Rick Scott wants UF Board of Trustees, Board of Governors to ‘investigate’ presidential pick

Rick Scott, Jeff Merkley file bill to stop U.S. funds for Chinese forced labor.

As Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to avoid increasing criticism of the University of Florida’s finalist for its presidency, a former Governor and current U.S. Senator is more daring.

Rick Scott is echoing the concerns of U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, who like the Senator is no fan of DeSantis, on the matter of Santa Ono’s nomination.

Scott said Saturday that Steube “raises important points, and the UF Board of Trustees and the Board of Governors need to investigate.”

Steube, who said DeSantis never reached out to him personally to discuss issues related to his Congressional district, invokes his history as a UF Hall of Fame member, a member of the prestigious Florida Blue Key, and a Double Gator to urge the Board of Trustees not to select Ono at its June 5 meeting.

The Congressman cites Ono’s belief that racism is America’s “original sin” and his handling of “pro-Hamas” protests at the University of Michigan as proof of how the prospective president “risks the university’s excellence.”

Others have offered criticisms.

Gubernatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds says the University needs to “go back and figure out somebody else.”

And Christopher Rufo, the conservative intellectual DeSantis appointed to the board of New College, has led the drumbeat of criticism for weeks.

“Florida must remain the place where woke goes to die—not where it will live again,” Rufo said Friday.

While DeSantis gets flanked on the right, a key supporter of his who helms the UF Board of Trustees stands by Ono.

“He is the right person to accelerate UF’s upward trajectory and help make it the undisputed leader among America’s public universities,” Mori Hosseini, who chairs the UF Board of Trustees, and Trustee Vice Chair Rahul Patel wrote in an email Thursday to alumni.

“We reject woke indoctrination,” DeSantis said May 7. “Those expectations are clear, and I don’t think that a candidate would have been selected who is not going to abide by those expectations. And I think that you will likely see that that’ll be very clear in this instance, but I’ll let the process play out.”

The process has played out since, but DeSantis has been isolated, with critics and erstwhile allies taking his talking points and using them against him as he has remained silent and unwilling to cross Hosseini.

A request to DeSantis spox Bryan Griffin for comment this week went unacknowledged.