[This article was updated at 3:22 p.m., Friday, March 31, 2023, to correct the spelling of former Education Secretary Eric Hagerty’s name]
Supporters and lawmakers warned about the spread of far-right ideology embraced by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his supporters ahead of DeSantis’ appearance near Harrisburg on Saturday.
DeSantis, who has said he is considering running for president in 2024, is scheduled to speak at the Pennsylvania Conservative Leadership Conference at the Penn Harris Hotel in Camp Hill in Cumberland County.
He is favored by some conservatives as the Republican Party’s candidate for the presidential nomination.
Democratic state lawmakers from Florida and Pennsylvania have condemned DeSantis’ policies that have targeted voting rights, abortion access, immigrants and elementary school curricula on racism, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Florida state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, D-Orange, said that as DeSantis pursues his agenda, the state faces a deepening housing crisis, skyrocketing rents, rising utility costs and attacks on consumer rights.
“We don’t want that type of demagogue in the White House,” Eskamani said during a press call organized by DeSantis Watch. “We do not want Gov. Ron DeSantis to inspire others to emulate his behavior.”
DeSantis Watch is a project of the Florida Center for Communications and Research that aims to highlight and oppose DeSantis’ policies.
Supporters of DeSantis’ ideology include Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, for whom DeSantis campaigned during Mastriano’s unsuccessful 2022 bid for governor.
Noting that Mastriano has said he wants to make Pennsylvania the “Florida of the North,” Pennsylvania Republican Malcolm Kenyatta of Philadelphia said Mastriano and DeSantis’ policies boil down to a list of people to hate, things to ban and marginalized groups to blame.
“You’re doing this because you don’t have serious solutions to the problems that people are really worried about,” Kenyatta said.
Kenyatta said DeSantis’ record on key programs like Medicare and Social Security, as well as his opposition to gun safety laws, will make Pennsylvania and the country less unthreatening.
“We cannot trust carnival barkers like Ron DeSantis and Doug Mastriano to ever focus on the issues that we as lawmakers focus on – the concerns of our families and communities,” Kenyatta said. “We deserve better than these people.”
Former Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Eric Hagerty, who served under Gov. Tom Wolf, has expressed earnest concerns about the trend of injecting policies into schools that he believes Pennsylvania cannot afford. He said that would be contrary to the needs of Pennsylvania’s school communities and teachers.
“I can say one thing, each of them has something in common, no matter what party they belong to,” Hagerty said. “None of them became teachers or chose to work in schools because they were interested in politics or pursuing a political agenda, as some politicians falsely claim.”
Hagerty said it is normal and robust to engage in political discourse about how to pay for public education or improve graduation rates.
“When politicians like Ron DeSantis and others try to ban books or tell schools what activities they can and cannot offer or what words teachers can and cannot say, this is not just an unnecessary distraction from meaningful discussions, we should recognize that “for insulting the hard-working, decent people from all walks of life who make our schools work,” he said.
Florida state Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Brewery, said that as a former educator, DeSantis’ attacks on the state’s schools are hurtful.
“Our children’s freedom to learn is under attack by a governor who abuses us and pushes his far-right politics into our classrooms, indoctrinating the minds of our children in an attempt to whitewash history,” Jones said.
