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Rep. Ron DeSantis (Republican for Florida) resigned from Congress on Monday to focus on his campaign to be the next governor of Florida. DeSantis faces Democratic candidate Andrew Gillum in the November 6 legislative elections. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
Rep. Ron DeSantis (Republican for Florida) resigned from Congress on Monday to focus on his campaign to be the next governor of Florida. DeSantis faces Democratic candidate Andrew Gillum in the November 6 election. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Ron DeSantis: The face of racist politics in Florida

The Republican representative and candidate for Flordia governor Ron DeSantis has not been able to avoid showing the true racist connotations of his campaign.

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The battle of the primary elections comes to an end, and with it comes the desperation of right-wing candidates beginning to reveal the true ideological positions of their campaigns.

For days, the headlines have reviewed the moral and political debate surrounding the election of the next governor of Florida, a race in which the candidates could not be more different.

Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum won the nomination of the Democratic Party. If elected in November, he will be the first African-American governor of Florida. Since winning the primary, he has been a victim of phone attacks by white nationalist groups.

It's been revealed that Ron DeSantis, the Republican candidate, has reportedly participated in four conferences organized by a conservative activist known for declaring that "African-Americans owe their freedom to whites and that the only 'true racial war' in the country is against whites," The Independent reported.

"DeSantis, elected to represent North-Central Florida in 2012, appeared at the David Horowitz Freedom Center conferences in Palm Beach, Florida, or Charleston, South Carolina, in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017, according to Michael Finch, president of the organization,” the report explains. "At the group's annual Restoration Weekend conferences, hundreds of people gather to hear right-wing provocateurs such as Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos and Sebastian Gorka sound off on multiculturalism, radical Islam, free speech on college campuses and other issues.”

Florida's race for governor has become the latest example of a paradigm shift in American politics, where independent candidates and supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' progressive handbook have garnered unexpected support from their voters, threatening the Republican establishment in areas once insured for the party.

The pressure has reached such a point that DeSantis has resorted to desperate strategies.

On Monday, the representative announced that he would resign from Congress "immediately" to "focus on his campaign for the governorship of Florida" just two months before the election, NBC reported.

In a statement, DeSantis explained that "as the Republican nominee for Governor of Florida, it is clear to me that I will likely miss the vast majority of our remaining session days for this Congress. Under these circumstances, it would be inappropriate for me to accept a salary."

"In order to honor my principles and protect the taxpayer, I officially resign from the House of Representatives effective immediately," he added.

Thus, the Republican candidate continued his campaign using one of the oldest strategies in the Florida GOP manual: sweeten the Cuban voter in the region by honoring the exiles and attacking the communism of the island.

This strategy aims to detract from the new democratic socialism that is brewing in the ranks of the U.S. Democratic Party, and which DeSantis has frequently attacked when referring to the Gillum campaign.

"In this campaign, I think we have a chance to make Florida even better," DeSantis said during his speech at the Bay of Pigs Museum in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami on Monday. "We’ve got our issues. We have to tackle them. But we’re never going to deal with the issues if we’re embracing this far-left ideology," the New York Times reported.

The paradox of this political strategy is that, while historically confusing two political movements that have nothing to do with each other and that perpetuate a stigma dead after the Cold War, DeSantis has been one of the few Republican candidates who has recognized the strength of the Latino vote to the point of raising the ghost of Fidel Castro again to gain support in a campaign that tacitly supports the most anti-Latino government that has existed in the country's contemporary history.

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