of the Governor of Florida From Ron DeSantis even the next president of the United States was talked about at the beginning of the year. Now DeSantis has to worry about whether his campaign will fizzle out even before the election year begins.
Republicans will start voting for their own presidential candidate in the primaries starting in January. The former president has long been expected to win the race Donald Trump’s and DeSantis dueling.
The hype around DeSantis has been steadily growing for the past couple of years. He was like Trump, but without Trump’s ballast: younger, more restrained and more powerful.
As governor, DeSantis had shown that he was able to promote Trumpian policies on a practical level. He is 44 years old and won the gubernatorial election last year with convincing support.
The road to the presidency seemed open. At the beginning of the year, at best, 40 percent of Republicans supported DeSantis as the presidential candidate.
Now DeSantis’ support has fallen to less than 15 percent.
What happened to Florida’s rising star?
DeSantis ran out of luck
DeSantis gradually began his presidential campaign from his governor’s office.
In Florida, DeSantis actively pushed through conservative laws related to, among other things, abortion and school policies. He profiled himself as the country’s toughest politician in the culture war against liberals and often proclaimed how “woke ideology is dying in Florida.”
In this way, DeSantis also challenged Trump himself. He just had to show the Republicans that he can promote things more effectively than Trump. Actions should speak louder than words.
However, DeSantis put off the official launch of his campaign until the summer. Trump, on the other hand, had already opened his campaign a long time ago, immediately after last November’s midterm elections.
PhD student at Åbo Akademi University Oscar Winberg judged that DeSantis made a mistake in timing.
– The midterm elections went poorly for the Republicans, but there was a lot of hype around DeSantis. At that point, DeSantis did not enter the race, but Trump did. Thus, Trump was able to freeze the entire field, says Winberg.
According to Winberg, Trump’s quick campaign opening quickly silenced the discussion about Trump’s weaknesses in the right-wing media.
Over the course of the spring and summer, several different criminal charges have been filed against Trump, both at the federal level and in two different states. Trump has integrated the lawsuits into his election campaign and claimed all the charges as a political chase.
The Trump show had started again, and suddenly DeSantis found the attention around him all around him.
DeSantis’ campaign team has not confirmed
In late May, DeSantis finally opened his campaign as an entrepreneur Elon Musk’s hosting the event, the messaging service on Twitter (currently X). However, DeSantis’ big moment turned out to be a farce, as the conversation between the speakers was interrupted and sometimes the broadcast was cut off completely.
The opening of the campaign symbolizes summer for DeSantis. He has invested in campaigning on social media, but the attention there has mainly been attracted by the constant hacking.
In June, the campaign team shared a video in which DeSantis was portrayed as, among other things, the serial killer from the movie American Psycho by Patrick Bateman alongside. In July, a video was shared in which DeSantis was placed in the middle of the Black Sun emblem, familiar from Nazi symbolism.
DeSantis fired the employee who shared the video, but the image has remained: DeSantis’ campaign team seems to be made up of online radicals who have no experience running a presidential campaign.
In addition to online mishaps, DeSantis’ campaign has been wasting its money at a rapid pace. For example, 1.5 million dollars have been burned during the summer just for flights on private planes. With the money shortage looming, DeSantis fired nearly half of his campaign team in July. Last week also the campaign manager Genera Peck got fired.
DeSantis loses to Trump in campaign skills
DeSantis’ presidential aspirations will rise or fall in the state of Iowa, where the Republican primaries begin. A victory in the first state could show that Trump is vulnerable.
DeSantis has focused his campaign on Iowa, promising to tour every county in the state. DeSantis’ problem, however, is an apparent lack of charisma. He doesn’t seem to enjoy meeting common folk at all.
The awkwardness of the campaign has come to be described by the moment when DeSantis pointed out to a child enjoying an iced drink that soda has a lot of sugar.
– DeSantis is not a candidate who would be natural at traditional campaign events, Winberg says.
Winberg thinks that during DeSantis’ honeymoon period, an image was built of him as Trump, but without the weaknesses.
– In that moment, it was forgotten that he never even had Trump’s strengths.
DeSantis made an error of judgment for his party
In addition to DeSantis’ poor campaigning skills, there is an obvious reason why his support is falling. DeSantis’ hard-right politics are not that popular after all.
– DeSantis looked at Trump’s popularity on the extreme right and believed that it was worth joining the culture war to the fullest, says Winberg.
Winberg points to DeSantis’ abortion policy, for example. In the spring, DeSantis signed a Florida law banning abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy.
Trump, on the other hand, has never drawn the strictest possible line on the issue of abortion or, more broadly, on social policy. While campaigning, Trump has criticized DeSantis as a too right-wing candidate who will take away people’s social security.
– Trump says that a strong public sector is good, as long as the benefits end up in the pockets of his own supporters, says Winberg.
According to Winberg, the situation describes the special position that Trump enjoys. Trump is such a clear symbol of the American right-wing that he can sometimes also push a more left-wing line, and no one still doubts his right-wing.
DeSantis, on the other hand, has to prove his right-wingness by driving past Trump on the right. However, this does not seem to work for voters.
In a recent article from The New York Times in survey research only about 30 percent of Republicans said that reducing the budget deficit is more important than keeping the level of Social Security unchanged. Also, only about 20 percent of Republicans supported a full ban on abortion.
– Many candidates over the years have made the same assessment error, says Winberg.
DeSantis sympathizes too much with Trump
The first Republican primary debate will take place on Wednesday in Milwaukee. DeSantis hopes that the debates will finally bring a lift to his campaign, but Trump, who is in the lead, does not even want to participate in the debate.
Trump refuses to commit to the condition of the debate, in which he promises to support the final Republican candidate. Trump has planned own competitive event on top of the debate.
– DeSantis would like to get on stage with Trump to challenge him in front of the TV cameras. Trump doesn’t have to go there if he doesn’t want to, because his supporters think he doesn’t have to, Winberg says.
The arguments still give DeSantis an opportunity to attack Trump. According to Winberg, DeSantis should stop being timid and say that he can win the election.
– It would have to be said that Mr. Trump has been a candidate for president twice and both times he did not get a majority of votes.
However, DeSantis is in a difficult position because Trump has lied since the last election that he was the real winner of the election, and many Republicans believe him.
– It’s a difficult place for the entire party when it’s been going along with Trump’s lies for years and now you have to turn around and say that Trump lost.
DeSantis has also long supported Trump’s lies. Having leaked to the public campaign document based on this, DeSantis plans to defend Trump instead of attacking him on the debate stage.
Last week, however, DeSantis stated in an interview that “of course he lost.”
– At this point, it’s a little too late, Winberg says.
Winberg estimates that Trump ultimately benefited from the fact that the Republican primaries were already perceived early on as a duel in which the other candidates have no place.
– It was decided pretty early on that this is a Trump vs. DeSantis race. Now we see that DeSantis can’t do well in such a situation.
DeSantis would be a convenient, common-sense choice for a presidential candidate for many Republicans – but he is not loved like Trump.
– For many, DeSantis would be suitable as vice president, for example, but it’s not right for him to challenge a hero, says Winberg.
You can discuss the topic until Sunday 20 August at 23:00.