Florida
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis woos GOP Christian voters but stays tight-lipped on his own Catholic faith
GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — As Ron DeSantis wrapped up a 12-stop campaign tour that began in an Iowa evangelical church and ended here in a South Carolina convention center, dozens of pastors met backstage to pray for the presidential candidate. Later, to the 1,500 people in the auditorium, DeSantis closed out his stump speech with a paraphrased Bible verse: “I will fight the good fight, I will finish the race, and I will keep the faith.”
The governor’s religious rhetoric and hard-charging policies are at the center of his outreach to white evangelicals — an important voting bloc in the early GOP nominating contests. And yet, when it comes to his own Catholicism, the culture warrior is much more guarded, rarely mentioning the specifics of his faith and practice.
“I don’t think he’s a wear-your-religion-on-your-sleeve kind of guy,” said Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote, a conservative advocacy organization that hosted a rally for DeSantis last fall.
Burch argues DeSantis’ policies are the true measure of his faith, from Florida’s six-week abortion ban to a spate of laws targeting LGBTQ+ rights and gender-affirming care: “Perhaps a good Scripture reference that may describe him is, ‘By their fruits you shall know them.’”
DeSantis officially entered the presidential race last month and is the leading alternative to former President Donald Trump, who remains the dominant force in the GOP for now. But if the Florida governor captures the Republican nomination and takes on Joe Biden, two Catholic presidential candidates will face off for the first time in U.S. history.
Both have publicly clashed with Catholic bishops: DeSantis over immigration and the death penalty; Biden over abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. The current president, though, speaks often about being Catholic. He is known to wear a rosary and is regularly photographed attending Mass in D.C. and on the road — in contrast to DeSantis, who is intensely private about his personal life.
He’s “nominally Catholic,” according to a New York Times essay from the conservative writer Nate Hochman, who later joined the DeSantis campaign. Last year, Hochman wrote that DeSantis is “politically friendly to conservative Christians. But he rarely discusses his religion publicly and almost never in the context of politics.”
The campaign did not respond directly to questions about Hochman’s essay or where the DeSantises go to church in Tallahassee. A spokesperson for Never Back Down, the DeSantis super PAC, did not have information about the governor’s current church attendance.
Maria Sullivan, a supporter who lives in DeSantis’ former congressional district, remembers worshipping regularly with DeSantis and his wife Casey at Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church when they still lived in Northeast Florida. “He’s a very low-key man, not looking for attention, just there with his family,” she said, recalling them at 7 a.m. Mass with young children in tow.
Sullivan said she attended the baptism of DeSantis’ older daughter at the church. The large, active parish was also a polling place in 2018, and where DeSantis cast his own ballot when he was first elected governor.
DeSantis grew up Catholic. He attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Dunedin, Florida, and according to his political memoir, he was expected at church every Sunday. He noted in his book that his mother’s family is so Catholic she counts a nun and a priest among her siblings.
His uncle, a parish priest in Ohio, figures into another of the few religious anecdotes that DeSantis shares for laughs on the campaign trail. After his first inauguration, his uncle baptized their son at the governor’s mansion, using water that the DeSantises had collected from the Sea of Galilee on a congressional trip to Israel. The punchline is that custodial staff threw out the plastic water bottle afterwards, not knowing its holy contents.
It’s during the rare instances when DeSantis talks about trials and tragedy that he gives his most revealing faith responses. He has spoken of the power of prayer in helping his family through his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. In March, he agreed with the journalist Piers Morgan when asked if he leaned on his faith after his sister’s death at age 30 from a pulmonary embolism.
“You start to question things that are unjust, like ‘Why did this have to happen?’” DeSantis said. “And you just have to have faith that there’s a plan in place, trust in God, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to have a life without challenges and without heartbreak and that’s just a function of being human.”
In his stump speeches, though, DeSantis sticks to general God-and-country fare, occasionally referencing the Bible and often in ways bolstering his warrior persona, such as telling audiences to “put on the full armor of God.” One of his ads released last year, which was a take on a 1978 Paul Harvey speech, played images of DeSantis while repeating the phrase, “ So God made a fighter.”
