Florida’s State Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the only Democrat holding statewide electoral office, as well as the only Jewish woman ever to win a statewide race, today announced her candidacy to challenge incumbent Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Fried, 43, a South Florida attorney, acknowledged she has a steep hill to climb, presuming she wins the Democratic primary.
“I’ve been up against odds my entire life,” she said in an interview with the Forward. “I continue to fight the good old boys in Tallahassee. Everywhere I go I hear people say the system doesn’t work for them and my heart breaks for them. Now it’s time to fix the system.”
Noble act of mercy or “venal political maneuver?” A number of observers including one of the nation’s leading medical ethicists are criticizing the decision by Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, to move an estimated 750 of the state’s Holocaust survivors and their spouses to the front of the COVID-19 vaccine line.
Speaking from the pulpit of the Turnberry Jewish Center in Aventura, outside Miami, last week, the governor announced that half the initial, weekly 1,500 doses allocated for homebound seniors will go to Shoah survivors.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at Turnberry Jewish Center Feb. 4 announcing plan to vaccinate Holocaust survivors.