Ron DeSantis, running against Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam to replace term-limited Florida Governor Rick Scott, was joined by Matt Gaetz at a joint-campaign event in Pensacola. There, both went on the offensive, citing a recent bombshell report that the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services did not conduct national background checks on thousands of applications for concealed weapons for over a year because an employee was not able to log into the system.
DeSantis commented that “Adam has spent years campaigning for governor, basically, in this position and the report was very concerning because it seemed like he wasn’t minding the store when we needed him to be there.”
He also added that he also wanted to understand “why, if this report was done a year ago, why are we just now finding out about this? Why weren’t some of the deficiencies communicated to Gov. Scott, to FDLE, to other people who would be interested in the fact you may have people who are not eligible getting permits to concealed carry? So that’s an unanswered question we need answers to.”
Gaetz also chimed in by commenting that he “was discouraged that Adam Putnam chose to throw his employees under the bus rather than taking some ownership over the fact that there wasn’t adequate oversight and adequate redundancy over something that is so important to public safety. I think that real leaders they step forward and take responsibility when things do not go right and we did not see that from Adam Putnam.”