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In their desperation to find an effective line of attack against former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his allies have resorted to demagoguery against the First Step Act.
Calling it a "jailbreak bill," DeSantis and his allies are shamefully attempting to weaponize the Act to scare Republican voters away from the former president.
On the merits, they are either completely wrong or intentionally dishonest. The recidivism rate of First Step Act participants is around 12 percent, according to Fox News. The federal average recidivism rate is 43 percent. DeSantis and his team are intentionally using a cheap tactic to conflate the issues of crime and lax prosecutors, much of which is controlled locally, with a law that applies on the federal level. They are betting that people are dumb enough to not know the difference. They are insulting the intelligence of their own voters and assuming the worst about the people that they want to represent.
A large part of Trump's current lead in the primary is due to him winning Republican voters of color by a landslide. Voters of color now represent 18 percent of the Republican primary electorate. Attacking Trump on a signature piece of legislation that overwhelmingly benefited Black and brown people is not a clever way to try to compete in a party that is beginning to change demographically.
In 2020, Trump won between 18 and 20 percent of Black men. The passage of the First Step Act was a key part of his appeal to that group.
Through his actions and rhetoric, it appears that DeSantis cares little about reaching out to those voters. Ironically his demagoguery of the First Step Act undercuts two core arguments that are central to his campaign. First, DeSantis presents himself as the "electable Trump," but his actions make it more likely that Black voters will mobilize against him should he be the Republican nominee. There is already a narrative forming, fair or not, that a DeSantis administration would be an existential threat to Black Americans. Instead of combating against that, DeSantis is making it worse. Not only with his rhetoric on the First Step Act, but also his pandering on restoring the name of Fort Liberty to Fort Bragg (the name of a confederate general), among other things.
Second, DeSantis dismisses charges from Trump supporters that he is an undercover Trojan horse for a Republican establishment that wants to retake control of the party. While I think that's overblown in some ways, making the case that you are anti-establishment becomes harder when you're using a consultant approved strategy straight out of the George H.W Bush "Willie Horton" playbook. Willing to go backwards on the real improvements that the GOP has made among voters of color just to win a primary is quintessential establishment.
Alice Marie Johnson, the public face of the First Step Act, is deeply disappointed by the attacks over the legislation. "What they're doing is dehumanizing the people. The uptick in crime is not because of the First Step Act. I say ... shame on them for mischaracterizing this." Sixty-eight-year-old Johnson was serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense when her sentence was commuted by Trump in 2018. Does DeSantis really think his White House hopes rest on advocating for keeping people like Ms. Johnson in prison?
The rhetoric from DeSantis on the First Step Act is completely dishonest, shameful, and a big middle finger to Black voters. If this is Team DeSantis's idea of "outreach," then prepare for the GOP to reverse all of its gains made among Black men from 2020. Intentionally shrinking the amount of voters who are willing to support you does not make you more "electable."
Darvio Morrow is the CEO of the FCB Radio Network and co-host of The Outlaws Radio Show.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
