Yahoo Finance Ron 'Dukakis'? How DeSantis's campaign looks like a meltdown from the past
As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign flounders, some are comparing him with Jeb! Bush, who began the 2016 Republican primaries as a presumed front-runner, but flopped at the feet of dynasty-slayer Donald Trump.
There may be a more fitting parallel for DeSantis, however: Michael Dukakis, who captured the Democratic 1988 presidential nomination while serving as governor of Massachusetts. Dukakis ran heavily on the “Massachusetts miracle,” a tech-driven boom in the state’s economy during the 1980s that left it outperforming virtually every other state. As a presidential candidate, Dukakis promised that he’d do for America what he did for his home state and sow prosperity nationwide.
DeSantis also thinks his home state should be a model for the rest of the nation. He wants to “make America Florida” and export the policies he’s implemented as governor to the rest of the U.S. Those include a low-tax business environment, pushback against “woke” liberal culture, and pandemic policies that favor openness and personal choice over shutdowns and health mandates.
As Dukakis learned, however, many voters don’t want somebody from another part of the country to convert them to the true and proper way. Americans want leaders to solve their problems, not change their culture.
Dukakis also became a poster child for what can go wrong when you take credit for developments you aren’t really responsible for — and then get the blame when a dreamy economy unravels. DeSantis might want to take note of that, too.
The “Massachusetts miracle” developed as technology companies linked to labs at MIT and Harvard began to blossom around Boston — and then boom as the computing revolution erupted in the 1980s. Fast-growing firms such as Digital Equipment Corp., Wang Laboratories, and Lotus, plus hundreds of offshoots, drew workers and capital. A real estate boom followed. By 1987, the unemployment rate in Massachusetts was 2.4%, the lowest in the nation. By virtually every other metric, the state was soaring.
Dukakis rode that record to the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. His general election campaign suffered, however, from listlessness and a mechanical, overly assured candidate. Dukakis’s opponent, George H.W. Bush, innovated new types of negative campaigning that smeared Dukakis and seemed to shock or overwhelm him. Bush won 40 of 50 states and walloped Dukakis in the electoral vote, 426 to 111.
There was more misery ahead for Dukakis. He decided to finish out his governor’s term and stay on through 1990. That left him managing the demise of the Massachusetts miracle, which had already begun by the time of the 1988 election. Boston’s tech firms made some wrong bets and started losing out to California upstarts that guessed right about the personal computing revolution. Suddenly, everything seemed to go wrong. There were mass layoffs. The property sector collapsed. Tax revenue dwindled, causing a fiscal crisis. A nationwide recession that began in the middle of 1990 made everything worse.
By the end of 1990, the Massachusetts unemployment rate was 7.8%, a point-and-a-half worse than the national average. The state’s bond rating sank to the lowest level among the 50 states. The Massachusetts miracle had really been an unsustainable bubble.
Dukakis’s approval rating in the state dropped from a stratospheric 79% in 1988 to less than 20% two years later. “The Dukakis saga is one of sadness and remorse,” Boston Globe journalist David Nyhan wrote in 1990. “He lost the White House. His reputation for competence turned to ashes. His name became a vile epithet to thousands of voters who actually hate him for what happened to the commonwealth on his watch.”
DeSantis may seem to be on sounder footing, yet, hmmm. DeSantis points to Florida as an economic model for the rest of the nation, and the facts back him up. Florida is the fastest-growing state in America, with the lack of a state income tax drawing businesses and workers. It outperforms the rest of the country in job and income growth. DeSantis won reelection last year in a landslide, a sign of high voter confidence.
Yet there’s trouble in paradise. Florida now has the highest inflation in the nation, with living costs rising at more than twice the national average. That state’s rapid growth has pushed up housing costs by double digits in many areas, and that’s the biggest driver of local inflation.
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Home insurance costs have reached crisis levels, with the average policy costing $6,000. That’s already 250% higher than the national average and it’s likely to go higher. DeSantis signed legislation last year meant to rein in insurance fraud and litigation, which have caused much of the problem. But DeSantis and others have warned that insurance costs will get worse before they stabilize.
DeSantis has also picked a puzzling and costly fight with the Disney Corp., Florida’s biggest taxpayer, over cultural issues, undermining DeSantis’s claim to be a business-friendly executive. Disney and the state are mired in litigation and Disney has scaled back investment in the state, while CEO Bob Iger blasts DeSantis as “anti-business.”
That’s in addition to searing heat from a warming climate that could dent Florida’s image as a semitropical retirement haven. Oh, there’s also Saharan dust and, of course, hurricanes fueled by record warm waters.
Much of this isn’t DeSantis’s fault. Yet some Floridians argue that the governor should be home dealing with residents’ problems instead of spending much of his time on the road campaigning. “While Gov. Ron DeSantis barnstorms the country campaigning for president,” the South Florida Sun-Sentinel wrote recently, “a growing chorus of Floridians are urging him to come home to deal with the state’s soaring housing costs and other problems.”
That doesn’t mean Florida’s economy will sour like it did in Massachusetts in the late 1980s. But there is certainly a cautionary tale in how quickly political fortunes can flip when they rely on an economic narrative. DeSantis is the beneficiary of many factors he had nothing to do with, such as the lack of a state income tax and decades of migration from northern states to the Sun Belt. Trends change, and global warming or a housing shortage or perceived intolerance or meddling with businesses could reverse the inflow and make some friendlier state the new Florida.
One way DeSantis and Dukakis may differ: their levels of success as a presidential nominee. Despite his wan presidential campaign, Dukakis won the Democratic nomination easily, with Jesse Jackson coming in a distant second. DeSantis may not get nearly that far.
While some Republicans view DeSantis as a plausible alternative to the Donald Trump chaos machine, the governor's anti-woke crusade hasn’t caught on and his campaign is already struggling. Some wealthy donors seem to be backing away and the DeSantis campaign recently laid off one-third of its staff. Critics say the DeSantis campaign is “too Florida-centric.”
In polls, Trump had a narrow lead over DeSantis among Republican voters at the start of the year. That has ballooned to a 37-point Trump lead. The more voters know about DeSantis, the less they seem to like him.
If he heads home early, maybe he'll be able to head off problems before they swell to Dukakian dimensions.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman.
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