MAYBE RON DeSANTIS WILL STEAL HIS OWN REELECTION

Ron DeSantis, who's running for a second term as governor of Florida even though he's hoping to be elected president two years later, has a new secretary of state, Cord Byrd. The Washington Post's Lizette Alvarez tells us a few things about him:

... he is as hard-right as his governor. Byrd’s website is called Florida Gun Lawyer. And as state House member, he helped turned many of DeSantis’s most radical ideas into high-profile culture-war bills involving race, education and gay rights.

As a lawmaker, Byrd also supported changes in voting laws, making it harder to use ballot drop boxes and register via third parties. A federal judge blocked the law in March, saying it ran “roughshod over the right to vote.” A higher federal court has since reinstated the law.

He's now in charge of elections. He doesn't appear to believe that the last one was conducted fairly.

Asked if Joe Biden won the election, Byrd said, “He was certified as the president and he is the president of the United States,” adding, “There were irregularities in certain states.”

What Byrd didn’t say is that Biden won the election.

Byrd is part of a power couple:

Byrd’s wife, Esther, is politically radical, too, a would-be Virginia Thomas....

In online posts (since deleted) soon after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Esther Byrd wrote, “In the coming civil wars ... there are only 2 teams ... With Us [or] Against Us” and “ANTIFA and BLM can burn and loot buildings and violently attack police and citizens. But when Trump supporters peacefully protest, suddenly ‘Law and Order’ is all they can talk about!”

This spring, DeSantis appointed her to the state board of education.

You might not be shocked to learn that she and her husband were photographed in 2020 on a boat flying a QAnon flag. Byrd has said he has never been a QAnon follower....

I've been assuming that DeSantis will coast to victory this year. He's had comfortable leads in nearly every poll. But a Listener Group poll conducted a month ago shows DeSantis's most likely opponent, Charlie Crist, beating him by 1. So maybe this election will be competitive.

And maybe Cord Byrd will need to intervene to ensure a DeSantis victory. As Lisette Alvarez notes, he has troops:

Especially worrisome: DeSantis dreamed up an election police force this year devoted to ferreting out voter fraud and other election crimes, and Byrd is in charge of the 15 civilian investigators and as many as 10 Florida Department of Law Enforcement Officers.

But wouldn't winning reelection by stealing an election be a bad look for a guy who wants to run for president? I don't think it would hurt DeSantis's chances at all in the primaries -- it would probably help him. Voters would treat his claims of Democratic fraud as gospel. They'd be proud of him for sticking it to the evil libs. They might see him as someone who succeeded where Trump failed.

Keep in mind that any future GOP effort to steal an election will look very different from Trump's attempted theft in 2020. The GOP candidate won't just say "I won" and then sit back while the media reports vote totals showing a Democratic victory. The GOP candidate will make specific, detailed allegations about fraud on Election Day, as the voting is taking place and as the first votes are being counted. Trump's initial argument was that votes counted after midnight on Election Day aren't votes, even though he never explained why that was the case. He and his allies eventually developed a set of cockamamie conspiracy theories, but it took them days. The next would-be election stealer will lay the groundwork much earlier.

And the next election stealer who has the means to do so will probably try to use intimidation to tamp down the Demoratic vote. DeSantis has his election cops. He can use them to scare off Democratic voters and to build a phony case that the election was riddled by fraud. (DeSantis will probably do this no matter what. He'll be ready to claim he's was cheated, and then if he wins legitimately he can have both a victory and a grievance, which is the way Republicans like it.)

Maybe none of this will happen. An easy, legitimate DeSantis victory is probably still the most likely outcome. But I think DeSantis and Cord Byrd would tamper with the election if necessary, and DeSantis would claim he was just righting a wrong, after which he'd proudly run for president, a hero to his party.