Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom came armed with a battery of statistics and rehearsed attacks for their ‘Great Red vs. Blue State Debate’.
The governors of Florida and California hurled accusations at each other over their handling of the pandemic, crime, immigration and the economy.
As the mud flew both slammed each other for making claims and using figures that were simply wrong.
After DeSantis accused his opponent of telling a ‘blizzard of lies’ Newsom said: ‘I can’t wait to get all the PolitiFacts…,’a refence to a website that does post-debate fact checking.
So, who was telling the truth?
Was Ron DeSantis’s human feces map accurate?
Perhaps the most eye-catching allegation came from DeSantis when he produced a map of San Francisco showing all the spots where human feces had been found.
The clear implication was that Newsom, as the current Governor of California and a previous mayor of San Francisco, had allowed the ‘once great’ city to become a cesspit on his watch.
The map is correct but requires some context, which was not given in the debate.
It was complied by Open The Books, an independent government watchdog organization, from reports made by citizens to San Francisco authorities.
The data available was from 2011 to 2019.
Newsom became governor of California in 2019, and was mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011.
So he could have argued he was not responsible for the situation as shown on the map
In those years – 2011 to 2019 – he was the lieutenant governor of California.
As there is no recent data available it is impossible to tell what a current map under his governorship would look like.
However, given the rise in homelessness in San Francisco it may have actually looked much worse for Newsom than the one DeSantis showed.
A U-Haul van in California – DeSantis said the state ran out as people left for his state
Did California really run out of U-Haul trucks because people were fleeing to Florida?
As he criticized Newsom’s policies DeSantis claimed: ‘They actually at one point ran out of U-Hauls in the state of California because so many people were leaving.’
This claim is true – in early 2021 major moving truck company U-Haul said demand was so high for one-way trips out of California there was a shortage of vehicles.
‘We sustained a shortage of available one-way trucks and trailers for outbound moves at times during 2020 and 2021 in California and other West Coast locations due to a substantially greater outflow vs. inflow of equipment,’ a spokesman told the Sacramento Bee at the time.
Census data shows more people left California for Florida last year than for any of the previous 16 years.
Newsom hit back by claiming that there had been ‘more Floridians coming to California than the other way around in the last two years.’
But the census data shows that, over the last two years, 50,000 moved from California to Florida, and only 28,000 went the other way.
Spring Breakers on the beach in Florida during the pandemic – despite the evidence Newsom claimed DeSantis was a ‘lockdown governor
Newsom claimed DeSantis was a ‘lockdown governor’ in the pandemic’
Newsom claimed DeSantis was a ‘lockdown governor’ in the pandemic
Newsom sought to portray DeSantis as having locked down Florida in the pandemic, which was misleading.
‘You closed down your beaches, your bars, your restaurants. It is a fact,’ said Newsom.
In the early days of the pandemic DeSantis took similar actions to other states, although he never issued a statewide beach ban and was widely criticized by Democrats for having them open on Spring Break.
He went on to open schools early and championed opening his state’s economy faster than others.
However, DeSantis made what appeared to be a falso claim that Florida had a ‘lower standardized Covid death rate’ than California in the pandemic.
In 2020 and 2021 Florida had 183 excess deaths per 100,000 people. the figure for California was 142 excess deaths per 100,000 people.
A student at a school in California during the pandemic
Which state really did better on education in the pandemic?
The two governors approached education during the pandemic very differently, with California schools remaining closed far longer.
Newsom claimed that schoolchildren in Florida suffered ‘more learning loss from Covid’.
He said: ‘Ron DeSantis had more learning loss during COVID – fourth grade reading, fourth grade math, eighth grade reading, eighth grade math.
‘We outperformed you in every, it’s a fact, during COVID, in every one of those categories.’
The claim is not true.
Last year, according to the U.S. Department of Education Nation’s Report Card, Florida schoolchildren did better on test scores than their Californian counterparts.
DeSantis responded that, in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Florida came in number three for fourth grade reading. California was far, far behind.’
He is correct that Florida was third for fourth grade reading and California was 32nd.
Violent crime figures from last year
Does Florida have a higher murder rate than California?
Newsom claimed that Florida has a 66 per cent higher rate of gun deaths than his state.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2021 Florida had 7.4 homicides per 100,000 people, while California had 6.4 per 100,000.
So, Newsom was right that Florida has a higher per capita rate.
Bit both states are below the national average of 7.8 per 100,000.
Sean Hannity hosted the Fox debate
Newsom refutes claim that California has highest taxes
Newsom claimed it was a ‘factual lie that the state of California has the highest tax rate.’
He also said that Florida ‘taxes low income workers more than we tax millionaires and billionaires in the state of California’
But California’s top rate of state income tax – 13.3 per cent – is the highest in the U.S., although it only affects those earning more than $1 million.
Florida has no state individual income tax.
Newsom claimed DeSantis supported ‘amnesty’ for illegal migrants
Newsom claims DeSantis supported ‘amnesty’ for illegal migrants
Newsom claimed that DeSantis, when he was a congressman, ‘supported amnesty’ for illegal migrants.
In 2018 DeSantis did back a bill that would have given a three-year renewable legal status to people who had arrived in the U.S. illegally as children – the ‘Dreamers’.
However, in the same year DeSantis voted against another bill offering Dreamers a pathway to citizenship.
DeSantis ‘banned 1,406 books’
Newsom said the Florida governor had been on a ‘book-banning binge”.
He said: “One thousand four hundred and six books have been banned just last year under Ron DeSantis’s leadership.”
DeSantis called that a “false narrative.”
Newsom added ‘What’s wrong with Amanda Gorman’s poetry?” – suggesting that was among the banned works.
The 1,406 figure, as may have been inferred by viewers, is not for books banned statewide.
It includes instances of publications being temporarily removed at individual schools following a complaint from a parent.
In the Gorman case a parent complained to a school about her poem “The Hill We Climb,” which she performed at Joe Biden’s Inauguration.
It was subsequently moved from the elementary to the middle school section of the library.