The governor of Florida was considered Donald Trump's most promising opponent, but then things changed
Ron DeSantis' candidacy in the Republican Party primaries ahead of the 2024 US presidential election appears to be growing increasingly weak. In recent weeks, six people have resigned or been fired from Never Back Down, the political committee formed to support the candidacy, and poll numbers have not risen as expected. Nevertheless, DeSantis is continuing his campaign, focusing primarily on the first states to vote, starting with Iowa.
DeSantis, who has been governor of Florida since 2019, announced his candidacy in May 2023 and was immediately seen as one of the most convincing alternatives to former President Donald Trump, who is currently clearly leading in all polls. However, DeSantis' candidacy never really gained momentum, on the contrary: recently she was questioned not only by Trump, but also by Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former US ambassador to the United Nations, as well as the only female candidate presented the Republican primaries.
According to the latest national polls, updated on December 17, Trump is clearly in the lead with 63 percent of the vote, followed by DeSantis with 12.3 percent and Haley with 10.7 percent. However, DeSantis's approval ratings have fallen significantly in recent months: In May, shortly after his candidacy was announced, it was 23 percent. However, Haley drew attention during the campaign and in the various debates organized by the party, winning votes and establishing himself as a valid alternative to DeSantis for the “second place” in the primaries.
Barring major upheaval, it remains very likely that Trump will win and become the party's nominee in the next presidential election, scheduled for November 2024.
Starting in late November, DeSantis' political committee — the so-called “PAC” called “Never Back Down” — began losing pieces. On November 22, director Chris Jankowski resigned, citing inconsistent opinions with the rest of management, and in early December, new director Kristin Davison was fired and replaced by Scott Wagner, a longtime friend of DeSantis. Two other committee members were recently fired, while board chairman Adam Laxalt resigned. Finally, last Saturday, Jeff Roe, one of the PAC's main organizers and founder of the long-time Republican Party-affiliated election consulting firm Axiom Strategies, also resigned.
Between March and July, the committee raised more than $130 million, but so far no votes have been cast from the funds.
The Republican Party primaries begin in Iowa on January 15, less than a month away. DeSantis has just completed a tour of all 99 counties in the state, a very ambitious operation carried out primarily to make himself known to voters and convince them of the solidity of his candidacy. However, the tour does not appear to have produced the desired results: polls show DeSantis at around 20 percent in Iowa, a far cry from Trump's 50 percent.
For the time being, DeSantis did not comment on the difficulties of his committee, but rather attacked Trump and Haley in particular, accusing her several times of running not to win the presidential nomination, but to stand out and for a role as vice president alongside Trump to hope. DeSantis has repeatedly said that he is not interested in any role in the federal government other than that of president and that he believes he can do more while remaining governor of Florida: “I'm not the number two guy ” he said during an interview for a Wisconsin podcast. Haley also said she wasn't interested in “playing for second place.”
DeSantis is considered a very conservative politician, so much so that in 2015 he was one of the founders of the parliamentary group Freedom Caucus, which later became the expression of the extreme right of the republic. During his years as a Florida state senator between 2013 and 2018 and then as governor, he has consistently established himself on the local and national political scene as a representative of the radical wing of the party, particularly on minority rights and as a Trump supporter.
Among other things, he said he was in favor of building a wall with Mexico (one of Trump's key campaign promises that was only partially kept), and in his first term as governor he expanded rights for gun owners in Florida and restricted access to voting for some minorities and passed a very restrictive abortion law that limited legality only to the first six weeks after conception. only within the first six weeks after conception. The law has not yet officially taken effect pending a Florida Supreme Court ruling, and in a recent primary debate, DeSantis said he favored a ban on abortion after 15 weeks of conception.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, he took an almost denialist approach: he accused the media of fomenting unmotivated “panic” and was among the first governors to lift restrictions aimed at containing infections, opening schools and commercial activities very early and the obligation to wear masks was lifted.
He also passed the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which, among other things, bans talking about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. The decision was heavily criticized by multinational entertainment conglomerate Disney and ultimately became the focus of a long legal battle between the company and the state of Florida. Initially, DeSantis used the issue to assert his conservative ideals and present himself as a “strongman” of the American right, but over time the issue worked to his detriment, particularly due to the enormous influence that Disney had on the economy and employment has in Florida: The Walt Disney World amusement park in Orlando employs over 70,000 people in the state, not counting related industries.
More generally, however, his clear opposition to so-called “woke” ideology, a term used derogatorily for the attitudes of people who are particularly attentive and committed to social injustices, has won him wide approval among the Republican Party's most radical voters. .
– Also read: Will the conflict with Disney become a problem for Ron DeSantis?
In 2022, DeSantis was confirmed as governor by nearly 20 points over Democratic candidate Charlie Crist, despite Trump supporters having performed worse than expected in that election. However, Trump had already begun to distance himself from DeSantis in view of his possible candidacy in the party primaries.
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