‘Pro-Freedom Conservatives’ Are ‘Fleeing to Florida to Be Free’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) leadership throughout the pandemic has brought “pro-freedom conservatives” to the Sunshine State in droves as they flee “tyrannical blue states” in search of freedom, Florida Republican Party vice chairman Christian Ziegler said during an interview on Breitbart News Saturday.

Registered Republican voters surpassed Democrats for the first time in Florida’s history as of October 31, a shift Ziegler said is largely because voters are leaving Democrat-run cities and states. He also noted that many more moderate Florida Democrats feel as though their party has “left them behind.”

From 2008 to the end of Obama’s presidency in 2016, Democrats went from nearly 700,000 more voters than Republicans to a little over 300,000, election data shows. By 2020, Democrats held slightly less than a 100,000-voter lead. Republicans are now roughly 4,000 votes ahead of Democrats — 5,118,357 to 5,114,039, according to data from the Florida Division of Elections.

Ziegler told host Matthew Boyle, Breitbart News’s Washington bureau chief, that the secret to the Florida GOP’s success was leaning into the “Trump/DeSantis wing of the party” and investing “a record amount of money” toward voter registration with the help of the governor.

“We’re excited in Florida, and a lot of that has to do with obviously Donald Trump coming in, people seeing that and starting to switch parties. He brought in a lot of southern Democrats, a lot of moderates, independents over to the Republican Party. And Ron DeSantis keeping businesses and schools open has really accelerated that,” Ziegler said. “His record plus his resources have now really paid off, and now we are a Republican state officially.”