Gov. Ron DeSantis has made countless controversial decisions over his first term in Tallahassee, but among the most glaring are the Florida Republican’s personnel appointments.
The ambitious governor chose Dr. Joseph Ladapo to serve as Florida’s surgeon general, for example, despite the doctor’s bizarre and potentially dangerous ideas. Soon after, DeSantis appointed Esther Byrd to the state’s Board of Education, which wasn’t a great idea, either.
As a Washington Post report noted, Byrd defended Jan. 6 rioters after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, warned of “coming civil wars,” defended the radical Proud Boys group, and made comments supporting the QAnon delusion. Who better to help shape education policy in the Sunshine State?
Last week, after Florida’s secretary of state resigned unexpectedly, DeSantis chose an appointee to fill the vacancy — tapping Esther Byrd’s husband. The Miami Herald reported:
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday named conservative Rep. Cord Byrd, a Neptune Beach Republican, as Florida’s new secretary of state, overseeing the state’s elections office. Byrd, an attorney, has sponsored some of the most controversial bills in the Legislature in recent years, and he sided with DeSantis in an ongoing intra-party dispute over the state’s congressional maps.
Cord Byrd has faced criticisms from Democrats and civil rights leaders for sponsoring, among other things, Florida’s anti-protest law that was later rejected by a federal court.
An Orlando Sentinel report added that during a debate on a proposed abortion ban, Byrd also “exploded in an expletive-filled rant” directed at one of his Black colleagues. DeSantis picked him to serve as Florida secretary of state anyway — a position that will not only put the Republican in a position to oversee the state’s system of elections, but also a newly created elections police force to combat systemic scourges that exist only in the imaginations of conservative conspiracy theorists. Democratic state Rep. Angie Nixon called all of this “frightening,” which seemed more than fair given the circumstances.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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