Florida vs. New Mexico? Really?

With GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis coming to Southeast NM over the weekend in support of Mark Ronchetti’s campaign to unseat Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, some current and former Democrat politicos in New Mexico have attempted to throw “shade” at DeSantis.

Mark likes to pretend to be a moderate, but then there’s this. pic.twitter.com/9mcHcjxZIG

— Matthew McQueen (@mcqueenfornm) August 9, 2022

Rep. Liz Thomson also had these “kind” words to say about DeSantis regarding his more open COVID policies.

But whatever you think of DeSantis, it is hard to find ANY significant policy area where Democrat-dominated New Mexico performs better than DeSantis’ state of Florida (which has been much more politically-competitive but overall more conservative).

Despite Rep. Thomson’s statement above, Florida has performed better on COVID;

On the recently-released “Kids Count” report (by a left wing think tank), Florida ranked 35th while New Mexico came in dead-last.

According to Wallethub, New Mexico spends the 28th most on K-12 while our results are 51st while Florida spends 44th most but performs 14th-best.

RGF put the following together awhile back on a variety of data points which all point towards Florida.

If you can find a legitimate measure of governance in which New Mexico outperforms Florida, please email it to us: info@riograndefoundation.org