by Laura Loomer
As Ron DeSantis prepares for his upcoming debate with California Governor and likely 2024 Democrat Presidential candidate Gavin Newsom in Georgia on November 30th, DeSantis will yet again make the case to Americans as to why he should be President by comparing his self perceived record with that of Gavin Newsom’s. For years, DeSantis has been over inflating his record as Governor of Florida in an effort to make it appear as though he is America’s most popular Governor, although recent reports have him and Iowa’s Governor Kim Reynolds listed as the two most unpopular Governors in America. DeSantis has dubbed his debate with Newsom, which will be moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity, as “Revival vs. Decline”. DeSantis wants people to believe that Floridians are better off in Florida under his leadership (or lack of), but that couldn’t be further from the truth, and the Florida housing market proves it.
Florida residents are already struggling with a myriad of economic issues because of run-away inflation and some of the highest utility rates in the nation, with Florida taking the prize for being that state with the highest inflation rates in the country. Additionally, the cost of rent has skyrocketed throughout Florida as landlords have had to increase monthly rentals in order to cover the drastic increase in property insurance and utility hikes, which has in turn created an affordable housing crisis in Florida, and is likely to cause a future housing market crash as well.
I have exclusively confirmed that the Deputy Campaign Manager to DeSantis’s failed Presidential campaign, David Polyansky, along with his wife Kristen, are quietly suing their insurance company in Florida after becoming victims of Ron DeSantis’s anti-consumer insurance bill that served to protect insurance companies at the expense of Floridians. While DeSantis tells people from California and other blue states to come to Florida where they will enjoy a better standard of living, and his campaign slogan is literally “Make America Florida,”, the civil remedy notice I have exclusively obtained proves that even DeSantis’s own Deputy Campaign Manager for his Presidential campaign is suffering from DeSantis’s disastrous policies in Florida.
Thousands of Hurricane Ian victims are still battling with their insurance companies over a year post-landfall, and many are still homeless, and unable to restore and repair their homes. Recent reports from the Wall Street Journal reveal that Florida homeowner insurance premiums have skyrocketed by as much as 900%, and have quadrupled under the Governorship of Ron DeSantis.
In a December 2022 bill signing of legislation that was generated from a special session in the Florida legislature, which gutted the ability of litigants’ to collect legal fees from insurance providers that refuse to pay out insurance claims, DeSantis stated,
“The issues in Florida’s property insurance market did not occur overnight, and they will not be solved overnight”.
Senate Bill 2A was claimed by lawmakers to be an “overhaul” of the state’s Insurance Statutes to combat the current insurance crisis that was created by a group of corrupt Florida officials, including Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis and now Former Florida Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier, allowing insurance companies that were supposed to be regulated by the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) to get a pass. A recently released report from FIGA proves this.
When Ron DeSantis was sworn into office as Governor of Florida in January 2019, Floridians paid an average premium of $1,988, meaning that insurance premiums have tripled since he assumed office. In 2023, Florida’s average homeowner insurance premium has increased 40% this year alone, which is four times the national increase. Premiums are rising at an unsustainable rate, and it has made homeownership, and even home rentals completely unaffordable for Floridians, especially the many seniors who have flocked to Florida for retirement, only to discover they can’t afford to live in Florida anymore on their fixed incomes. The rising cost of premiums has forced thousands of Floridians out of their homes due to surprise increases that the average person who is living paycheck to paycheck cannot afford. According to a recent report, “In just half a decade, the median price of a single-family house in Florida rose $150,000 or 60%. According to Redfin, the average cost of a home in March 2018 was approximately $250,000. In March 2023, it was roughly $400,000.”
The constant pattern of staggering premium hikes or policy terminations is giving homeowners heartburn. There is no denying that the middle and lower classes in particular will bear the brunt of this crisis in Florida, with their hard-earned incomes and little to no disposable income being drained to cover the costs of home repairs, or losing their homes all together via mass foreclosures due to unaffordable premiums, along with insurance carriers being delinquent on paying out claims.
And despite polling nationally at 8% in GOP Presidential Primary Polls with no path to victory in sight for his doomed Presidential campaign, Ron DeSantis has continued to abandon his duties as Governor of Florida, which has exacerbated the growing homeowner insurance crisis in Florida.
DeSantis is not only Sanctimonious in his belief that he can beat Donald Trump in a GOP primary, but instead of actually addressing corruption in Florida’s insurance market, he has made a habit of saying we just have to “pray” and hope that Hurricanes don’t hit Florida. While speaking in Israel earlier this year, DeSantis told the crowd that he single-handedly stopped Hurricane Dorian from hitting Florida because he prayed at the Western Wall in Israel.
DeSantis’s claims that Dorian was ‘prayed away’ from hitting the State were totally false, because Hurricane Dorian did hit Florida, killing six Floridians.