“He deals in vague platitudes about faith and so on, and he very much downplays his Catholicism,” said Cary McMullen, a retired journalist and former religion editor of The Ledger in Lakeland, Florida.
In 1960, when anti-Catholic sentiment was more prevalent, then-candidate John F. Kennedy gave a landmark speech to a group of Protestant ministers, pledging he would not take orders from the Catholic Church if elected. For his part, DeSantis has already been willing to defy the Catholic hierarchy on policy.
El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz said DeSantis’ recent flights of migrants — taken to California from a Catholic Church shelter at the Texas border — are “reprehensible” and “not morally acceptable.”
In 2022, DeSantis attended Mass and met with most of Florida’s Catholic bishops during their annual lobbying days in Tallahassee. The bishops urged him to reconsider his immigration policies, in particular his objection to unaccompanied minors, which the Catholic Church cares for in one of its Florida shelters.
“It was a frank exchange,” said Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, the highest-ranking Catholic official in the state.
DeSantis doubled down in opposition after the meeting, which devolved into competing press conferences by him and Wenski and ended with a DeSantis spokesperson saying the archbishop lied. (DeSantis said it was “disgusting” for Wenski to equate today’s immigrant children with Cuban minors who came to Florida 60 years ago. Wenski mistakenly inferred DeSantis said recent unaccompanied minors were “disgusting.”)
DeSantis skipped the annual event with the bishops this year while traveling to promote his book in advance of launching his presidential campaign.
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops has praised the DeSantis administration on its anti-abortion, school choice and anti-LGBTQ+ policies, while criticizing its support of the death penalty.
No political party is “totally consistent with the gamut of our Catholic interests,” Wenski said.
“Biden makes a bigger deal of his Catholicism than DeSantis does,” Wenski added, noting “it gives all us bishops heartburn because of his radical abortion stance.”
For now, the DeSantis team appears to be focusing their faith outreach on white evangelicals, who vote overwhelmingly Republican. Catholics, on the other hand, are swing voters and not a lock for either party. Never Back Down, the DeSantis super PAC, has brought on senior adviser David Polyansky in part to coordinate grassroots faith outreach — efforts he also led for Ted Cruz, who won the 2016 Iowa caucus thanks to evangelicals.
Bob Vander Plaats, head of The Family Leader and a coveted evangelical endorsement in Iowa, was impressed when he and his wife had lunch with the DeSantises in Tallahassee recently. Asked if the governor talked about his own Catholic faith, Vander Plaats demurred: “No, we really didn’t get into a lot of that, other than what we believe are our core values.”
Likewise, John Stemberger, an influential evangelical leader in Florida, said he has not discussed the governor’s Catholic faith with him, but he has prayed over him before his inauguration. Stemberger’s organization, the Florida Family Policy Council, recently gave DeSantis its top award at the group’s annual gala.
In the long history of Christian U.S. presidents, many candidates from both parties have shared personal faith stories. Those heartfelt professions used to be integral to courting evangelical voters, but Stemberger said they matter less now than policy.
“So many times, we’ve seen somebody who says they have faith but then their policy decisions don’t reflect what we believe would be the traditional values that come from that faith,” Stemberger said.
Trump also has changed the calculus. The man that he has dubbed “DeSanctimonious” offers fewer scandals and far more religious literacy than Trump, who still won over a record number of evangelical voters. Even if DeSantis doesn’t share his personal faith journey as easily as Mike Pence or Tim Scott, he still can appeal to conservative Christians.
“You don’t have to be Pat Robertson in order to win those votes because Trump isn’t,” said Michael Binder, a political scientist at the University of North Florida.
After the rally in Greenville, a group of four friends — all previously Trump supporters — said DeSantis won them over that evening.
“He’s more palatable,” said Tom O’Shields from Easley, S.C. “Mr. DeSantis seems to have what those Christian voters are going to want without the baggage of Mr. Trump.”
