Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded to trash-talking House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) by extending an invitation for a paid trip to the Sunshine State.
“Please. Be my guest. I will pay for you to come down to Florida to campaign,” DeSantis said on Wednesday. “I’ll put you up in the Florida governor’s mansion. We will take you fishing.”
Jeffries was in hog heaven after voters in Virginia narrowly approved a new map expected to give Democrats total political dominance in the Old Dominion, a major triumph for his party, which stands to give Democrats 10 of 11 congressional seats after the midterms.
It was the party’s biggest win yet in the redistricting war that started when Texas Republicans moved to approve the redrawing of gerrymandered maps, and the New York City Democrat challenged the Florida governor to go ahead with the Sunshine State’s own redistricting plan.
.@RepJeffries “Our message to Florida Republicans is F around and find out. If they go down the road of a DeSantis ‘dummymander’, the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans.” pic.twitter.com/3zFoRXRLvD
— CSPAN (@cspan) April 22, 2026
“Our message to Florida Republicans is F around and find out. If they go down the road of a DeSantis dummy-mander … the electoral tide is turning in Florida,” he said during remarks at the Democrat campaign office.
Jeffries had previously vowed “maximum warfare” by targeting GOP seats in Florida if state Republicans go through with redistricting.
DeSantis fired back.
Congressman Jeffries — come on down to Florida and make our day. pic.twitter.com/3yzk9R4vc5
— Team DeSantis (@TeamDeSantis) April 22, 2026
“I heard this guy, Jeffries, popping off in Washington about Florida. He wants to be Speaker of the House, and he’s kind of more liberal than Pelosi and all this other stuff from New York City,” the governor said.
“Just, ‘Oh, Florida can’t do this, or we’re going to go after Florida.’ Please, be my guest. I will pay for you to come down to Florida and campaign. I’ll put you up in the Florida Governor’s mansion. We’ll take you fishing, we’ll do all this stuff,” he added.
“If Florida Republicans proceed with this illegal scheme, they will only create more prime pick-up opportunities for Democrats, just as they did with Trump’s dummymander in Texas. We will aggressively target for defeat Mario Díaz-Balart, Maria Elvira Salazar, Carlos Giménez, Kat Cammack, Anna Paulina Luna, Laurel Lee, Cory Mills, and Brian Mast. We are prepared to take them all on, and we are prepared to win,” Jeffries said in a statement earlier this week.
“Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time,” the top House Democrat pledged.
“The far left hates him,” DeSantis also said. “They call him a Dollar Store Obama.”
“They call him a dollar store Obama.”
Ron DeSantis slams top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, says the “far left” hates him even though he’s “as left as they come.” pic.twitter.com/xWrUcKYDCQ
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 23, 2026
“Hakeem Jeffries campaigning in Florida would be an early Christmas gift for Republicans in Florida,” DeSantis said in a Wednesday post to X, sharing video of his remarks. “Happy to roll out the red carpet!”
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