The 2024 election may be years away, but it’s not too early to start thinking about the possibilities.
President Joe Biden is already preparing for a re-election run, while Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t ruling herself out either. But, regardless of the Democratic nominee, there is really only one viable option for entrepreneurs. In Florida and across the country, small business owners are ready for Ron DeSantis.
As he recently highlighted in a new advertisement, DeSantis remained steadfast against the voices who clamored for a shutdown in Florida. Despite unprecedented pressure from Democrats and their media allies, DeSantis refused to recklessly shut down businesses and destroy jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing his state to survive and even thrive in turbulent times. I know it firsthand: As an entrepreneur, it was exponentially easier to hire new employees and retain my current workers in Florida than if I was running a business in a blue state like New Jersey or New York. I was grateful to be here.
Ron’s results speak for themselves. Florida-based employers have added jobs for 27 consecutive months, exceeding the national rate for 16 consecutive months since April 2021. Throughout the pandemic, Florida registered a higher growth rate than the United States as a whole, growing by 6.9% in 2021 alone — the state’s highest growth rate since 2004. And its cities boomed, with Miami now considered the “next Silicon Valley.”
People vote with their feet, and many feet have flocked to Florida in recent years. Since early 2020, hundreds of thousands of people have moved to the Sunshine State, often escaping more restrictive states like New York to do it. Look at it this way: Each year, Florida is adding population that is roughly equivalent to the size of Orlando. While New Yorkers fled their city — which the New York Times dubbed a “once-in-a-century shock” — Florida gained Orlando after Orlando.
And it didn’t come at the expense of public health. In fact, Florida’s overall COVID-19 death rate per 100,000 people ranks behind those of Michigan and New Jersey, states that were far more restrictive with mask and vaccine mandates. Adjust for age, and Florida falls to 31st in the country when it comes to COVID-related deaths. That’s behind the likes of Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
This is no accident. Since the onset of the pandemic, DeSantis took the coronavirus seriously, prioritizing the health of Florida’s elderly residents and providing them access to COVID-19 vaccines first. He never overreacted, wisely protecting the state’s most at-risk senior population without compromising the freedoms of other residents.
It’s the sort of common-sense governance that Floridians have come to expect from DeSantis. He is pro-business through and through, identifying the threat that Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing poses to corporate profitability and economic growth writ large. At the same time, he is taking a hard stand against “woke” education policies that have crept into corporate boardrooms. Not only are “woke” educators and corporatists detrimental to childhood development, but they also propagate a perverse view of the American dream that just isn’t backed up by the facts, and DeSantis isn’t afraid to say so. In Florida, I interact with immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela on a regular basis, and they understand the beauty of the American dream better than most.
That’s exactly what America needs in the White House come 2024: A proud American who is unabashedly supportive of the American Dream. After Biden’s many failures, Americans are ready for a president to follow in Donald Trump’s footsteps and champion business prosperity once again.
Business expansion. Job creation. Economic growth. Those are the staples of the DeSantis platform, and Floridians are ready to see it go national. All Americans should be ready for Ron’s resurgence.
An advocate for Ready for Ron PAC, Joseph Semprevivo is the owner of Joseph’s Premier Real Estate in Sebastian and former CEO of Joseph’s Lite Cookies. He is also the author of “Madness, Miracles, Millions” and the former state economic development commissioner of New Mexico.