During the last legislative session, many observed that DeSantis’s attention was focused on collecting as many brownie points as possible from lobbyists, members of the Florida legislature, and the Trump base in an effort to lay the groundwork for his 2024 Presidential campaign and utilize the war chest of over $200 million that he deceptively raised from Trump supporters prior to November 2022 in an effort to secure his gubernatorial re-election. Ultimately, his political ambition prevented him from making better decisions for Floridians, whom he has now completely abandoned after promising them another term as their Governor, and then immediately neglecting them upon securing re-election.
While Governor DeSantis and state CFO Jimmy Patronis took in millions in campaign donations to push through legislation to limit storm victims’ rights to sue their insurance companies, Ron DeSantis’ Deputy Campaign Manager, David Polyansky, along with his wife Kristen, have been in a legal battle with their own insurance company, Vyrd Insurance.
Polyansky was a senior advisor to Ron DeSantis’s Never Back Down Super PAC, and is now the deputy campaign manager to DeSantis’ failed Presidential campaign, in violation of the 120 day cool down period which prevents coordination between PACs and campaigns.
I have exclusively obtained the Civil Remedy Filing against Polyansky’s insurance company that was submitted by attorney Alex Zatik from the Hollywood, Florida law firm of Cassel & Cassel. See that filing below…
If you aren’t familiar with the Cassel & Cassel law firm of Ft Lauderdale, Florida, the law firms’ founder is a stanch Democrat and anti-DeSantis Florida State Representative Hillary Cassel.
State Rep. Hillary Cassel is a Democrat on Florida’s Hurricane Resiliency & Recovery subcommittee, and an attorney who represents families against insurance companies. She was arguably one of the most vocal critics of DeSantis’s duplicitous Insurance reform bill in the 2023 Florida legislative session, in which DeSantis allowed for the insurance companies to write their own bill in exchange for campaign donations.
In April 2023, parts of Broward County, Florida were heavily impacted by massive floods. During this time, Ron DeSantis was traveling both nationally and internationally, illegally campaigning for President via a shadow presidential campaign that was deceptively disguised as a book tour. However, instead of doing the job he was elected to do as Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis completely ignored the flooding of Broward County, and didn’t issue a statement about the floods until an entire week after they occurred. DeSantis waited an entire week while Floridians were under water to announce that he would ask the federal government to declare Broward County a disaster area, which would make residents eligible for financial assistance. Dean Trantalis, the Mayor of Fort Lauderdale, made headlines for blasting DeSantis in the aftermath of the floods that rocked the major South Florida city.
This prompted a response from Democrat lawmaker Hillary Cassel, who represents Broward County in the Florida legislature, and is the founder of the law firm Cassel & Cassel, which has been retained by David Polyansky, the Deputy Campaign manager for DeSantis’s Presidential campaign.
In a scathing statement, Cassel blasted DeSantis for neglecting Floridians so that he could run for President in violation of Florida’s Resign to Run law, which had not yet officially been changed at this time in April 2023.
“It took the governor over a week to ask for that assistance and he is yet to visit the district and my community that is in desperate need of help! We’ve known since the very beginning we were going to need federal support because, as a property insurance attorney, I know that property insurance, individual homeowners policies are not going to cover these claims. These claims are as a result of flood, most of these people are not in flood zones so they do not have flood insurance. It is very clear that it is more important to him to run a national campaign, go overseas, talk about foreign issues, and he has left the state of Florida literally high and wet.”
Speaking to the Washington Post in May 2023, Cassel blasted DeSantis’s deceptive “insurance reform bill”, stating,
“Nothing in this law says they must impose fines, they must do additional audits, they must have transparency with insurance companies’ financials. The goal is to protect consumers and we will never reach that goal if the people in charge of insurance regulation is bought and paid for by the insurance company and are able to turn a blind eye and not look at the real problem.”
Hillary Cassel also criticized former Insurance Commissioner and Ron DeSantis for President campaign donor David Altmaier, by saying he failed to follow through on the Legislature’s mandate for him to provide lawmakers data . As I previously reported, David Altmaier, Florida’s former leading insurance regulator under DeSantis, left his position to work for one of the largest lobbying firms in the state of Florida, after he played a leading role in shaping a pro-insurance industry bill that was signed into law by Governor DeSantis, despite being harmful to Florida homeowners.
While digging into Ron DeSantis’s campaign finance reports for his Presidential campaign earlier this year, a familiar name popped up. David Altmaier, now a Tallahassee lobbyist and DeSantis for President campaign donor, was once the top insurance official in the state of Florida when he served as the Florida Commissioner of Insurance Regulation from May 2, 2016 until December 28, 2022.
According to DeSantis’s first FEC report since filing to run for President, he received a campaign contribution in the amount of $1,000 from Altmaier on May 25,2023, just one day after DeSantis officially filed to run for President.
It is rather ironic that the Deputy Campaign Manager for DeSantis’s Presidential campaign has filed a lawsuit against an insurance company that was protected by DeSantis’s own campaign donor, who also happens to be the former Florida Commissioner of Insurance Regulation who the lawyer for DeSantis’s Deputy Campaign Manager has openly criticized and blamed for Florida’s insurance crisis.
