Hurricane Ian Is a Test for DeSantis’s ‘Florida Model’

Offstage after the press conference,

Ron DeSantis

had a different emphasis. “He came down to the city and kind of prepared all of us,” says Mayor

Erik Arroyo

of Sarasota. The two shared notes on the preparations they had put in place. They pledged to get the city running again more quickly than the days or weeks most believed it would take.

Mr. DeSantis had gotten an early start. To free up Federal Emergency Management Administration money for rescue work and debris removal, “he called it an emergency before it was even a tropical storm,” Mr. Arroyo says. That declaration came five days before Hurricane Ian made landfall.

At the time meteorologists projected that Ian would touch down as a Category 3 storm, rather than the 155-mile-an-hour Category 4 force it became. Nonetheless, Mr. Arroyo says the governor sent more state support than usual. “Since the last storm, a big difference is that Gov. DeSantis has the Florida guard,” he says, referring to the Florida State Guard, established in June. The governor ordered members of the state-funded civilian force to affected zones along with National Guardsmen. “They had hundreds of people in armories just ready to go.”

Two of the hurricane’s first recorded deaths were nearby in Sarasota County, and the mayor has surveyed heavy damage. Yet he believes the region dodged the worst, and by Thursday he was optimistic: “We are pretty much going to be up and running within 48 hours. We’re doing assessments now, searching for grid damage.”

Back in Tallahassee that evening, Mr. DeSantis briefed the press on the destruction in Lee County, search-and-rescue operations, and food and shelter options for displaced people. He acknowledged that the death toll is certain to rise. But he also echoed some of the Sarasota mayor’s optimism. “There have been more than 700 confirmed rescues,” he said. “Two hundred thousand accounts have been restored in Southwest Florida,” he said of the power outages, because “the pre-staging for this was over 42,000 linemen.” His remarks were fairly short on thoughts and prayers and long on initial measures of progress.

To a national audience that knows him mostly as a provocateur, the governor may seem to have been sobered by the storm. Emergencies draw out the serious side of all executives, but the change of tone in Mr. DeSantis’s case is particularly notable. Just over a week ago he was busy defending his flight of 50 Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, a stunt meant to rankle progressives as much as to draw attention to the border crisis.

Yet many Floridians and out-of-state supporters have long recognized Mr. DeSantis’s disciplined focus on practical matters. Since taking office in 2019, the governor has brought the same detailed approach to fiscal policy and education as he has to emergency management. He’s called it the “Florida model” of governance, and its quality-of-life focus builds on the records of two previous Republican governors,

Jeb Bush

(1999-2007) and

Rick Scott

(2011-19). Mr. DeSantis has brought that style to a new level of national prominence.

Hurricane Ian will test Florida’s recent success, creating years of costs and reminding people of the state’s unique hazards. Mr. DeSantis, who’s up for re-election on Nov. 8, may be evaluated based on his response to the storm as much as any other feature of his term.

Still, the state’s performance during his term to date is notable. Since 2020, Florida’s low tax rates and lack of Covid restrictions have spurred growth that generated more than 1.5 million new business licenses—the most in the nation and a quarter-million more than California. Its population grew by 1% from July 2020 to 2021, while the U.S. had its lowest growth on record. About 12% of Florida students are now enrolled in private or charter schools, and they’re outperforming their peers in traditional public schools on state exams. These aren’t the issues Mr. DeSantis touts most in his TV appearances, and his opponents are likewise more interested in cultural battles. But reforms in these areas have formed the core of his governorship.

The results have caught the attention of business elites who usually cluster in the nation’s old financial capitals. “I think about an environment that I’ll be able to recruit talent to, a place where people will want to raise kids,” says financier

Ken Griffin.

“Florida really excels on all of those levels.”

Mr. Griffin made news this summer by moving his hedge fund, Citadel, and its related market-making firm from Chicago to Miami. He says that the muggings of two of his colleagues near the old headquarters provided the final push. But he’s been a Florida optimist for years, in part because of his involvement with Mr. DeSantis. He supported the first gubernatorial run in 2018 and renewed his commitment this April with $5 million to the Friends of Ron DeSantis political-action committee.

Mr. DeSantis has developed a reputation for being stubborn and aloof, even among friends and supporters. Mr. Griffin reads those traits more positively. “I was really impressed by how much Gov. DeSantis is his own person,” he says. Mr. Griffin hails the governor’s progress on taxes and school choice, but says his bolder calls are what set him apart from others in the GOP. In particular, “he led the state through the pandemic in a way that was vilified by the press and loved by the people.” If the hurricane response goes well, a wider audience may decide that Mr. DeSantis’s headstrong approach isn’t so bad.

