Florida's Surgeon General is headed to the Granite State, hitting the campaign trail for the man who hired him next week.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo will appear with Ron DeSantis Wednesday at an event hosted by the Never Back Down super PAC.
"Dr. Ladapo will be attending in his personal capacity," the super PAC notes, apparently recognizing the unusual optics of a state employee traveling during a workday for a presidential campaign event for the man who hired him.
The "Medical Freedom Town Hall" is conveniently located for those who plan on stepping off the ski slopes for a stump speech, at the McIntyre Ski Area in Manchester.
Ladapo was finally confirmed by the Florida Senate in 2023 mostly along party lines. He has reflected DeSantis' contrarian view of COVID-19 precautions and mitigations that surfaced in full once Donald Trump left the presidency in 2021.
As Florida Politics' Christine Jordan Sexton reported, Ladapo's controversies surfaced even during the confirmation hearing, with Sen. Tina Polsky noting that the Surgeon General altered the findings of a state-produced study about COVID-19 vaccines to suggest some vaccines pose a significantly higher cardiac risk to young men.
The findings were criticized by professors at the University of Florida, where Ladapo also works, and the medical community at large. Ladapo's findings were also contrary to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations.
That wasn't Ladapo's first run in with Polsky. Ahead of the confirmation hearing, he refused to comply with Polsky's request that he wear a mask while visiting her in her Senate office. Polsky, who was being treated for breast cancer at the time, told Ladapo she was sick and asked him and his staff to wear a mask while in her office. When he refused to comply, Polsky told Ladapo and his staff they had to leave.
Ladapo and DeSantis have a mutual affinity that the Governor did not enjoy with predecessor Scott Rivkees, who was famously sidelined in the middle of a July 2020 roundtable when he noted that people may have to social distance for up to a year.
The Surgeon General has enthused about DeSantis' character in situations far outside the narrow scope of setting state health policy, such as when he offered a testimonial to reporters after the Governor was taken to task for his reaction to a racist mass murder of three people at a Jacksonville Dollar General earlier this year.
The Surgeon General called it "terrible that people take advantage of the fact that he's a different color from the poor victims of that tragedy to try and tie him into something."
"It's immoral and unfortunately it's reflective of what we've been seeing for, you know, for many years, but certainly during the pandemic where people hide reality and they spin it and they try and make you buy what they're trying to sell you. And it's not true. It's a total lie, and they try and take advantage of the Governor just because he's not the same color as these people," Ladapo said.
Ladapo added that DeSantis "has a wonderful heart" and said "it's terrible that they do that and it's terrible that they get to get away with it so often just because he's not the same color as the people who were harmed."
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