LIBERTY, Ohio (WKBN) — One of the day’s most significant political events anywhere in the country took place Friday evening in Liberty. A standing-room-only crowd wanted to hear what Florida’s governor had to say.

The crowd that showed up at the Metroplex in Liberty numbered close to a thousand people, and while J.D. Vance gave a campaign speech in which he repeatedly criticized Tim Ryan, many of the people there wanted to hear what Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had to say.

DeSantis came on stage to a standing ovation and a thunderous applause and threw hats of some kind into the audience. The first thing he explained was his ties to the Mahoning Valley.

“My mother is from Youngstown and she’s here…and my father is from Aliquippa but went to Youngstown State,” said DeSantis.

DeSantis then took the audience through a series of issues like how conservative candidates should run their campaigns.

“The other thing we’ve done, that I think more Republicans need to do — don’t just sit back and let the left eat your lunch. Go on offense. Take advantage of issues,” said DeSantis.

DeSantis criticized many of the vaccine mandates that were in effect saying his state never mandated anything. He said the state of Florida has added 70,000 private sector jobs.

“And I can tell you none of that would have been possible if we had let our state over the last two years descend into some type of Faucian dystopia,” said DeSantis.

He talked about law and order and was critical of prosecutors who fail to go after criminals of petty crimes.

“And when we had a prosecutor in a part of Florida that was supported by Soros that said he was only going to enforce certain laws and was not going to enforce others we took action by removing him from office,” said DeSantis.

He also talked about issues with China.

“We’ve already signed legislation banning things like Confucius institutes at our universities. We are very mindful of them trying to infiltrate our economy. We’re going to be doing legislation to block them from purchasing land,” said DeSantis.

DeSantis said Florida has also drawn a “clear line in the sand” that its school systems should be educating kids and not indoctrinating kids. Florida, he said, has banned critical race theory in its K-12 schools. He said Florida is not teaching kids to hate the United States or to hate each other based on race.