this is "Facing South Florida" with Jim DeFede.
>>Good morning, I'm Jim DeFede
and welcome to "Facing South Florida".
Governor, Ron DeSantis gave his State
of the State address last week.
And in his view, everything is coming up freedom.
He used the word freedom or some variation
of it 15 times in his speech.
But if there was one line that captured
the 30 minute address, it was this.
>>We were right and they were wrong.
>>I'm not sure anyone from either party should be bragging
about what a great job they did during the pandemic.
And certainly not in Florida,
where more than 63,000 people have died.
After the speech I spoke to Nikki Fried,
the state agriculture commissioner, who is running
in the Democratic primary to take on DeSantis in November.
I asked her about the governor's speech.
>>Jim, I am disappointed in the governor.
This is an opportunity when we have a state
that is still suffering from COVID,
you have a divisiveness, you have hatred.
You have all of this emotion that's going on in our state
and our country right now.
And you have a governor who had a microphone for as long
as he wanted in front of not only the legislators,
but family and friends and the entire state.
And quite honestly, probably a lot of the nation watching.
And he should have had this inspirational speech of how
we're gonna come together,
how we're gonna move our state forward.
And instead he took this opportunity to throw red meat
and to talk about things that are not
on the forefront of Floridians' minds.
We know, I mean, look at Miami Dade,
housing prices are through the roof.
People can't afford property taxes.
People can't afford their property insurance, rent.
I mean, look what happened in the Hialeah this week,
the protests that are happening because rent is increasing.
People can't afford food and gas.
And those weren't the issues that he was talking about.
He was talking about things that really applied
to Washington, DC and created more divisiveness
and hatred in our state.
And it was really disappointing that this governor
and any governor should take these opportunities to inspire,
to uplift everybody.
So people can walk away saying, "That's my governor."
And instead he used that time to divide us once again
and just throw him red meat at his base.
>>Well, I think some people may have bristled at the tone
when he says, "We were right, they were wrong."
There is some truth to the notion of the way that he decided
to handle the pandemic versus other states
like New York, California.
In the end, New York is now handling it a lot more
like Florida did in the past.
In other words, I was in New York for the holidays.
And it's very clear that the governor, that the mayor,
they have no intention of closing schools.
Schools are gonna remain open.
They realize that from an economic standpoint it puts
a real burden on parents and families
when the schools are closed.
So in some sense, while the tone may have been off,
was the governor not right about a lot of his policies
when it comes to COVID?
>>And I've said that.
I've said last year that we should
have had our schools back open.
I was concerned that there was not the right protocols,
the right money.
I mean, how much money is sitting still today
in the governor's office that should have
been distributed down to our schools
to make sure that there's proper ventilation,
that there was proper hand sanitizers?
Or the barriers that can go into classrooms or being able
to give more money to hire more temporary teachers
during this time period?
So while keeping our schools open was the right decision.
It's the way that it was done.
It was it's my way or the highway.
And we are gonna ban this and we're gonna ban that.
And again, making this divisiveness in our state
was not with the right answer.
And the fact that he chose a lot of winners and losers
when he was even reopening the state.
I was very supportive of the reopening plan,
even though he made sure that I was not part of it.
I showed support for it but then
he chose winners and losers.
He opened up this type of business
but not this type of business.
That this one was essential workers but not this one.
And so the way he handled that and the lack of transparency
to the people of our state.
And most importantly too, his lack of communication
with our local officials who were the ones
on the ground every single day having to make
these really hard decisions.
Still to this day, he has not had an all mayors call
at all during his administration.
Whereas I've had to step up and I've had now two or three
with county and city commissioners, talking to them,
calling them, asking them what resources.
We still have $646 million that was sent down
from the federal government for testing for our K-12 system.
Where's that money?
>>Let me, let me ask you this.
You raise a concern in December about rapid tests.
COVID tests that were about to expire.
The governor's office seemed to deny that this was true.
And then in a press conference,
the governor was asked specifically the question.
He stepped aside and let the head of Department
of Emergency Management come through
and essentially say that you were right.
