Gov. Ron DeSantis has made fighting the influence of the federal bureaucracy a centerpiece of his presidential campaign.
“We’re going to bring the administrative state to heel,” DeSantis vowed during his campaign launch on Twitter in May. Since then, he has promised to do so radical changes in the Department of Justicewho says he has been too aggressive in his pursuit of conservatives like former President Donald Trump.
If he were elected, he would lose his job. Every four years, the Congress publishes a report on the government’s positions which are subject to appointment. In 2020, that report listed more than 9,000 positions, a striking reminder of the scale of executive power.
To understand how DeSantis might carry out that job, and what kind of people he might appoint to those positions, the Tampa Bay Times reviewed the most recent appointments DeSantis made to state agencies and boards large and small, obscure and highlighted
The review covered 309 appointments to 96 boards and agency positions that were submitted to the Florida Senate for confirmation earlier this year. (Hundreds of other appointments were not subject to Senate oversight, and the Times did not examine appointments from past years or recent appointments not brought before the Senate this year.)
The review noted DeSantis’ penchant for appointing polarizing figures and newsmakers to both high- and low-profile positions.
But he also found that one in four of his appointees had been chosen by a previous governor and reappointed by DeSantis.
In many cases, DeSantis relied on seasoned movers and shakers who have been in government circles for years. Some of the governor’s picks interviewed by the Times said they had never heard from DeSantis himself about his appointment. At least half a dozen of his picks went to DeSantis’ Republican opponent, Adam Putnam, in the 2018 governor’s race.
Federal appointments are also fundamentally different from many state board executives. Although they serve important regulatory roles, those who serve on Florida’s professional boards, such as the Board of Chiropractic Medicine, often receive little or no compensation.
Still, the election shows how DeSantis has continued the decades-long journey of conservative Florida government.
DeSantis’ office did not respond to email requests for comment for this story.
But Trump, DeSantis’ main challenger for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, recently criticized DeSantis in an emailed statement to reporters, saying the governor had a “track record of terrible appointments,” including some that were not included in the Times review.
For example, Trump criticized DeSantis for picking a secretary of state, Michael Ertel, who resigned in 2019, just weeks into his term, after photos of him. appeared in blackface at a Halloween party.
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Who does DeSantis pick?
The vast majority of DeSantis’ picks reviewed by the Times were registered Republicans. Almost three out of four chosen were men. At least one in five had given to the governor. (The governor’s office did not respond to requests for a more detailed demographic breakdown of DeSantis’ election.)
And, in a sign of how DeSantis is reaping the rewards of a Republican supermajority in Tallahassee that he likely won’t enjoy in Washington, nearly all of his picks won official approval from lawmakers.
The Florida Senate considered 298 of the 309 elections analyzed by the Times this year. Every appointee who got a hearing, from DeSantis’ pick to oversee the Disney special taxing district to his pick for the less newsworthy Florida Funeral, Cemetery and Consumer Services Board, was confirmed .
That includes Craig Mateer, whom DeSantis tapped to serve on the state university system’s prestigious Board of Governors. The Orlando-area businessman had given DeSantis’ political committee $300,000 over the years and last year would give the governor another $100,000.
The state’s university system has been central to DeSantis’ push to remake Florida’s schools. For example, the Board of Governors in March voted to require teachers to undergo tenure evaluations every five years.
The Senate also unanimously confirmed seven of DeSantis’ picks for the Board of Medicine and four of his picks for the Board of Osteopathic Medicine this past session.
Those boards voted in recent months to ban certain medical treatments for transgender youth, acting against the recommendation of several prominent health groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, in order to enact a key policy priority of the governor.
Nikki Whiting, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Health, which works closely with these medical boards, said DeSantis’ election is nonpartisan.
“These people, regardless of party affiliation, are there for their experience,” Whiting said.
DeSantis’ most controversial picks
With hundreds of seats to be filled each year, it’s not feasible for the governor to pick only friends and allies, say those involved in the process.
“How many friends can you choose when you name thousands of people?” said Ed Moore, who DeSantis put on the Ethics Commission in August. As a former legislative official who has been in Florida government for decades, Moore said he knows firsthand that finding dedicated and qualified people isn’t easy.
Moore has given about $4,500 to DeSantis over the years. But he wasn’t a true believer on Day 1: Moore initially endorsed Putnam in the 2018 governor’s race.
“A good governor will try to bring in people from different perspectives,” Moore said.
Still, DeSantis has also appointed ideologues and loyalists to several key positions.
He made national news for electing conservative scholar Christopher Rufo to serve on New College’s Board of Trustees.
Esther Byrd, whom DeSantis tapped to serve on the Board of Education, drew criticism after online posts appeared about her advocating for the extremist group Proud Boys and for being photographed on a boat with a framed flag with a logo associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. (Byrd was confirmed by the Senate with only one lawmaker voting against it.)
Her husband, former state Rep. Cord Byrd, was reconfirmed this year as DeSantis’ secretary of state, the state’s top election official.
Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general, has also been polarizing for Florida lawmakers and others. As the coronavirus wreaked havoc in Florida, he refused to wear a mask to the office of a state senator undergoing cancer treatment, despite the senator’s request that he do so.
Ladapo also oversaw and publicized a Department of Health study warning young people against getting COVID-19 mRNA vaccinations. The study omitted data that went against the department’s anti-mRNA vaccine recommendation.
His initial nomination was met with such stiff partisan resistance that Senate Democrats walked out of the 2022 confirmation hearing. (He was confirmed this year by a 27-12 vote).
Even some of DeSantis’ picks for lesser-known positions have drawn attention at times.
Sandra Atkinson, an Okaloosa County Republican whom DeSantis picked to serve on the Massage Therapy Board in 2021, entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 riots, according to a report. research by USA Today.
However, the Senate did not consider his appointment in 2022, and he left the massage board in March 2022. He was not part of the Times analysis.
Fill vacancies
One of DeSantis’ major environmental moves, which came just days into his first term, had to do with executive appointments.
In an almost unprecedented step, DeSantis in January 2019 called on all members of the governor-appointed South Florida Water Management District to resign. In March, he had filled this board with his own picks.
The turnover came primarily in response to the board’s decision to approve a sugar company land lease near the Everglades that DeSantis questioned. It was a sign of one of the truisms of DeSantis’ time in the governor’s mansion: When you set your mind to something, it often happens.
But DeSantis has sometimes been slow to move forward on some appointments. In August 2020, Florida was in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Executive appointments to regional water boards had fallen off DeSantis’ list of priorities.
So much so that an environmental group sent a letter to the governor warning that three of the state’s five boards would soon be unable to meet a quorum if DeSantis did not appoint more members to those bodies, as required by law.
Later that fall, DeSantis made several appointments to the water district’s boards, and they began operating more or less normally again.
The Times’ analysis of the governor’s appointments did not find many boards with large numbers of vacancies that could hamper their ability to deliver.
Darrick D. McGhee Sr., who DeSantis reappointed in October to another term on the Florida Human Rights Commission, said the governor resolved his board’s attendance problem. Before he was originally appointed in 2020, the commission, which mediates civil rights cases, was unable to meet due to a lack of appointees.
DeSantis filled the board and has since cleared his backlog of cases, McGhee said.
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