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
More than 10 states have joined the State of Florida in an amicus brief to support its fight over state’s rights after a North Carolina judge ruled Florida State University (a public university) waived its “sovereign immunity” by voluntarily dealing with the Atlantic Coast Conference
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Earlier this year, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody sued the ACC after it failed to provide the details of the Grant of Rights agreement between the Conference and ESPN, which has been one of the focal points of both lawsuits.
Mecklenburg County (North Carolina) Judge Louis A. Bledsoe ruled that Florida State waived its sovereign immunity by being a member of the Conference, making the secrecy of the agreement between the ACC and ESPN legitimate.
The ACC has since released the (heavily redacted) details of the Grant of Rights agreement.
AG Moody claims the agreement is public record under Florida law, but the ACC – and Mecklenburg County Judge Louis A. Bledsoe – disagrees.
AG Moody’s argument in the lawsuit is that it does not matter if Florida State does business with the ACC outside of state lines, all records – due to Florida law – are public records.
The states alongside Florida involved in the amicus brief supporting the FSU Board of Trustees include Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah.
Part of the amicus brief states:
“Each of the fifty states enjoys immunity under the U.S. Constitution from lawsuits to which they have not consented. Embracing a long history of sovereign immunity, the Constitution requires a state’s consent before a federal court or another state’s court can exercise jurisdiction over that state. The States have an interest in preserving the rights secured to them and their constituent institutions by the U.S. Constitution, including the immunity of their public universities from suit in other states’ courts without the States’ clear and unequivocal consent.”
In short, the states believe the ruling from Judge Bledsoe – should it become precedent – threatens the authority of each individual state guaranteed by the Constitution.
It is uncertain how this brief will affect the ongoing competing lawsuits between FSU and the Atlantic Coast Conference, but it could result in the case being thrown out and solidify a precedent protecting state’s rights.
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A Florida deputy is “fighting for his life” Friday after being critically injured in a “horrific accident” that claimed the lives of two of his colleagues, officials say.
Deputy Ignacio Diaz of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office was struck Thursday on the shoulder of Southern Boulevard by a female driver who was trying to pass a vehicle on her right, according to Sheriff Ric Bradshaw. Diaz, along with Cpl. Luis Paez and Deputy Sheriff Ralph Waller, had been conducting traffic enforcement in the area.
“She overcompensated, got off the road and then struck all three of the motor officers, at which time all three went airborne in different directions,” Bradshaw said.
“Hopefully he is going to make it,” Bradshaw added regarding Diaz. “It’s a bad crash. We are jointly investigating this with Florida Highway Patrol.”
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Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Deputy Ignacio “Dan” Diaz, who was critically injured Thursday after being hit by an SUV while conducting traffic enforcement. (Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office)
Bradshaw said the accident happened after one of the officers made a traffic stop and then “could not get his motorcycle started, so he thought he had a dead battery.
“So he called the other two over to help him move the bike off the road. They were all three on the grassy area on the shoulder of the road, and they were going to wait for another PBSO vehicle to come with some battery cables,” he continued.
The female driver, who did not appear to be impaired and was traveling in a zone with a 55-mph speed limit, suffered minor injuries in the crash, the sheriff said.
Paez and Waller were airlifted to a hospital, where “they worked on them for as long as they could there,” but “they were injured so badly they just weren’t going to make it,” according to Bradshaw.
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“Law enforcement, public safety and the military are the only professions when you leave the house and kiss your family goodbye, that might be the last time, and here’s the example of it,” Bradshaw said. “When a deputy dies, a piece of the community dies with them. It’s tough.”
The sheriff, who also called the accident “horrific,” said Diaz underwent surgery and is now in critical but stable condition in a local hospital’s ICU.
“This is our hero, Deputy Ignacio ‘Dan’ Diaz, currently fighting for his life. Deputy Diaz joined PBSO in 2004 and has been a valued member of our Motor Unit for over 10 years. We ask for your thoughts and prayers for him and his family during this incredibly difficult time,” the sheriff’s office wrote on its Facebook page.
“Our hearts are heavy as we mourn the loss of our brothers, honor their memory, and support their families during this devastating time,” it added in a post announcing the deaths of Paez and Waller.
