I spent six years working with Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier, first as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida and later in the Governor’s Office. From my view, both men have a strong and admirable populist drive.
Populism is a word that gets thrown around a lot, so let me be clear about what I mean by it. It is the idea that powerful institutions and those who control them should answer to the ordinary people they exist to serve.
DeSantis knew which fights he wanted. Those fights were bold, often the first of their kind in the country, and won on behalf of ordinary people. As Chief of Staff, Uthmeier was indispensable to these accomplishments.
Since Uthmeier was appointed Attorney General, he’s continued this populist fight.
Uthmeier has sued Target, gone after Snapchat, Roblox and TikTok, subpoenaed CVS, investigated FICO and filed the country’s first lawsuit by a state against OpenAI. This is a man squaring off against large, elite corporate powers.
Nothing on that list hits home more than the fight he took on in July.
Uthmeier sent a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops asking its schools to honor Florida’s state-issued religious vaccine exemptions. Florida law requires public and private schools to grant religious exemptions from these requirements, though it allows schools to opt out if granting the exemption would violate their religious tenets.
At least one diocese refused exemptions, denying enrollment to children who had them. Uthmeier’s position is that Catholic theology provides no grounds for denying the exemption. Comply, he wrote, or risk eligibility for the state scholarship program that sends voucher money to Catholic schools.
Uthmeier is a devout Catholic. He cited the Catechism, Pope Leo and Scripture in the letter itself.
The Archbishop of Miami called the letter a “not-so-veiled threat.”
It is my perspective that Uthmeier’s action reflects populism in its purest form — a faithful Catholic taking on the hierarchy of his own church on behalf of the people in its pews, alongside the thousands of non-Catholic students who attend its schools.
But as an attorney and public servant, I’ve learned that “I think” and “I feel” are not evidence of reality, and I wanted to find out how others felt about Uthmeier’s stance.
So, before writing this, I asked Dr. Karen Cyphers to put my “thoughts” and “feelings” to the test.
For some time, I have worked with Cyphers, a data scientist who has made it a habit to challenge whether my instincts hold up under scrutiny. We are in the middle of a larger project together — a hard look at how Florida became the most effective, nationally emulated conservative state under DeSantis and how these successes can be replicated elsewhere.
Cyphers ran a scientific survey of 1,100 Florida voters, including 308 Catholics. Not about vaccines, but about the principle of Uthmeier’s position. Her research found that three out of four Florida voters (74%) agreed that private schools accepting state dollars should honor state-issued religious exemptions, just as public schools must.
And a strong majority think funding should be withheld from schools that don’t comply — a view expressed by equal shares of Catholic and non-Catholic voters alike.
Both sides have real arguments here. The bishops say Catholic teaching permits vaccines and that their schools’ policies serve the common good. Uthmeier says that because Florida law gives parents a religious exemption, a school taking public dollars doesn’t get to decide which parts of that law apply to it.
But the heart of this isn’t much in dispute among ordinary people. The Church says receiving vaccines is morally permissible — and when Cyphers asked Floridians what that means in plain terms, 85% said it means Catholics may receive them if they choose, not that all Catholics must. Among Catholics themselves, 86% said the same.
“Permissible” is not the same as “required” — and, to Uthmeier, a Church that has no objection to vaccines hasn’t identified a conflict with state law. It has identified the absence of one.
Reasonable people land on both sides of the issue. The point that strikes me as meaningful is what it took for Uthmeier to send that letter at all.
He could have let this one go. But he took a stand because the principle outweighed the politics.
And if this is any indication of how Uthmeier will continue to govern if elected in November, voters from all walks of life can count on this: An Attorney General who will hold Florida’s Catholic bishops to the law will hold anyone to it.
___
Larry Keefe runs Keefe Strategies, where he consults on selected projects at the crossroads of law enforcement, national security, politics and law. He served as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida and later as Public Safety Czar and then Immigration Czar during the DeSantis administration.
