There is a reason that President-elect Donald Trump has tapped so many Floridians to fill his administration. Part of it is proximity — Trump has a mansion in Palm Beach — but more than that, Florida is the breeding ground for the kind of government Trump envisions for his second term: A souped-up executive branch that has contempt for institutions; a talent for exploiting the resentment of working-class voters; a desire to give favorable treatment to donors; and an urge to aggressively use state power to attack dissenters.

Florida, which has been under unified Republican control for 25 years, has been the cradle of this type of government. Fueled by an ambitious governor and a Republican legislature focused on appealing to the party’s extremes, Florida became a fertile proving ground for the culture-war battles that ignited the MAGA movement and the authoritarian experimentation that followed. It’s given us the Proud Boys, Moms for Liberty, and is home to more Jan. 6 rioters arrested than any other state.

Two broad trends have made all this possible in Florida — and they’re dynamics that are gradually reshaping the rest of the US as well. The first: changing demographics plus a heavy dose of inequality.

Florida’s population is older and less White than most of America — putting it a decade ahead of where the rest of the country is going. “Every election, pollsters come to the state to do focus groups and test their messaging,” says Susan MacManus, professor emeritus of political science at the University of South Florida. “Because of our diversity, you can plop into any metro area and get just about whatever demographic you want to look at.”

Florida today is also economically more unequal than most states. That’s because a handful of states, Florida among them, have become a playground for billionaires and a magnet for retirees, even as those residents rely on the labor of foreign-born and low-wage workers.

At least 46% of working Floridians are so economically strained and housing-poor they can't afford many basics. The state’s average cost of living exceeds the national average. Housing in many cities is among the most expensive in the nation. And although Governor Ron DeSantis promised to lower property insurance rates, since he first took office in 2019, rates have doubled.

Trump and DeSantis have chosen to take advantage of these demographic trends by stoking anger and resentment — including among many of the 22% of Floridians who are immigrants — then vaguely promising to improve the economic status of everyone, from tax-avoiding billionaires to the working class. Voters believed them.

The second reason Florida is a harbinger for the rest of the US has to do with its explosive growth — two-thirds of all Florida residents come from someplace else, and more people moved to Florida during the pandemic than any other state. Those shallow roots mean that the cultural isolation and social media echo chambers that are now polarizing America’s politics have long been at work in Florida, effectively undermining any shared commitment to the common good.

In the state’s dispersed cities and gated communities, engaging in community politics is rarely a top priority for newcomers or snowbirds. The decline in local journalism and lack of independent sources of information also make holding elected officials accountable harder than ever and has contributed to the nationalization of Florida politics — a trend that is also now beginning to engulf the rest of the country. In this environment, the connective tissue and shared values that traditionally knit generations together simply never get a chance to grow. That’s why Florida long ago discovered what most of America now knows: People are becoming more isolated.

So it’s no surprise that Florida has become the epicenter of Trump’s brain trust. His chief of staff and his nominees for secretary of state, attorney general and national security advisor are all Floridians, as are several key public health officials. They’ve seen this movie before.

In 2010, Florida elected as governor a first-time politician and disgraced executive Rick Scott. (The Republican’s health care company had been fined for committing the largest Medicaid and Medicare fraud in US history, something Scott — now a US senator — calls “political persecution.”) Spending nearly $78 million of his own money, Scott’s television-centric campaign was run by Susie Wiles — today Trump’s pick for chief of staff, but then a little-known Jacksonville political hand. Scott’s margin of victory was narrow, but he promised to fix Florida’s economic woes and voters were willing to give the newcomer a pass on his past — as America has done for Trump.

When the pandemic hit, Florida proved ripe for grievance politics. State Republicans, fortified by effective polling, grassroots outreach and a ton of cash, tapped into the angst far better than Democrats. They used it to expand the executive branch and weaken other institutions.

And in 2022, partisan gerrymandering dramatically expanded the Republican advantage in the state legislature. These lawmakers are so secure in their majority that, although they routinely pass laws that put the interests of the donor class over the public’s, they rarely pay a political price.

Working with the authors of Project 2025, DeSantis and legislators radically revised education policy, upended freedom of speech, and increased government’s role in business and personal health decisions — while systematically silencing dissent. Florida has effectively transformed a governing democracy into a state-heavy autocracy. If Trump follows, here’s what to expect:

•Student performance will suffer. In the last five years, Florida expanded school voucher programs, allowed for armed teachers, barred sociology courses and higher education diversity programs, supported book bans in schools, and feuded with the College Board over its African American studies course. Meanwhile, student test scores have declined every year since DeSantis was elected, 10% of all public school teachers have left the profession, and schools began another year last fall with a massive teacher shortage.

•Freedom of speech will be dismantled in unprecedented ways. The passage of the heavy-handed “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act” (Stop WOKE Act) in Florida restricted public schools and private employers from talking to students or employees about concepts like racism, bias, and privilege. The law known as “Don’t Say Gay” limited discussion of LGBT+ issues. Other laws compelled speech by forcing unions representing public-sector workers to distribute anti-union propaganda, and prohibited social media companies from suspending the accounts of politicians who promote violence.

•The administration will reach into private businesses and personal lives in ways never seen before. DeSantis took the unprecedented step of using the powers of his office against school boards, cruise lines, Disney, universities, doctors, race studies, local governments and what he called “activist corporations.” This untrammeled executive power is enabled in part by Florida’s courts, which are increasingly reluctant to hold other branches of government in check after DeSantis followed the advice of a “secret” panel of legal advisors headed by Leonard Leo and installed a supermajority of conservatives on the state’s Supreme Court.

•Public health will worsen. Florida officials now intrude in decisions that rightfully belong with families and their physicians about gender dysphoria or a woman’s reproductive health, but when it comes to the public’s health — such as tamping down the spread of infectious diseases — the state bars putting public safety over personal choices. DeSantis named Dr. Joseph Ladapo, an outspoken vaccine skeptic, to be state surgeon general. He is the only state health official in the nation to mandate that vaccinations be voluntary and that fluoride be removed from all drinking water. His vaccine opposition has led to a decline in kindergarten vaccination rates in Florida and an unprecedented increase in avoidable childhood illnesses, such as mumps and measles.

•Government will use money and power to silence opposition. DeSantis removed two state attorneys for disagreeing with him and used state resources to harass citizens and undocumented immigrants. He intimidated broadcasters and spent more than $20 million of health and transportation money on ad campaigns attempting to defeat citizen-led ballot initiatives on abortion and marijuana, and when voters approved restoring felons’ voting rights, he worked with legislators to undercut those efforts.

Neither DeSantis nor the Florida Legislature paid any political price for these misguided policies. But the result is a balkanized state. A place with plenty of sun but little soul. Grievance gets more oxygen than compromise, and money goes farther than votes.

DeSantis was unsuccessful in his attempt to Make America Florida by running for president in 2024, but the country is already well on its way to Floridafication. Many of Trump’s impulses — his attacks on diversity and education, his desire to use his office for retribution, his embrace of vaccine skeptics, his urge to crack down on dissent and centralize power — should be seen as growing first in Florida.

If Florida portends the future, Americans ought to take a closer look at what that really means — for their individual liberties, their pocketbooks, and the fabric of their communities.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.

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