Fox News probes Ron DeSantis’ property insurance problem. How far will they go?

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Fox & Friends brought zingers; Hannity brought questions. What's next?

Ron DeSantis returned on Wednesday to Fox News, where he dealt with a question about one of Florida’s gravest problems: the state’s troubled property insurance market, arguably the worst in the country. It was posed in the morning in absentia, and in the evening on prime time television.

The morning started off with a “Fox & Friends” segment where Ponte Vedra’s Brian Kilmeade and others described a “tragic” state where people “who used to be able to afford to live there can’t afford to live anymore,” with “insurance through the roof” and an “insurance system that collapsed in Florida.”

Later that day in what could be seen as irony, a 100-year-old oak tree fell at the Governor’s Mansion. DeSantis played off the tree’s death, saying removing it would give his kids more space to hit baseballs.

The evening saw Sean Hannity end a softball interview about storm recovery with a curve ball finisher: a question about rates up “30% or even higher” which is “forcing people to self-insure.” DeSantis stood in front of the fallen tree in a windbreaker, on taxpayer owned property and a floodlight serving as a second sun, and made his case.

DeSantis stressed improvements, such as four new companies in the market and another “on the way.”

“Consumers need to have choices,” he said. “That’s how you keep premiums in check.”

But he blamed inflation and 2022’s Hurricane Ian for escalating costs, avoiding the “fraud” explanation sometimes used to justify high rates.

“I think you may, when this hurricane season is over, have more companies that are going to be willing to get in the market. But we’ve had a lot of issues with inflation generally, as you know, and then particularly having Hurricane Ian, which is one of the most costly storms in the history of the United States,” DeSantis said.

Hannity began the show with a monologue about President Joe Biden, saying the “storm made landfall on one of the few days he wasn’t on vacation.” DeSantis did not challenge that narrative or thank the President for his help and cooperation.

In an interview Wednesday, Biden said DeSantis “trusts” his “judgment,” suggesting that campaign speech threats to send the President “back to his basement in Delaware” aren’t the entirety of the relationship between the two men.

“I know this sounds strange, especially (given) the nature of politics today. But you know, I was down there (after) the last major storm. I spent a lot of time with him walking from community to community, making sure he had what he needed to get it done,” Biden said.

“I think he trusts my judgment and my desire to help and I trust him to be able to suggest that this is not about politics. It’s about taking care of the people of the state,” Biden added.

The Governor more or less affirmed the President’s take.

He said Wednesday in Perry that “supporting the needs of the people who are in harm’s way or have difficulties” has got to “triumph over any type of short-term political calculation or any type of positioning.”

“This is the real deal. You have people’s lives that have been at risk. We don’t necessarily have any confirmed fatalities yet, but that very well may change. And then you have people whose livelihoods have been turned upside down and so they need support. So we’re going to work together from local, state, federal, regardless of party, to be able to deliver results for the people in their time of need.”

He said something similar before the storm.

“There’s a time and a place to have ‘political season,’ but then there’s a time and a place to say that this is something that’s life-threatening. This is something that could potentially cost somebody their life, that could cost them their livelihood. And we have a responsibility as Americans to come together and do what we can to mitigate any damage and to protect people,” DeSantis said Monday.

DeSantis and Biden cooperated in the wake of 2022’s Hurricane Ian and after the Surfside condo collapse as well, in two other suspensions of the so-called “political season.”

Hannity didn’t seem aware of those quotes or that history of timely and practical federal response, but it would have been an interesting line of questioning to drive at the two working across party lines, shelving performative rhetoric for the greater good.

Hannity or the Governor could have mentioned the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) having ensured “all needs are met” or stressed the collaboration with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell starting Thursday. That didn’t come up either.

Perhaps that was just a short segment. Hannity didn’t bother to ask DeSantis about throwing the House and the Senate under the bus over the insurance issue. DeSantis, on successive days, blamed the Legislature for not implementing insurance reforms he wanted, then refused to say what those reforms were when asked directly Tuesday in Tallahassee.

Hannity, or presumably any Fox host going forward, could have asked DeSantis about Sen. Rick Scott’s pointed criticisms.

“It’s way too expensive to insure homes in Florida right now. And so we’ve got to work with the insurance companies. (We’ve) got to recruit them to come back to the state. (We’ve) got to get more competition and (we’ve) got to solve the problem so they can drive their rates down,” Scott told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

“Until it’s completely solved, there’s more to do,” he added. “So we still have companies leaving. I mean, we have less competition.”

