental rights legislation, Scott said it was important for Governors to “work with” major companies in their states.
The critiques went both ways.
When running for office, DeSantis distanced himself from Scott during the controversy over Scott’s blind trust for his assets as Governor.
“I basically made decisions to serve in uniform, as a prosecutor, and in Congress to my financial detriment,” DeSantis said in October 2018. “I’m not entering (office) with a big trust fund or anything like that, so I’m not going to be entering office with those issues.”
In 2020, when the state’s creaky unemployment website couldn’t handle the surge of applicants for reemployment assistance as the pandemic shut down businesses, DeSantis likened it to a “jalopy in the Daytona 500” and Scott urged him to “quit blaming others” for the website DeSantis’ administration inherited.
The chill between the former and current Governors didn’t abate in time for 2022’s hurricane season, when Scott said DeSantis hadn’t talked to him after Hurricane Ian ravaged the state. Scott’s camp said the Senator called the Governor multiple times to see how the federal government could assist the state’s efforts, but DeSantis did not return those phone calls.
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