Meet Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who has been criticized for leaving beaches open to spring breakers and not issuing a stay-at-home order during the coronavirus pandemic

"The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state. That is not gonna work. That's not gonna be good for Florida," he had said in an interview on Fox News.

Critics called out DeSantis, saying the phrase "monkey this up" was a racist comment toward his opponent, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who would have been Florida's first black governor, according to Vox.

His campaign released a statement calling the accusation "absurd," Mahoney wrote.

The new appointments secured a conservative majority on the court, a lack of which had "long been a source of frustration for Republicans," according to the Pensacola News Journal.

He formed four advisory committees: economy, education, environment, and public safety.

According to the list of accomplishments on the Florida government website, DeSantis has helped make record investments in the state's education system and created the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program for children of families with limited financial resources.

In healthcare, he legalized smoking medical marijuana, created the Patient Savings Act to help lower healthcare costs, took steps to lower the cost of prescription drugs in the state, and established the Opioid Task Force while securing over $120 million to fight the opioid epidemic.

In November 2019, DeSantis proposed a $91.4 environmental billion budget. That includes $2.5 billion over the next four years to preserve the Everglades — a $1 billion increase in spending over the past four years and a record high level of funding for restoration.

The Everglades Foundation praised his proposed budget, but Aliki Moncrief, executive director of Florida Conservation Voters, said it needed more action "to invest in climate solutions," according to CBS Miami.

DeSantis has also established two environmental committees: the Blue-Green Algae Task Force and Office of Environmental Accountability and Transparency.

DeSantis provided televised briefings twice daily, avoided pushing for early evacuations, and reached out and listened to local emergency managers during Hurricane Dorian, according to local outlet Daytona Beach News Journal.

Scott had closed daily conference calls with disaster managers to the media, but DeSantis opened them back up to reporters.

DeSantis has said he wouldn't have signed the Florida Legislature's post-Parkland gun bill into law, which Scott did. It was Florida's first gun control measure in nearly a decade, according to The Herald. It implemented a three-day waiting period to buy gun buys and raised the purchase age from 18 to 21.

"When I served in Congress, I fought back against the Democrats' witch hunts every single day," DeSantis wrote in an email blast, according to The Miami Herald. "I REFUSED to let them overturn the 2016 election and erase your vote from history. Now the Democrats are officially moving to impeach our duly elected president, my duty to protect him isn't over."

He added: "As Governor of Florida, I want the president to know that we have his back in this fight 100%, so today I'm issuing the Presidential Protection Fund to fight back against this disgusting attempt to overturn a legitimate U.S. election."

That's according to a Mason Dixon poll. Hispanic, African-American, Independent, and Democrat voters showed approval in the poll, according to local news outlet Venice Gondolier.

"The message I think for spring breakers is the party is over in Florida," DeSantis told "Fox and Friends" mid-March. But DeSantis didn't make an official order, leaving the decision to close beaches in the hands of local governments.

After public backlash over the crowded beaches, DeSantis signed an order that will limit beach parties to 10 people per group and closed all bars and nightclubs in the state for 30 days. He eventually issued an executive order closing all beaches and businesses in Broward and Palm Beach counties, which are among the largest and hardest hit by pandemic, until March 31. But his office said governments will have the ability to enforce, relax, modify, or remove these closures as they see fit.

The New York Times has suggested that DeSantis is hesitating to enforce measures that may hurt the state's $86 billion tourism industry.

In a news conference on March 24, DeSantis called a potential shelter-in-place order "a very blunt instrument."

"When you are ordering people to shelter in place, you are consigning a number — probably hundreds of thousands — of Floridians to lose their jobs," DeSantis said. Florida's population tops 20 million.

"We have 20 counties that have zero cases at all and about 25 counties that really only have a few cases," he added. As of March 30, the number of counties in Florida without coronavirus cases has dropped to 16.

Ten Democratic members of Florida's congressional delegation sent DeSantis a letter asking for a shelter-in-place order, reported The Hill. One Florida attorney is even suing him for not closing public beaches statewide to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Even some Florida citizens are angry, implying his lack of decision-making is leading to coronavirus deaths.

But Trump and the Florida Medical Association have both praised DeSantis for his coronavirus response.

In a news conference, DeSantis called out New Yorkers for getting on flights out of the city even though the state is under a shelter-in-place order, Business Insider's Taylor Borden reported.

"You're having people be reckless and cause problems for other communities," DeSantis said. "Tens of thousands have defied [state directives in New York] and so we're ending up in a situation where we're having to pick up some of those pieces.

DeSantis issued an executive order requiring everybody arriving from the New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut area to self-quarantine for 14 days. He said the National Guard would be stationed in major Florida airports and would ask passengers of flights coming from the New York area to self-isolate on arrival.

He later ordered the same restrictions for travelers from Louisiana. He's having the Florida Highway Patrol set up a checkpoint on the interstate to intercept drivers, reported Mary Ellen Klas for The Miami Herald.

Mary Ellen Klas, the Herald's bureau chief for the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times Tallahassee Bureau, said she was refused entry to a press briefing on March 28, reported David Smiley for the Miami Herald.

Klas she was told she was being refused access because she had requested "social distancing" at the governor's briefings. "I asked for social distancing. I didn't ask to be excluded," Klas said.

While a reporter from the Orlando Sentinel was admitted, reported Smiley, the decision to bar Klas elicited condemnation among media folk and some state lawmakers for "limiting access to information during a time of crisis."

DeSantis said 60% of all COVID-19 cases in the Sunshine State are currently in southeast Florida, reported local station Local10.

"It gets all four counties operating under the same sheet of music," he said.

The order encourages people to stay inside and practice social distancing to help slow the spread of coronavirus, reported local station WPTV, but specific details of the initiative weren't immediately announced.