Vaccines for votes: DeSantis' shot-in-the-arm strategy

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Vaccines for votes: DeSantis’ shot-in-the-arm strategy

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-op-com-bousquet-desantis-vaccines-for-votes-20210219-yyrnc3wpvzfa3cp3j63okzg3qy-story.html

Feb 19, 2021

By Steve Bousquet South Florida Sun Sentinel |


TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis dishes out COVID-19 vaccines to voters the way Florida politicians used to serve up barbecue.

His travel schedule, typically released long after he lands someplace, shows just how deeply the state’s pandemic response is intertwined with his own political agenda.

DeSantis has been to Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center, Kings Point in Delray Beach and Sun City Center near Tampa — all home to high-priority 65-and-up residents at the front of the vaccination line who happen to be reliable voters. He has visited the Lynn Haven Senior Center near Panama City, a deep-red bastion of Trumpism. He has personally offered shots in the arm to Holocaust survivors, Bay of Pigs veterans and elderly widows in Little Havana.

This week, he was in a mobile home park near St. Petersburg as a 94-year-old World War II veteran, Vern Cummings, received the vaccine, and it was set up so “Fox & Friends” could carry it live. The way Fox’s morning crew heaped praise on DeSantis, he should report the live shot TV as an in-kind donation to his re-election campaign.

We’re witnessing Pfizer and the Friends of Ron DeSantis PAC all rolled into one with daily media events, paid for with your tax dollars, piped into your living room on TV. It may be an unbeatable re-election formula, which is why he’s doing it constantly.


Yet for some strange reason, we can’t find DeSantis on TV distributing vaccines in Opa-locka, Riviera Beach, Lauderhill, Ybor City, Jacksonville;s west side, or other places where positivity rates are higher.


The story is not just who’s getting vaccinated. It’s who’s not: Black and Hispanic Floridians, front-line health care workers, teachers and educational personnel. These Floridians have no shot at getting a shot. They don’t live in the right zip codes.............. ........................

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