Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
Last summer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) released a 30-second ad for his re-election campaign. It was pretty standard stuff for a Democratic governor in a blue state, talking up abortion access and LGBT rights and racial tolerance. But it was also addressed to the people of Florida, 3,000 miles away and ineligible to vote in Newsom’s race, unless they took his closing invitation to move to California.
The ad was just one episode of a multi-month feud between Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a fight that went another round earlier this month.
DeSantis slammed a new California law which says doctors judged to have shared “misinformation or disinformation” related to COVID-19 could lose their license to practice. “If a high-quality physician is driven out of California, [Florida] is going to be the first place people are going to want to go,” he said, returning Newsom’s invite.