DeSantis Goes Into Crist Debate Having Passed Key Test

Ron DeSantis is set to debate his Democratic rival Charlie Crist later this as the Florida GOP governor received bipartisan support for his response to Hurricane Ian.

The two candidates who are hoping to win November's gubernatorial election will face off in a televised debate on October 24 at the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Already the favorite to win re-election to office, DeSantis will enter the debate having received praise from voters for how he dealt with the deadly and hugely destructive storm.

According to a recent YouGov/The Economist poll, about 55 percent of Americans either strongly or somewhat approved of how DeSantis responded to the Category 4 storm that hit the Sunshine State on September 28.

When broken down further, the survey found that 80 percent of Republicans supported the governor's handling of Ian, with 55 percent of independents and 43 percent of Democrats also expressing approval.

Despite criticism that officials in Lee County waited too long to issue a mandatory evacuation order—leaving it until less than 24 hours before the hurricane made landfall—a majority (60 percent) of Americans also approved of the Florida state government's response to the storm.

Ahead of Ian approaching, DeSantis made efforts to tone down his usual firebrand rhetoric and put aside political "pettiness" in order to protect the people of Florida. This included him thanking President Joe Biden for approving federal assistance and announcing a pre-landfall declaration.

In turn, Biden said DeSantis had done a "good job" when asked by reporters to assess the governor's handling of the recovery efforts during a visit to the worst-hit areas of Florida on October 5

"We have very different political philosophies," Biden said. "But we worked hand in glove."

Biden and DeSantis have frequently clashed during the president's term in office on issues such as Florida's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

In the weeks before Ian hit, the pair also exchanged words over DeSantis' move of transporting migrants on planes to Democratic strongholds, including apparent plans to send them to Biden's home state of Delaware.

With just a few weeks before the midterms, DeSantis does not appear to damage his chances for a victory by openly working with Biden to deal with the storm.

Michael Binder, a professor of political science at the University of North Florida, told Newsweek that DeSantis "skillfully avoided" the same fallout that was met with Crist and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie when they embraced Democrat Barack Obama.

In 2009, when he was the Republican governor of Florida, Crist hugged Obama after introducing him on stage at an event in Fort Myers.

In 2014, two years after he joined the Democratic Party, Crist wrote an article for Time magazine in which he said the hug with Obama essentially "ended my viable life" as a Republican politician.

Christie also received backlash for apparently hugging Obama when he came to visit the Garden State in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy hit, despite the pair only engaging in a handshake.

Binder said Christie soon saw his future within the Republican party "collapse," including a failed run for president in 2016, which ended after he only received 7 percent of the votes in the New Hampshire primary.

While no opinion polls have been taken in the wake of Hurricane Ian, a Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy survey conducted among likely Florida voters between September 26 and 28 gives DeSantis an 11-point lead over Crist, 52 percent to 41 percent.

FiveThirtyEight gives DeSantis a 93 percent chance of winning November's election.