Promise kept.
Gov. Ron DeSantis traveled to Daytona Beach on Monday for the opening of the second Florida location of Buc-ees, a Texas-based convenience store and gas station chain attracted to the Sunshine State by Enterprise Florida.
“He did make that commitment a few years ago that he would be here for the groundbreaking and the grand opening if we pull this thing off. And we did. And he's fulfilled his commitment,” said Buc-ee’s co-founder Arch "Beaver" Aplin.
Maybe it was the wide variety of beef jerky or the 120 gas pumps at the 53,000-square-foot facility along Interstate 95, but DeSantis was gushing over what he said was his first visit to a Buc-ee’s, which he labeled the “Shangri-La of service stations.”
“You've gone a long trip, you may need to take a break and have some relief. These bathrooms are the cleanest bathrooms you've ever seen in your life,” DeSantis said. “Man, it's like a five-star restaurant in there because they really take pride in things, and it really shows. It really makes a difference.”
DeSantis, who gave himself the sobriquet of a “gas station connoisseur” for the travel time put in as a candidate and elected official, might have to make amends with aficionados of the Busy Bee locales along Interstate 10, which have long bragged about clean bathrooms on billboards.
DeSantis isn’t the first governor to have an affinity for convenience stores. His Republican predecessor Rick Scott was gaga for the Wawa chain.
Scott went to Pennsylvania in 2015 and tried unsuccessfully to lure to Florida the headquarters of the Wawa, Pa.-based company.
Philadelphia reporters, during a videotaped press conference, noted that Scott even offered to change the name of a town in Florida to Wawa.
"I wasn't very successful," Scott, now a U.S. senator, quipped.
