Ron DeSantis Ridicules LGBTQ Students in Mailer to Voters

Ron DeSantis has been accused of deriding LGBTQ people in a mailer attacking Charlie Crist, his opponent in Florida's governor race.

The flier, circulated by Floridians on social media, depicted a student wearing makeup and facial hair at their graduation ceremony. A speech bubble drawn next to them said, "Thank you, Joe Biden and Charlie Crist, for making Floridians pay off my student debt."

A second page showed a photo of Crist hugging President Biden. A block of text below the image read, "Charlie Crist is forcing hard working Floridians to pay back student loans for degrees like Gender Studies and French Poetry." The mailer also threatened that a "Biden-Crist College Loan Bailout" would worsen inflation, punish hard-working taxpayers and reward universities.

A few Florida voters who received the mailer shared their aversion to DeSantis's tactic online.

"Front and back of a mailer that came to my house in support of @GovRonDeSantis from the @FloridaGOP," tweeted Emily Bell. "Folks all they've got to sell is hate and it's absolutely disgusting."

Another voter with the handle @Thoreaus_Horse said she also received the "hate mailer," which she called "pure Nazism."

"It is designed to cause GOP base to rage, to scapegoat," she tweeted. "It is shameful and despicable. You take a happy picture of a kid graduating and try to turn it into something insidious."

On Facebook, another voter said he threw his copy in the fire after it arrived in the mail.

"Not even worth the paper it's printed on," he wrote.

Even comedian Sarah Silverman reposted the mailer, accusing DeSantis of "running on hate and winning." She urged Floridians to vote for Crist.

DeSantis is projected to win the governor's race, holding close to a 10-point lead in various polls, according to FiveThirtyEight. During a rally for Crist on Tuesday, Biden called the governor "Donald Trump incarnate" and accused him of "demonizing the LGBTQ population."

LGBTQ activists have resoundingly slammed DeSantis for his so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill, which outlawed "classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels or in a specified manner" earlier this year. The bill led to public school and employee walkouts, along with denouncements from Disney, celebrities and other observers nationwide.

Florida also has the country's second-highest number of school book bans—outranked only by Texas—according to data from PEN America, a free speech and literary nonprofit. Over the 2021-22 school year, the vast majority of books targeted for removal nationwide featured LGBTQ or non-white characters or covered themes of LGBTQ identities or race and racism in U.S. history, according to the organization.

Newsweek reached out to DeSantis for comment.