Bill Cotterell: DeSantis bungles the Hope Florida mess

The governor should learn some lessons about how to handle public-relations problems, our Capitol Columnist writes.

Everyone agrees on some unwritten rules for managing a political scandal, but when things go wrong, even the most adroit politicians seem to think those hard-learned lessons don’t apply to themselves.

That’s what we’re seeing in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ham-fisted handling of the Hope Florida mess. Even Republican legislative leaders, who groveled through the governor’s first term in servile submission, are using words like “subpoena” and “money laundering” about a program First Lady Casey DeSantis formed to help needy Floridians straighten out their lives.

If she wasn’t a likely candidate for governor next year, the $10 million involved would be a blip on a hundred-billion-plus state budget. And if DeSantis had been less of a schoolyard bully for six years in office — or if he hadn’t run against President Donald Trump last year for the GOP nomination— he might have more friends on the Capitol’s fourth floor who’d either stick up for him or continue looking away.

Never mind details, the headlines we’ll see in attack advertisements if Casey DeSantis runs for governor tell a horror story.

The state won a $67 million settlement in a healthcare overpayment case and, instead of going into the treasury, $10 million went to a foundation linked to Hope Florida. The money then went to two groups that helped the governor defeat a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed recreational marijuana.

Superb reporting by Politico and the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times Capitol bureau followed the money like the Washington Post’s dogged duo sniffed out Watergate 50 years ago. And like the Nixon gang, DeSantis followed his instincts, turning a passing peccadillo into a legacy-threatening PR crisis.

Rather than being conciliatory, DeSantis lashed back. As a House budget panel began poking into Hope Florida and the foundation, the governor went to Chairman Alex Andrade’s Panhandle district and said GOP leaders were conspiring with liberal Democrats — and, of course, the news media — to “smear” him.

“These guys in the Florida House of Representatives, you’ve got a cabal of them in the leadership,” DeSantis said. “They are colluding with liberal media and the Democratic Party of Florida to try to smear, to manufacture smears (of himself, his wife and Hope Florida) to support their political agenda.”

After Watergate, Iran-Contra, Bill Clinton’s private affairs and any number of lesser lurid interludes, politicians learned — but rarely practice — certain do’s and don’ts for crisis management.

First, when cornered, put everything out there. Take the hit, get it over with, sooner the better.
Second, you put it out. Not your friends, not your enemies, not the lawyers. “He disclosed” looks nicer than “was subpoenaed” in a news story.
Third, if scapegoats are needed, throw them overboard early, but remember those former friends will have an incentive to talk.
Fourth, try a “charm offensive.” Don’t attack your inquisitors, say you welcome their inquiry. Be aggressively accessible to the media.

That last one would be hard for DeSantis. It would help if he put the ball in play more often, maybe with a lengthy free-for-all news conference, with packets of documents to support his side. The DeSantis format heretofore has been showing up considerably late (without so much as a “sorry to keep everybody waiting”) then making an announcement and leaving.

Rigid control of message and access served his purposes in his first six years as governor. But DeSantis was an ascendant star of Republican politics in his first term, then a presidential contender. Re-elected emphatically in 2022, he was feared by legislators who knew he’d be vetoing bills, deciding budget items and appointing officeholders until January 2027.

Now in his lame-duckery, DeSantis has the usual backlog of grudges and resentments all governors accumulate by their sixth year. Plus, he’s got Trump mad at him for that foolishness in 2024, and Casey DeSantis will have a Trump-endorsed opponent, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, if she runs in the GOP gubernatorial primary next year.

History has a precedent for governors dealing with very questionable expenditures. But DeSantis can find little comfort in it.

Claude Kirk, Florida’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, set up a “Governor’s Club” in 1968, collecting $500 a year from, mostly, companies and law firms doing business with the state. Kirk refused to disclose his private finances, which he said were used for travel and events he didn’t want to bill taxpayers for, but the state Supreme Court ruled that a House committee could subpoena his records.

Kirk’s Governor’s Club had nothing to do with the exclusive Governors Club (no apostrophe) a couple blocks north of the state Capitol.

Anyway, Kirk begrudgingly disclosed $420,000 in contributions — peanuts by today’s standards — then he went on statewide TV and renamed his fund The People’s Club, inviting all Floridians to send him a buck or two.

It didn’t help. Kirk didn’t get much money and was defeated in 1970.

Bill Cotterell is a retired state Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at wrcott43@aol.com