Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has sought to make former President Donald Trump‘s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, including his refusal to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, an issue in the 2024 presidential campaign.
While Florida received high marks on the economy as the pandemic came to a close, the topic hasn’t been translated into success in the primary.
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At the time, DeSantis bucked federal recommendations in favor of keeping the state open and mandate-free, as well as requiring schools to remain open for in-person learning. These moves ultimately worked in his favor, bringing up his approval rating, bringing down his disapproval rating, and cementing him as perhaps the only significant challenger to Trump in the 2024 Republican primary.
Republican strategists attribute the issue’s lack of resonance to the fact that COVID-19, as well as the resulting lockdowns and masks, are almost entirely absent from everyday life for Americans in 2023. “It’s just not ever-present in people’s lives like it was when we were all walking around being asked to wear masks,” Iowa GOP strategist David Kochel said.
“People move on quickly from things like that. It was a terrible time, and people were very ready to move on from it,” he continued.
“I think the bulk of voters want to forget about COVID and their complicity in the lockdowns,” Republican strategist John Feehery said.
According to GOP strategist Chip Felkel, “COVID wreaked havoc on so many lives and families, and that wound is still open for many. … But [DeSantis] has made a mistake in targeting something many want to move past.”
Not only has DeSantis’s touting of his anti-lockdown and anti-mandate record not given him a boost, but it actually coincided with his declining polls in the primary race, which show former Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley rising to second place in some key measures and tying the Florida governor in others. Nationally, DeSantis remains second only to Trump, but Haley has been the only other candidate to show upward momentum.
COVID-19 has turned out to be of such little importance to voters in 2023 that it wasn’t even an option for the top issues ahead of the presidential election in some surveys. When it is included, just 26% believe addressing the virus’s spread should be a priority “for the president and Congress to address this year.” The possibility of a resurgence of masks or lockdowns hasn’t emerged as an important matter in any of the polls tracking the 2024 election.
“We are seeing across a lot of political situations that voters want to put a painful past behind them,” Director and Research Professor of the University of Michigan Center for Political Studies Ken Kollman said. He added voters are more concerned with topics that affect them, such as the economy or crime. “COVID, and its related controversies, have receded quickly as issues of concern to voters,” he said.
“Elections are usually about the future, not the past,” Republican strategist Doug Heye said. “Asking voters to look back is a difficult thing. You could say the same about Jan. 6. Democrats challenge there is to make it current and relevant politically to voters.”
Professor of politics at Princeton University Paul Frymer said, “[COVID-19] just isn’t the motivating issue that it was,” pointing to a Gallup poll in which most people indicated their lives have started to return to normalcy, at the very least.
“I assume DeSantis also thought it would be linked to a broader agenda against woke liberals since Fauci is identified with mask-wearing and generally greater public care to prevent COVID’s spread,” he said.
But, Frymer explained, “the public’s memory, at least in terms of priorities, tends to be quite short. Fauci has retired and isn’t in the public eye. I can see why this issue would fall flat. Just on its face, it is trying to dig up something that people have largely moved past or at least care less intensely about.”
According to the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, David Paleologos, the topic isn’t necessarily unimportant to voters. However, the audience it would normally resonate with is far too committed to Trump. “The use of COVID-19 and Dr. Fauci as an issue to rally GOP voters is a poll-tested one,” he said, “but its most fervent believers are Trump voters who are loyal to Trump first and that issue second. That is why the effort has fallen flat so far.”
Kollman noted that while “the distrust of institutions among many people that shaped the COVID era lingers and continues to affect public attitudes and political behavior,” DeSantis’s decision to capitalize on it has not made him “stand out among other Republican candidates on that dimension.”
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One DeSantis-aligned strategist confirmed this claim and told the Washington Post of the resulting shock when people weren’t receptive to criticisms of Trump on COVID-19, and such a strategy even backfired on the Florida governor on occasion. The strategist also said voters were “simply unwilling to attach any of that blame on Trump.”
DeSantis’s campaign did not provide comment to the Washington Examiner.
