During a tense political moment, the governors of California and Florida have become ‘archetypes’ of a Democratic versus Republican future.

By Kaia Hubbard

As the country celebrated Independence Day this week – with large swaths of the population divided by recent Supreme Court decisions, record inflation stinging consumers’ wallets and the nation rocked by more mass shootings – polls showed that Americans are in agreement on one thing: that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

But in California and Florida, a Democratic and a Republican governor show two distinct paths forward.

Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis have for months – if not years – courted a political rivalry, even if it was only an implied one. In recent weeks, the contrasts between the two have come to the fore, as pitched political battles felt nationally have perhaps been most prominently on display in the starkly different realities in which the two states are operating – and in the fringes of the parties where each governor stakes his claim.

“This is sort of a proxy war, if you will, for a broader fight between the Democratic vision of the country and a Republican vision of the country,” says Steven Webster, a professor of political science at Indiana University who studies the nature of political behavior and public opinion in the U.S.

It’s a fight that seems to have become more urgent – and more personal – in recent weeks.

Newsom upped the ante in an advertisement that made headlines this week, targeting the GOP – and, in particular, DeSantis.

“Freedom, it’s under attack in your state,” the Democrat says in the advertisement released in Florida on Independence Day, citing moves from Republican leaders in the state to ban books, impose restrictions on voting, limit classroom discussion of certain topics and roll back access to abortions as footage of DeSantis speaking at a podium and shaking hands with former President Donald Trump plays.

“I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight, or join us in California,” Newsom said. “Where we still believe in freedom: freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate and the freedom to love.”

“Don’t let them take your freedom,” he said.

Just as Newsom paints DeSantis and the moves of his GOP colleagues as extreme, DeSantis has taunted Newsom’s state in recent months for its liberal policies, while his spokesperson called the advertisement a “desperate attempt to win back the California refugees who fled the hellhole he created in his state to come to Florida.”

According to Webster, both Democrats and Republicans tend to perceive the other side as being more extreme than they actually are and regularly campaign against the other party by pointing to their fringes. But with the fall of Roe v. Wade, he says, “We see states really become further divided along political lines. And so, in some respects, you see Newsom and DeSantis as these archetypes of a Democratic state and a Republican state.”

In the last week, at least three of the controversial policies Newsom pointed to in his advertisement took effect in Florida – the legislation dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by opponents that bans classroom instruction of sexual orientation or gender identity in some age groups, the “Stop WOKE” act, which bans the teaching of Critical Race Theory in classrooms and a ban on abortion beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy – DeSantis-backed policies he has heralded in his effort to make the state the “freest state in America.”

“While so many around the country have consigned the peoples’ rights to the graveyard, Florida has stood as freedom’s vanguard,” DeSantis said during his State of the State address before the state legislature in January, where he outlined legislative priorities including cracking down on immigration and safeguarding Second Amendment rights in addition to the abortion and school curriculum policies.

Meanwhile, in California, Newsom has packaged the state as a “safe haven” for abortion, while committing to protecting the rights of LGBTQ Californians, expanding funding through Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, to include people in the country illegally and imposing some of the strictest gun control measures in the nation to combat a string of gun violence in recent weeks.

The two leaders appear to be operating in different realities.

“We’re as different,” Newsom told CNN, pointing to the governors and their states, “as daylight and darkness.”

That divide was especially evident when DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law. Billed as a parental rights policy despite claims from those in opposition saying it targets LGBTQ individuals, DeSantis touted it during a press conference in March for giving parents a voice in their childrens’ education, declaring, “in Florida, we no longer know that parents have a right to be involved, we insist that parents have a right to be involved.”

Newsom, on the other hand, said on Twitter that the bill was “born out of a LIE – that people ‘become gay’ by talking about it,” warning that it will harm LGBTQ children and criticizing the move as “monstrous.”