Motorcycles belonging to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
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As of Friday, it appears no charges have been filed following the accident. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
A Florida judge has granted the defense team’s motion for a mistrial in the Home Depot murder case because of an “unhinged juror.”
After more than five hours of deliberations earlier this week, an Escambia County judge called a mistrial for Shelia Agee, who is accused of helping her son kill the mother of his child at a Pensacola Home Depot store last year.
“A particular juror has not treated this case during the evidence with the seriousness that they should have, that has apparently continued during deliberations,” Judge Coleman Robinson told WKRG.
The problems reportedly began when juror Sallie Sue Smith was caught with a crossword puzzle during testimony, according to WEAR News 3.
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Keith Agee, 20, and his mother, Sheila, were allegedly texting about his plans to kill Brooklyn Sims at The Home Depot in Pensacola. (Escambia County Sheriff’s Office)
On Tuesday, Smith was found working on a crossword puzzle during witness testimony. The next day, she was found using another crossword puzzle during deliberation.
Smith told WEAR News that the puzzle “helped her focus,” and denied any threatening behavior in the jury room.
“It was me,” Smith told WEAR News. “Well, I didn’t know it was a bad thing. I do that when I concentrate and I’m listening. You couldn’t see the bench or witness stand very well cause it was dark. But I could hear it… That’s just the way I do. I just do that and I had no idea and then when they told me I wasn’t supposed to do it, I stopped. And then, today, when I went into the jury room, I had another crossword puzzle.”
Other jurors also later shared concerns about their safety during deliberations with Judge Robinson.
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Sheila Agee, 50, is facing charges in the shooting death of 18-year-old Brooklyn Sims after allegedly helping her son plan the attack. (Washington County Jail)
“It is just a single piece of paper with a crossword puzzle printed on one side and not sure what’s on the other side,” said Robinson. “…I cannot ever recall a juror doing a crossword puzzle during a trial.”
Judge Robinson later questioned each juror, calling them in, one by one, and asked if they felt safe to continue after concerns were relayed to him by security.
Nearly 20 witnesses took the stand, while it took prosecutors less than two days to rest their case against Agee. However, due to the jury’s issues, the trial was “hindered beyond repair.”
Smith didn’t say what her decision was on a verdict, but denied any threatening behavior to WEAR News.
“We retired to the jury room and started to deliberate,” Smith said. “It became obvious to me right away that I was in the minority of one versus 11 other people… At first, it started out reasonable. A lot of shouting, and I can shout, too.”
“I do have a loud voice, but I was being shouted down by a lot of people,” Smith added.
KILLER MOM SUSAN SMITH DENIED PAROLE 30 YEARS AFTER DROWNING SONS
Keith Agee, 20, is charged with homicide and aggravated battery in the shooting death of 18-year-old Brooklyn Sims. (Escambia County Jail)
Agee, 51, was charged with principal to first-degree premeditated murder after police discovered text messages allegedly showing her help plan the shooting death of the mother of her son’s child, 18-year-old Brooklyn Sims, who was also Sheila’s co-worker.
Her son, Keith Agee, 20, was arrested by the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office in connection with the deadly Aug. 11, 2023 shooting of Sims.
“According to text messages, it’s clear that Keith Agee’s mother, Sheila Agee, knew and participated in the plan to kill Brooklyn Sims. Additionally, text messages between mother and son highlight the mother’s involvement in helping locate the victim,” the ECSO previously wrote on Facebook.
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The department released the alleged text messages between the mother and son on its Facebook page, claiming they took place right before Sims was shot and killed.
“The murder itself is unbelievable, but to know the mother knew about it and helped coordinate it is incomprehensible,” Sheriff Chip Simmons said previously via Facebook.
The case is expected to be back in court on Feb. 5.
“Another jury will have to come back and listen to the evidence in front of another jury where hopefully, those certain members will follow common sense, will follow the law, will treat their fellow jurors with decency and appropriateness. And will reach a verdict, whatever that may be, that is a fair and just verdict for both sides,” Robinson said.
Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report.
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