Ron DeSantis fundraising email targets ‘crime slums,’ ‘woke mob’s fraud’

Ron DeSantis in Georgia. Image via AP.

While the first Republican presidential debate of 2024 saw a softer pitch on culture-war tropes from Ron DeSantis, that doesn’t mean he’s done with them.

In a new email entitled “Hi, I’m Ron DeSantis. This is who I am,” the Governor’s campaign juxtaposes biographical triumphs with various dog whistles designed to remind potential donors that he hasn’t forgotten about the war on “woke.”

“Failing leftist policies across the country are shoving a radical ideology down your throat,” DeSantis wrote. The leftists want to “let Mexican drug cartels cross our border freely and continue to murder Americans,” he said

“This is NOT okay,” DeSantis continued. “Riots and disorder have infested some of this nation’s oldest cities and turned places like Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco into crime slums.”

DeSantis has made Chicago and San Francisco recurrent themes in his claims like “every urban area is now a disaster zone.”

“I mean, we can’t be successful as a country if every urban core in our country is a disaster zone,” DeSantis said during a CNBC interview. “Look at San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York City. They’ve all declined significantly and the No. 1 reason is because of lack of law and order.”

During a “Fair Side Chat” with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds earlier this month, he groused that urban areas were “war zones,” all of which are “decaying.”

“You look at these urban areas in this country. Some of them are like war zones. You can’t be successful if every urban area is decaying,” DeSantis said, as part of comments making the case for “school choice.”

“Part of the reason it’s decaying is because the schools are horrible in places like Chicago and Los Angeles,” DeSantis added.

The Governor has specifically singled out San Francisco for special opprobrium.

“We’re here in the once great city of San Francisco,” he said during a previous campaign video. “We came in here and we saw people defecating on the street. We saw people using heroin. We saw people smoking crack cocaine.”

The Governor also didn’t mention the word “woke” on stage from Milwaukee, but fans of the riff need not fret, given the email brings it back.

“This election is not about me,” the Governor writes. “It’s about YOU and the American children who are being subjected to the woke mob’s fraud.”