Port of Pensacola

DeSantis Brings $9 Million for the Port, But Makes the Crowd Wait Through a Grab Bag of Oddities First

Before the governor got to the Job Growth Grant announcement that Pensacola came to hear, he spent the bulk of his remarks on Fauci, “woke” politics, robo-taxis and flying cars.

Gov. Ron DeSantis came to Pensacola Wednesday to hand the city $9 million in state funding to help build a new shipbuilding facility at the Port of Pensacola, tied to the Birdon America deal that promises to bring nearly 2,000 shipbuilding jobs. Mayor D.C. Reeves, Escambia County commissioners, Pensacola City Council members and assorted current, past and wannnbe election officials turned out for the occasion.

• Having covered four governors since 1999—Jeb Bush, Charlie Crist, Rick Scott and DeSantis—I notice patterns. Bush, Crist and Scott arrived early and worked the room, greeting supporters, shaking hands and taking photos. DeSantis arrives late, walks through a side door, and begins talking, making little eye contact with the audience. Then he is whisked out of the room after answering very few questions from the media.

On Wednesday, before the photo op for the mayor with a cardboard check, the audience had to listen to a rambling monologue that had almost nothing to do with those in attendance. DeSantis delivered soundbites for online viewers.

Rambling Disaster: The governor covered, in order, the first day of school for his kids, the permanent Back to School Sales Tax holiday, teacher pay, a Wisconsin legislative candidate’s comments about “proximity to whiteness,” the political left’s stance on abolishing police and prisons, Florida’s crime rate, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s private-versus-public statements on COVID vaccines and the lab leak theory, autonomous vehicle testing at a test track in Polk County, air taxi “vertiports” and his fondness for “The Jetsons,” an $8 billion road-spending acceleration, Everglades restoration, a “doxing” audit of state university curricula for ideological content, workforce education rankings, and Florida Prepay refunds.

“So all that being said, we’ve got a lot of momentum. We’re doing a lot of really good things,” DeSantis told the crowd while staring at an imaginary spot floating waist high in the aisle before him.

Strip away the digressions, and the news is straightforward: the state is investing $9 million in infrastructure at the Port of Pensacola to support a new shipbuilding facility connected to Birdon America, part of the push to bring maritime manufacturing jobs to Pensacola.

Why It Matters

Governors use these ceremonial check presentations as a stage, and that’s not new.

• But the imbalance Wednesday was notable: a room full of local officials, a city staff that has spent years chasing grants to revitalize the Port, and the leadership teams from Birdon and American Magic wanting to hear about local jobs but forced to stay awake as DeSantis spent far more time on Fauci and abolish-the-police candidates in Wisconsin than on why $9 million matters to the Port of Pensacola.

For a city trying to create higher-paying jobs, the grant is substantial. We will track what it funds, what Birdon commits to in return, and how many jobs actually materialize.

• However, the speech delivered said more about where DeSantis’s political attention is right now, and it’s not the people of Pensacola.