DeSantis’ week shows how hard it is to take on Trump
Ron DeSantis isn’t officially running for president yet, but he just suffered through the kind of week a candidate for the highest office in the U.S. would love to forget.
The Florida governor has been seen as the most formidable potential challenger to former President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination. Yet DeSantis’ early advantage has eroded following miscues over Ukraine policy and as Trump pushed himself back into the spotlight by calling for protests against his potential indictment in New York.
DeSantis’ recent struggles highlight two major vulnerabilities as he sizes up a 2024 run. The first is his lack of experience in foreign policy, a common stumbling block for governors who set their sights on the White House. The second is Trump’s ability to seize national attention and reset the agenda by whipping up his still-fervent backers among the GOP faithful.
On Monday, DeSantis infuriated Trump and his supporters when he called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution politically motivated — but then chided the former president for paying “hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.”
Then, after angering top Republican lawmakers by downplaying Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute,” DeSantis backtracked on Wednesday, earning a rebuke from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson.
In private conversations around Tallahassee, just blocks from the governor’s office in Florida’s capital, DeSantis’ allies and advisers acknowledged he’d had a tough week. But they maintained that the Republican primary remains a two-man race between Trump and the 44-year-old governor.
Other observers said the tough stretch shows enthusiasm for DeSantis is fading.
“DeSantis is not ready for prime time. We saw this with Sen. Marco Rubio in 2016,” said Garrett Ventry, a senior adviser to Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Trump ally. “Rubio had this little surge in 2016 and then he imploded. What DeSantis is doing is clearly not working.”
Careful campaign
DeSantis has built a strong base of support in Florida — the state Trump also calls home — by pumping out conservative policy on guns and tort reform with the help of a Republican-led state Legislature. Nationally, he’s won admirers by decrying “wokeness” in schools, culture and business.
Florida law has kept DeSantis from fully launching his candidacy. The state Legislature that’s helped push through his agenda must pass a law that would allow him to run for president without giving up his current job. He’s expected to formally announce his run in mid-June, though that timing could move up depending on the polls and political climate, advisers say.
Still, DeSantis and his team have been carefully laying the groundwork for his run. Last fall, he won his second gubernatorial race by about 20 points, a standout victory in an election year when many Republicans struggled. Behind closed doors, the governor has settled on his top staff for his campaign and super PAC, filling key roles with veteran officials experienced in squaring off with Trump.
Losing ground
Despite the campaign’s organization and discipline so far, DeSantis’ efforts to project competence and seem above the fray have been upended as Trump pulls away in the polls.
A new Monmouth University poll showed 41% of GOP voters support Trump as the nominee, while 27% prefer DeSantis. In February, Republican voters supported them equally, at 33%. Trump has pulled ahead with almost every voting bloc, including evangelicals, voters under 65, and those who identify as “very conservative.”
“The fact Trump is polling as strong as he is confirms what we all knew already: Trump is the front-runner and will be hard to beat,” said Alex Conant, communications director for Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.