BUCK: Because I’m in Florida right now, I have to say it’s interesting that there is a pretty big breaking news story just from this morning and it’s not a good time to be an Andrew Gillum fan. You all will remember the 2018 gubernatorial election here in the state of Florida where Andrew Gillum ran against the now governor we were just talking about him — Ron DeSantis — who some people are saying is looking more and more likely to be a Republican presidential contender and maybe even an occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania at some point.

We shall all see. I don’t pretend to have a crystal ball. I’ve been in politics, political radio too long to think that I can predict these things. But he’s certainly getting talked about a lot in that regard. His former opponent in 2018, Andrew Gillum — and this was a super close race, just so everyone remembers. Ron DeSantis won 4,076,186 votes in the final tally; Andrew Gillum, 4,043,723 — a difference of give or take 33,000 votes in that governor’s race, a razor’s edge on a razor’s edge kind of margin there.

Well, the breaking news today is that the individual the Democrats wanted to be the governor of the state of Florida is facing a 21-count federal indictment conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud and making false statements to the FBI. Clay, I read through the DOJ document. This is always the best way to do it, right, whenever they have the actual the Department of Justice charging or the charging document available to be read or just their press release on what the charges are.

He, it seems, had someone as a coconspirator — alleged coconspirator — Sharon Janet Lettman-Hicks, and they were raising money for one purpose and then she was funneling money — this is, again, according to the indictment — through, it looks like, some kind of LLC or corporation and then funneling money directly back to Gillum for personal usage and to her for personal usage.

This is one of things… You remember this. I remember from terrorism cases Not that this is a terrorism case, but you know what gets most people with these federal indictments? False statements charges and anything involving wire fraud, because it’s numbers on the screen. Easy enough to prove, and you face 20 years maximum for a wire fraud charge. It’s a serious felony.

CLAY: For everybody out there who wonders about the importance of governors’ races, I think you can make a strong argument that the state of Florida in electing Ron DeSantis over Andrew Gillum rendered the single most important governor’s race election result in the twenty-first century and maybe going back 20 or 30 years before that. Let me explain what I mean by that thesis. You mentioned it, Buck: 33,000 votes DeSantis beats Andrew Gillum by. Worth also noting that Andrew Gillum was a part of a gay sex imbroglio that happened in Miami where police had to be called, drugs were used, photos of him passed out on the ground.

BUCK: I believe there was a prostitute and a substantial amount of illegal drugs.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: A male prostitute and meth or something was in abundance. Yeah.

CLAY: Which blew up his life even before these federal indictments came down just a couple of hours ago, and so when you look at this — and I think when you follow through, everyone out there will understand. If Andrew Gillum had been the governor of Florida… Let’s pretend that he doesn’t get the federal indictments — let’s pretend that the gay sex scandal doesn’t emerge, let’s just he wins and he mostly stays out of trouble.

He would have done exactly what Andrew Cuomo did and exactly what Gavin Newsom did. He would have shut down the state of Florida during covid. If he had shut down the state of Florida during covid just like New York and California, so many Republican governors would have been afraid to follow the lead of Ron DeSantis who made the decision that lockdowns made zero sense, who opened up schools, who kept everything flowing in terms of the commerce as best was possible in the state of Florida. And we would have been Canada or we would have been Australia, ’cause I’m not sure any other governor of a populous state would have been willing to stand up to the popular tide of lockdown, viral superiority.

BUCK: I gotta say the other — even much more — remember, Florida was a Democrat-lean by registration state going.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: It was very close, but maybe by 100,000 or 200,000 registrations. So it was this very-thin-margin state. There were far more red states where the governors were just wimpy.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I’m just gonna say it: They went along with it. A lot of them try to rewrite the history now, but there were places that could have been beacons of sanity and freedom and constitutionalism during the pandemics who just bent the knee to Fauciism. ‘Cause, remember, it’s so important; I hated lockdowns and masking even when Trump was president. Trump wasn’t pushing that stuff.

I mean, the first couple of weeks we’re all terrified, we saw northern Italy. It was the states that became essentially crazy. Florida did not become crazy. But these other states went completely out of their minds — New York, California — and then when Biden became president, you added the federal government layer on top of it. So Trump was far better on these issues.

CLAY: By far.

BUCK: It needs to be said. He was far better on these issues of covid and lockdowns than Biden was, not even close. And obviously Ron DeSantis at a state level was by far the — not even — “the best” is such a broad term. The sanest, the most data driven, the most realistic about what was actually happening. And, Clay, he created the space for others. I think Abbott had DeSantis envy in Texas. I think there were other governors who saw what happened in Florida and saw that it was possible for businesses to be open. Without Florida and DeSantis, does Georgia open as early as it did? I don’t think so. Without DeSantis, does Texas start to move in the right direction, although I think far too slowly? I don’t think so.

CLAY: I think some small states would have, but they would have had such tiny populations, and they would have been overwhelmingly rural in nature such that it wouldn’t have had the same impact. What happened was, DeSantis trusted his data, his analysis of the all of the covid related lockdown decisions, and he was willing to go out there and take all of the fire because when you followed in his wake, there wasn’t as much criticism for everyone else.

And 33,000 votes, Buck — 33,000 votes — in Florida in a 2018 governor’s reelection that — let’s be honest — nobody thought was super important. I know people cared, and whether you’re Republican or Democrat Party rules in Florida is a big deal. But no one thought that governors would become as important as they did by 2020 in the spring.

BUCK: We have a lot more than 30,000 people in the state of Florida alone listening to this right now.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: We have several times over plus the margin of victory, just so everyone knows, and that’s why we always like to move the stories around based on where things are happening. So we’re looking at every part of the country ’cause we have stations in every part of the country, and we want to make sure that we’re representing not just the national level but the concerns at the state and even local level when that becomes a prominent enough issue for everyone to be hearing about it.

And you think about that Florida election, the implications of it and how tight it was, going into this midterm, I just don’t want anyone leaving anything on the table. Leave it all on the field, so to speak, right? Everyone’s… This has gotta be all hands on deck because even an election that doesn’t get that much attention can make a huge difference. In the case of Florida — think about this, folks — millions and millions of peoples jobs, their mental health, their physical health all turned on this.

CLAY: Their kids at school.

BUCK: Right. The Republican Party offered up Ron DeSantis. We were laughing yesterday, the hit piece on him is this guy who goes to Harvard and Yale and serves his country in the military, he’s way too focused, not enough beer bongs for Ron DeSantis when he’s in college. And then they wanted Andrew Gillum. Put aside the personal scandal but there’s illegal drugs and other things involved. Put aside that for a moment, facing a 21-count federal indictment.

CLAY: That and, by the way, the “DeSantis is too serious” angle is the exact opposite of the George W. Bush story, which was, “This is a guy who likes to party too much, who has too much Fun, he’s coasted his entire life.” So if you’re a fun-loving, easygoing guy — I think also W. Bush went to Yale, right? And you don’t take school that seriously, oh, you’re not ready to be president. If you do take school seriously and you come from a middle-class background, you’re way too focused and, therefore, are not a good choice, either. You literally get hit on either side. Partying too much, didn’t party enough. He’s too cool, he’s not cool enough. You can’t win.