Republicans Broke Florida's Unemployment System. Could It Cost Trump the Election?

[babylonsister]

Republicans Broke Florida’s Unemployment System. Could It Cost Trump the Election?
Instead of taxing businesses, the GOP cut benefits. The voters it hurt have soured on the president.
Hannah Levintova
October 12, 2020

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In April, frustrated by the lack of progress, Johnson and dozens of her group’s members began protesting all over the state and caught the attention of the local press. Soon, Johnson got an email out of the blue from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who thanked her for contacting his office (she says she never had), asked for more information about her case, and pledged to bring it to the attention of Gov. Ron DeSantis. Within a week, Johnson’s benefits started rolling in. She wondered if it was because she had gone on TV so much that Tallahassee wanted to shut her up.

But many people in Johnson’s group were still waiting. So she went to WhiteHouse.gov and wrote her message to the president. “I sent a letter to tell him: ‘You’re going to lose this election because of this unemployment,’” Johnson recounts. “I was like, ‘I’m working with the unemployed here, and DeSantis is going to lose this for you. You need to fix this.’”

The White House sent her a bland form response. That same week, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature voted against convening a special session to address the unemployment system issues in the state. For Johnson, it was the last straw. “I felt like in our government’s eyes we were the scum of the earth,” she says.

Days later, she went on a local radio show and announced that she was going to run for the state legislature. And after a lifetime of voting for Republicans, she would do it as a Democrat.

If Trump wants to win the crucial swing state of Florida, he cannot afford many Kelly Johnsons. He won the state by 1.2 percentage points in 2016. In 2020, that razor-thin margin could be erased by the thousands of Floridians who have been burned by the state’s broken, worst-in-the-nation unemployment system. It is a system that Trump’s Republican allies helped bankrupt after the 2008 financial crisis, setting the stage for disaster when the state faced another downturn. Now, the system’s dysfunction in the face of the COVID pandemic has earned Trump and his allies ire from the newly unemployed, including about 600 members of Johnson’s group who were 2016 Trump voters but she says have told her they won’t vote for him in 2020.

“Sometimes for voters it’s about what has really hit you viscerally and directly,” says Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida. “That’s the kind of issue this is: It hit people hard. Those are the kinds of things people remember. In a close election, it’s definitely one of the things that could sway the election.”

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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/republicans-broke-floridas-unemployment-system-could-it-cost-trump-the-election/

[beachbumbob]

1. add in DeSantis failures with COVID, I don;t think the outcome in Florida will be close

[Iliyah]

2. Scott screwed the unempoyment royally . ..

DeSantis did not try to fix and added additional eff ups.