The knack for long-term planning that Sarasota’s mayor noticed has also shaped other parts of the DeSantis agenda. Another early and significant donor to the governor recalls that then-Rep. DeSantis planned to overhaul Florida’s education system well before he was elected governor.

“When he first announced he was going to run in ’18, here’s what I remember,” says financier and philanthropist

Roger Hertog.

“He said, ‘I know you’re interested in education reform. As you know, what stands in the way of the governor is the state supreme court.’ ”

Mr. DeSantis was referring to a 2006 ruling by a liberal majority that blocked the use of public funds for private schools, putting Florida out of step with most states. “But the governor appoints judges,” he told Mr. Hertog. “If I’m elected governor, I promise I will appoint judges who favor education choice.”

This was done in his first month. In January 2019 he filled three vacancies on the seven-member Florida Supreme Court, creating a conservative majority. That cleared the path for his first expansion of the state’s voucher program, which let scholarships draw from taxpayer funds. School-choice opponents threatened to challenge the expansion under the 2006 ruling. But no lawsuit reached the high court, perhaps because progressives sensed that the justices were likely to overturn the 2006 precedent.

A rally in Boca Raton last week celebrated the fruits of that school-choice campaign. Addressing a crowd of 1,000 supporters, Mr. DeSantis listed the reforms he and the Legislature have made to school funding.

“We enacted the Family Empowerment Scholarship,” a voucher program that he’s expanded twice against teachers-union opposition. “Now if you look at our choice options in the state of Florida, because of what we did we’ve got about 235,000 students on some form of private scholarship.” The most recent expansion last year opened scholarships to any family earning less than 375% of the federal poverty level, which means about 80% of households are eligible. “That’s one of the best in the country,” Mr. DeSantis said.

The line struck a chord for an obvious reason. The event was held at the Torah Academy of Boca Raton, one of hundreds of religious schools that have drawn more students as a result of the scholarships. Before the governor spoke, a teenage boy thanked him personally on the students’ behalf.

Achievements of this kind have increased the Florida GOP’s appeal among political moderates. “I’ve noticed that a lot of people who might have been neutral on politics before have really been energized,” says

David McIntosh,

president of the Club for Growth. Part of that is owing to the governor’s defense of business interests. “By keeping it a state with no income tax and keeping the economy open, Florida’s economy has just mushroomed.”

Mr. McIntosh notes that government has stayed small as the state’s output has grown. “As Ron likes to brag, the cost of government per citizen is just so much lower than in some of the other large states.” Florida’s per capita state and local spending in 2020 was $8,000. New York’s is almost twice as high at $15,000.

Florida Republicans now lead Democrats by more than 270,000 registered voters after trailing by 258,000 four years ago. The swing is even more remarkable in contrast with the trend in Georgia and Arizona, traditionally conservative Sunbelt states. They also have Republican governors and have seen their populations and economies swell in recent years. Yet

Joe Biden

managed to carry both in 2020 while

Donald Trump

widened his majority in the Sunshine State. Electoral margins have also tightened recently in Texas, the nation’s largest red state. Some credit the Florida GOP’s rise to Hispanics’ shifting affiliation, but that trend hasn’t made up for Republicans’ struggles in heavily Hispanic Southwestern states.

Nonetheless, Hispanics make up a growing share of the state’s Republicans, and Mr. DeSantis has labored to woo them. The mayor of Miami worries that the governor’s penchant for culture wars could turn off Hispanic voters otherwise drawn to the GOP.

Francis X. Suarez,

a Miami native whose Cuban-born father served as mayor in the 1980s and ’90s, criticizes Mr. DeSantis’s migrant flights as “a stunt instead of a solution.” The two men also disagreed about Covid, as the mayor favored lockdowns for a longer period.

Yet despite their “different styles,” as Mr. Suarez puts it, there’s little daylight between them on the question of how to keep the state thriving. “Our city rejects the socialist model where government takes the lead in the economy,” the mayor says. Miami “just cut taxes to their lowest level yet” and celebrates that “we’re No. 1 in the nation in wage growth, and No. 1 in tech-job growth.” With Southeast Florida mostly spared by the hurricane, Mr. Suarez lent city employees to the recovery effort. The similarities between the two 44-year-old Republicans may signify a strong future for the Florida model.

Chatter about Mr. DeSantis’s presidential prospects will intensify as the hurricane passes. The state’s recovery, and his role in it, will define his credibility as a potential candidate. Weather disasters are a challenge that any Florida governor accepts in advance, and Mr. DeSantis appears to have done so with gusto. If he gets it right, he’ll be much harder to write off as a mere provocateur.

Mr. Ukueberuwa is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.