That there are a million tests that now have expired,
that they're seeking an extension
from the federal government on.
How did you learn that there were all
those tests that were about to expire?
And what do you think of the governor's handling of this?
>>So during, I guess, the latter part of December,
when all the lines were starting to form all across
our state and it was brought to my attention,
where's the governor?
And there was no presence from the governor.
This was general emergency management.
And then I came to the realization that he had been MIA
and then his office tried to hide it.
Posting a picture saying, oh,
here's the governor at a bagel store.
Well, it was a picture that was taken
and posted a week earlier.
And so there's all these questions about his just lack
of not showing up for the people of our state.
So I called my chief of staff.
I said, "Look, governor's gonna be MIA.
He's not gonna be active on this issue once again.
It's time for us to be back in the fold."
So we started calling around to local health departments,
to city and county commissioners.
To even people in his own administration saying,
"What is he going to do?
What is he not going to do?"
And in those communications is when we found out about
the tests and the person that gave us the information
gave it to us intentionally to make sure
that we got this information out.
They were very concerned that these tests were just sitting
there while Floridians were again, not with family
and these four or five hour hours worth of lines,
we're not back at work.
And so we made sure that even before I found out about this,
I had called on the governor to reopen
our state testing sites, which he had closed in May.
So that was my first call of action to the governor,
which he, of course, still to this day has not done.
And so that's when we found out about the tests
and we sent it out in a press statement.
And his press secretary basically called me a liar.
Say that my questioning was bizarre.
The press secretary of the Department of Health said,
"Stay in your lane."
And so it was very aggressive attacking on me saying
I had no idea what I was talking about when in fact I did
and had concrete information to back it up.
And unfortunately, once again,
what this governor did is unprecedented.
He never takes ownership of anything that happens inside
of his departments, inside of his agencies.
He passed the buck and pass the ball over to
a bureaucratic secretary to take
the fall for what was happening.
>>Let's talk about the legislative session.
Probably the most controversial bill
that they may take up this year was introduced
on the first day of session,
which would ban abortions after 15 weeks
even in the cases of rape and incest.
>>I'm outraged, I'm outraged.
This is not what the people of our state want.
Roe v. Wade was decided 70 years ago.
I think the anniversary is next week of Roe v. Wade.
This is a women's personal choice.
This is her freedom.
You wanna talk about freedoms,
which is what the governor likes to talk about?
This is her freedom to decide between herself,
her medical doctor or experts, her family,
her spiritual leaders.
This is not a decision that government
should ever be involved in.
And the fact that this is something that they want
to do day one of legislative session,
I do believe that they're gonna pass it.
I do believe that the governor has signaled
this week that he's gonna sign it.
And this is not the issues of today.
And I've said this for my entire time up in Tallahassee.
I kept talking to my Republican friends along the way,
even when I was on the other side
doing government consulting,
"Why do you guys take up these issues?"
Government's supposed to help people.
Government is supposed to be able to solve problems,
not create problems.
And I don't understand why we are gonna use
so much bandwidth during legislative session to have
this fight when it's not necessary.
I will do everything in my power to stand up, to fight,
to encourage others to stand with me.
This should never be a partisan issue.
There are one out of four women have had an abortion.
That's not just Democratic women.
Those are women who are also Republicans.
That decision is never easy on a woman.
This is not something that a woman takes lightly.
This is not their form of birth control.
This is a really hard decision and to make light of it
and not even to do exemptions for rape and incest
it shows you that the point of this bill it is to rise up
their base and to throw this red meat.
There are so many problems that are happening in our state,
buildings collapsing, where's the piece of legislation
that talks and addresses what happened at Surfside?
Where is our piece of legislation that fixes
our housing problems and rent assistance
and property assurance and taxing?
There's so many problems in our state.
And the fact that on day one of our legislative session that
the Republican party and now signaled by the governor
is gonna sign it, shows us and the rest of the state
that they are no longer in touch with everyday Floridians.
And this is gonna backfire on them in 2022,
if they actually move forward with this.
>>When we come back, Republican state,
Senator Ileana Garcia, stay with us.