This week, as a severe storm bore down on the state and in the wake of a massacre in Jacksonville, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis reportedly decided to officially postpone all campaign activities.
DeSantis declared during a press conference on Sunday that he would stay in Florida for the foreseeable future while Tropical Storm Idalia, which is anticipated to intensify into a hurricane this week and make landfall somewhere along the Gulf Coast, continued to approach Florida.
On Monday, DeSantis, a candidate for president, was supposed to hold a campaign event in South Carolina.
DeSantis also went to a candlelight vigil held on Sunday night in memory of the massacre that claimed three lives in Jacksonville on Saturday before the shooter committed suicide.
DeSantis began the Sunday news conference by denouncing the shooting that occurred close to the historically Black Edward Waters University.
DeSantis claimed to have met with the president of Edward Waters, A. Zachary Faison Jr., and to have promised more security resources, comparable to those given to Jewish Day Schools in response to threats.
DeSantis added that he would soon give additional information about the measures his office had made in reaction to the shooting in Jacksonville.
In Tallahassee, at the state’s Emergency Operations Center, where preparations for Tropical Storm Idalia were already well under way, he met with media.
A large portion of Florida’s Gulf Coast, from Englewood in Charlotte County all the way up to Indian Pass, just west of Apalachicola in the Florida Panhandle, was under hurricane watches on Sunday.
St. Petersburg and Tampa are under observation. Idalia’s estimated track and intensity at landfall are both unclear, and the size of the coastline covered by the Hurricane Watch reflects this uncertainty, which forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami stated as being more than typical because the storm is still in the early stages of development.
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