DeSantis turns page on CPAC attendance

Governor hits ground running with book tour

Gov. Ron DeSantis may not be officially running for president, but his packed schedule this week sure looks like someone laying the groundwork for a campaign.

After spending the weekend meeting with key GOP allies and conservative media figures in South Florida, DeSantis is set to kick off a tour in Leesburg on Tuesday to promote his newly released book, “The Courage to Be Free.” The governor is already doing interviews with conservative media about it.

But one place he won’t be going is CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual Super Bowl of the far right, which is returning to the Washington, D.C., area after two years in Orlando. Instead, he will be off raising money around the country.

“CPAC has been getting more and more extreme with each passing year,” said Mac Stipanovich, a Tallahassee consultant and former anti-Trump Republican turned independent. “And I think that DeSantis has probably pretty well established his credentials and his credibility with the people who are going to be sitting in the audience at CPAC. … There may be ways for him to better spend his time without some of the exposure that, in a national race, might not be beneficial.”

“The Courage to Be Free,” DeSantis’ second book, was panned in a New York Times review as being “courageously free of anything that resembles charisma, or a discernable sense of humor.”

In a friendlier interview with conservative host Mark Levin, DeSantis talked about his time at Yale, where he felt like “a fish out of water” and said he “rebelled the other way,” according to Insider.

The book signing Tuesday at the Books-a-Million store in Leesburg is closed to the news media, according to the store manager. Only those with advance tickets to the already sold-out event will be allowed to attend.

DeSantis’ weekend retreat was notably held just down the road from former President Donald Trump’s turf in Palm Beach.

The Washington Post reported U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., U.S.

Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Thomas Massey, R-Kentucky, and governors Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Bill Lee of Tennessee and Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma joined DeSantis at the Four Seasons hotel for discussions on “election integrity” and “medical authoritarianism.”

Also at the event, the Post reported, was critical race theory critic Chris Rufo, who DeSantis named to the board of New College in Sarasota as part of an effort to convert the school from progressive to conservative.

None of those names appear on the list of speakers at CPAC this week.

CPAC spokesperson Megan Powers confirmed to ABC News that DeSantis, who had a prime role at the 2021 and 2022 CPACs in Orlando and welcomed conservatives to the “freedom” state, won’t be there this year.

Instead, Trump is again set to be the headliner, having been the first name announced last month.

Instead of going to CPAC, DeSantis is holding fundraisers nationwide but has also recently spoken with police groups in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.

Trump has been steadily holding events following his presidential announcement in November, most recently making an appearance at the site of the recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

Trump has repeatedly attacked DeSantis as being “disloyal” and shared a photo purported to be of a young DeSantis at a party with teen students as a teacher. He disparaged the governor for shutting down the state in April 2020 as a response to COVID-19 and used the phrase “Meatball Ron” in a post stating he would never call DeSantis that.

DeSantis has refrained from firing back, however.

At the Republican Party of Florida meeting in Orlando earlier this month, a merchandise table was divided between “Trump 2024” and “DeSantis 2024” flags, and cardboard cutouts of the two of them were stationed far apart.

While the conservative media establishment, including the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, have seemingly put their weight behind DeSantis, a new Fox News poll released Monday showed Trump with a 43% to 28% lead over DeSantis in a hypothetical matchup.

Other names such as former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence received just 7% or less.