Nikki Fried warns of ‘threat’ from Gov. DeSantis ‘lack of transparency’

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried slammed HB 1 Friday.

Though the Democratic Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services has said she puts “state over party,” her political committee emails are more traditionally partisan.

A Wednesday email from Florida Consumers First, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried‘s political committee, denigrated Gov. Ron DeSantis as dangerous.

“His lack of transparency is a threat to us all,” the missive maintains, continuing a 2020 theme of Fried grousing about the Governor, who doesn’t mention her at all in response.

“Governor DeSantis has a real problem with transparency,” the email adds. “He has continued to silence public health officials’ and whistleblowers’ efforts to share accurate information about the impact of the novel coronavirus on the state.”

“A Department of Health ‘confidential’ memo shows that by Feb. 18, more than 500 people in Florida were being monitored for possible exposure to the virus. While health officials scrambled to come up with a plan to contain and prepare for the pandemic, Floridians were kept in the dark until March 1,” the email adds.

Supporters, Fried writes, can be assured they can trust Fried “to continue to put pressure on the Governor to share critical public health information to protect Floridians.”

For the Commissioner, this continues a recent trend of calling the state’s COVID-19 case data into question. On national television Saturday, Fried said that people “can’t trust the information” from the DeSantis administration.

Fried went on to describe a “dangerous pattern … of misinformation,” especially regarding prisons and nursing homes, two sectors prone to institutional spread.

“This is a pattern of deception we’ve seen from the Governor over and over again,” Fried said, saying that she was ‘not surprised’ Rebekah Jones, a former worker for the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, was fired allegedly for spotlighting her problems with the process.

Fried and other Democrats last week decried Jones’ dismissal, whose whistleblower claims that the state was massaging data have been countered by an administration contention that she was fired with cause for insubordination.

Whatever the ultimate truth of Jones’ termination may be, for the perpetual campaign world that is a Florida Cabinet-level political committee, it’s ultimately just more grist for the messaging mill.