A Florida burger joint is suing him for banning children from watching drag acts. African-American activists have issued a “travel advisory” for those entering the state. As for Disney, a major employer, the company considers him worse than all of its cartoon villains combined.
When it comes to enemies, even Donald Trump has struggled to find so many so quickly. But endless friction is just the way hot-tempered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis likes it. And tonight, the self-proclaimed champion of the anti-wakeness movement has officially entered the race for the 2024 White House.
He presented himself as Trump’s successor in the role of anti-establishment Republican nominee and vowed to break the party’s “culture of losing” despite his own hiccups in recent polls.
And in what is taken as a sign that his campaign will focus on the culture wars gripping the US over issues such as sex, gender and education, he announced his candidacy on the main battlefield of the conflict: Twitter , via a chat with its owner and fellow misfit Elon Musk.
Some American conservatives, who view Trump as a “broke flush,” believe DeSantis represents their best hope of winning the presidency next year. They view the Ivy League-trained former naval officer, 44, as a more reliable, intellectual candidate.
Endless friction is just the way hot-tempered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis likes it. And tonight, the self-proclaimed champion of the anti-wakeness movement has officially entered the race for the 2024 White House. Pictured: DeSantis with his wife Casey DeSantis and children Madison, Mason and Mamie in November 2022
He presented himself as Trump’s successor in the role of anti-establishment Republican nominee and vowed to break the party’s “culture of losing” despite his own hiccups in recent polls. Pictured: Donald Trump greets Ron DeSantis at a rally in Florida in 2018
Also crucially, he has garnered the support of cable TV giant Fox News and the rest of Rupert Murdoch’s powerful media empire.
Whether or not they anointed the right man remains to be seen. There are questions about everything from his political judgment – he has described the Ukraine war as a “territorial dispute” – to his table manners, particularly how he eats chocolate pudding (supposedly with three fingers).
His seeming determination to humiliate the powerful Disney Corporation, which has its largest theme park in Florida and employs 80,000 people regardless of the economic cost to the state, has worried many.
He first came into conflict with the so-called “House of Mouse” after they pledged to oppose DeSantis’ crackdown on teaching sexual identity to elementary school children.
Since then, it has been the primary target of his vocal denunciation of an economic and political idiocy he believes is destroying America.
The company retaliated by scrapping a $1 billion plan to build a Florida campus that would have attracted 2,000 digital technology workers from California.
Polls of Republican voters dating back to Trump’s overwhelming victory in 2016 suggest a sizeable segment of party loyalists support DeSantis, with many prioritizing the culture war above all other issues. But nationwide polls suggest many undecided voters and Democrats disagree.
They don’t believe that politicians should punish companies just because they disagree with them on cultural or political issues. Giving Republicans enough joy to win the nomination without upsetting the broader constituency is the balancing act DeSantis must walk. But the Florida governor, a taciturn introvert – Trump has nicknamed him “Shy Ronnie” – is absolutely adamant.
Can the man who was re-elected leader of the Sunshine State in a landslide victory last year win over the rest of America?
It’s certainly true that many of the issues he fought for, such as parental rights in schools, harsher penalties for criminals, and a generally less intrusive government, resonate with many Americans.
And his less privileged background is appealing too. The son of a television engineer and a nurse, DeSantis grew up a strict Catholic in a working class neighborhood in Florida. He did well in school, attending Yale University (where he ran the baseball team) and then Harvard Law School. Inspired by the 1992 legal drama A Few Good Men, in which Tom Cruise plays a lawyer fighting a corrupt system while defending two Marines accused of murder, DeSantis joined the US Navy as a lawyer. He was deployed to Iraq as a legal adviser to SEAL Team One.
DeSantis will attempt to challenge Joe Biden for the presidency in 2024. Pictured: Biden delivers a speech at the White House on Wednesday
His seeming determination to humiliate the powerful Disney Corporation, which has its largest theme park in Florida and employs 80,000 people regardless of the economic cost to the state, has worried many. Pictured: A sign near the entrance to Disney World in Florida
In 2012, he was elected to Congress and seven years later became Governor of Florida, running on a small-government, low-tax electoral map.
Supporting Donald Trump proved crucial to his victory in Florida, a fact that explains why the former President, who heaps contempt on DeSantis, is now a rival.
DeSantis reportedly used a bizarre dating technique as a college student, in which he told a young woman he wanted to go to a Thai restaurant but pronounced the word as “thigh.” If she rebuked him, he wouldn’t go on.
“He didn’t want a girlfriend to correct him,” said a fellow student. But today, his glamorous wife, former television journalist Casey Black, with whom he has three children, is considered his closest advisor — carried over into every email he sends — and very supportive of his White House ambitions.
Discussing her successful battle with breast cancer is one of the few times he has publicly shown emotion. (Ironically, in view of Cinderella’s castle at Disney World, the couple married.)
DeSantis showed early signs that he was politically moderate as governor – raising teachers’ salaries and winning $1 billion for restoration projects in the Everglades, a tropical wetland wilderness. But then came the pandemic.
His radical response was to quickly lift restrictions and reopen schools after just four months of homeschooling, despite a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases across the country. This made him the darling of conservatives across the US, but earned him the nickname “DeathSantis” as Covid cases rose in the state.
Still, Florida’s economy fared better than other states, which imposed tighter restrictions and had higher death tolls.
He has since cemented his reputation as a right-wing Republican by expanding gun laws and expanding the death penalty to include child rapists. DeSantis has also restricted immigration and banned abortions in Florida after the sixth week of pregnancy — one of the most restrictive laws in the country and a move that could cost him in an election among female voters.
His 2022 Parents’ Rights in Education Act — wrongly dismissed by opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay” law because it stigmatized LGBT people — banned elementary schools, children ages five to nine from anything about sexual orientation and teach gender identity.
It also sparked his war with Disney, whose workforce pressured executives to fight back. DeSantis responded by terminating an agreement that had given Disney World tremendous advantages in effectively conducting business in the 25,000-acre district in which it is based.
He calls his state the place where “woke men die,” has extended “Don’t Say Gay” to all schoolchildren, and introduced a law that forbids people who aren’t assigned to their gender at birth from using restrooms Children were also banned from watching drag shows.
He has also angered African-American organizations with last year’s Individual Freedom Act — better known as the Stop WOKE (The Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act — which banned school classes or on-the-job training that teach people that they are “inherently racist and sexist” are “or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously”.
Its main target is “critical race theory,” a fashionable academic specialty that focuses on the racism supposedly rooted in America.
“We will not allow Florida taxpayers’ money to be spent teaching children to hate our country or each other,” DeSantis promised.
Some warn that his biggest weakness in the elections is that he’s just not likable. But after four years under Joe Biden, who is said to be the epitome of kindness but whose dismal ratings have now rivaled Trump’s, will that really be too much of a problem?