Scott, who was Governor for eight years, said issues endemic to the Florida market “have to be solved at the state level.”

That includes shrinking Citizens Property Insurance’s exposure, the state insurer of last resort.

“I worked to get it down from a million policies to 400,000. I think it’s back up to 1.3 million policies. It’s not a fully funded insurance product,” Scott maintained.

Scott’s critiques are not new. He called the state’s insurance marketplace a “disaster” earlier this year, saying the departure of Farmers Insurance was a “wake-up call” to the state.

Could a Fox host ask about that? It seems more likely than it did 24 hours ago.

The symbiosis between the politician DeSantis and the network’s more performative hosts has been years in the making, buoying him improbably to the nomination for Governor in 2018, then a win outright in the General Election. But the property insurance market is already being tested early this storm season, and as the numbers of claims become known after Idalia, critical questions will emerge, even in historical safe spaces.

A.G. Gancarski

A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. His work also can be seen in the Washington Post, the New York Post, the Washington Times, and National Review, among other publications. He can be reached at AG@FloridaPolitics.com or on Twitter: @AGGancarski


12 comments

  • My Take

    August 30, 2023 at 10:48 pm

    DeSScamus = FAILURE

    (That’s how GOPers would judge it if reversed)

  • My Take

    August 30, 2023 at 11:20 pm

    Decades of developer and builder bribing of politicians (and buiding inspectors) have left Florida with a huge potential liability “target”
    Take a look at south Miàmi and Andrew. Compare 1950s and 60s or so “hurricane code” housing with that from newer times. A slightly damaged roof vs a missing roof in many cases.

  • PeterH

    August 31, 2023 at 1:28 am

    Fox is beginning to ask a few challenging questions on issues that are important to Americans.

    What will be interesting to see if Fox addresses the recent 1000 page radical conservative dogma released by The Heritage Foundation and others and endorsed by Trump, DeSantis and Ramaswamy! Dick Cheney’s ‘all powerful executive’ proposal basically dismantles Democracy as we know it.

  • Sonja Fitch

    August 31, 2023 at 5:44 am

    Omg Desantis All Needs are Not met!!!!! Wtf. Desantis is going to do for Desantis bs instead of the citizens of Florida. Get out Desantis! Go far far away. Like GITMO. Seemed to be your,Desantis’s kind of sick perverted leadership!!!

  • I..N. Maate

    August 31, 2023 at 6:49 am

    What is the story here? Where is there some news? This kind of “journalism” amounts to throwing a bunch of bananas into the chimp cage and laughing at the inmates while they go crazy.

  • Michael K

    August 31, 2023 at 8:47 am

    Are you telling me that liars, like DeSantis, will not get the same “free pass” that Trump & Co. once got from Fox “news?”

    That Dominion lawsuit must have woke some people up over there.

  • Dr. Franklin Waters

    August 31, 2023 at 10:59 am

    Everybody is overreacting here.
    Sure the insurance industry here is in a shambles and it’s a crisis that threatens to crater the entire Florida economy. And yeah, we’ll probably see a housing market collapse in the near future.

    But at least most drag shows are outlawed now and trans people can’t poop in public bathrooms anymore. Priorities people.

  • Leonard

    August 31, 2023 at 5:07 pm

    High property insurance rates is not a new problem in Florida. Governor Charlie Crist tried to tackle the issue by making reinsurance more affordable for insurers….Rick Scott had 8 years to fix the problem and did NOTHING. The real solution is to harden homes to reduce the risk of hurricane damage. We also need to phase out mobile homes which may be cheap—but they are not safe. It you reduce the risk of damage not only will rates go down…more companies will be interested in the Florida market. Homes built in the last 25 with newer building codes hold up well to Cat 1-3 hurricanes….

  • Margaret

    September 1, 2023 at 4:50 pm

    The Insurance Industry is simply reflecting the fact that Florida policies regarding where people develop property, i.e., in places no housing or business should be located, is the real reason they are pulling out of the State.

    Besides which, taxpayers all over the State and the Nation are paying, in taxes, for the replenishing of beaches to accommodate home owners who foolishly build flimsy homes just feet from rivers, streams, the ocean and on barrier islands, which should be abandoned for mangrove, which protects everyone inland. Rebuilding, over and over again along the Coasts and replenishing, again and again, the sand which washes away with every high tide and winter storm, is why insurance and taxes are so high. ENOUGH!

Comments are closed.


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