(Bloomberg) — Fresh off his re-election victory, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis now faces a potential showdown with Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
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Trump has already made DeSantis his leading foil on the campaign trial – boasting at rallies of polls that show the former president leading DeSantis roughly 2-to-1 among Republicans. Those who know DeSantis say they believe he’ll seize the moment and won’t be deterred from taking on Trump.
“He’ll never have a better opportunity to win the White House, and I don’t think he’s afraid of the president,” said Fred Piccolo, a Republican political consultant who served as DeSantis’s communications director in 2021. “It’s not in his nature.”
DeSantis, 44, has sidestepped the question of a 2024 presidential campaign, most notably in a debate last month with his now-vanquished rival for governor, Charlie Crist, who he defeated with 60% of the vote on Tuesday. Trump, who is expected to announce his own candidacy on Nov. 15, has increased his swipes against DeSantis, dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious” and threatening to divulge damaging information if he runs.
DeSantis didn’t mention Trump in his victory speech Tuesday night, but he sounded very much like he’s still campaigning for office.
“Leaders don’t follow, they lead. As our country founders due to failed leadership in Washington, Florida is on the right track,” DeSantis said. “I look forward to the road ahead.”
DeSantis already has financial backing from one key Republican constituency — a wide swath of Wall Street donors and wealthy individuals, some of whom have made clear they are not eager for a Trump return in 2024. Many see in DeSantis a candidate who is just as conservative, anti-tax and anti-regulation as Trump – but with none of Trump’s baggage.
Record Fundraising
These donors helped fuel DeSantis’s record fundraising this cycle. The $164 million DeSantis raised since January 2021, is not only more than any governor in US history, but exceeds Trump’s donations through the third quarter by $3 million.
About 60% of DeSantis’ haul comes from donors who gave $50,000 or more, including at least 10 billionaires benefiting from Florida laws that allow unlimited donations. Trump, in contrast, relies largely on a network of small-dollar donors, a sign that his grassroots support is greater than that of DeSantis.
DeSantis’s wooing of wealthy donors, crucial to his success in a presidential contest, began early in his first term.
At a Palm Beach fundraiser for the Everglades Foundation, in February 2019, billionaire financier Paul Tudor Jones lauded DeSantis for answering “our prayers” by securing conservation funds just days after taking office.
“It is a new dawn in Florida,” DeSantis said with the bravado that would become his trademark. Many, like Jones and Interactive Brokers Group founder Thomas Peterffy, would go on to write big checks to the governor.
Billionaire Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, who has contributed $10.8 million to DeSantis since 2018, once explained siding with the governor over Trump: “I think it’s time for America to move on,” Griffin said in an interview at the Economic Club of Chicago in October 2021. “The four years under President Trump were so pointlessly divisive that it was not constructive for our country.”
At an event Monday night, Griffin didn’t mention DeSantis by name, but talked about how his children were indoctrinated in “woke ideology” in Chicago schools. He said his son was reprimanded for telling an Asian student he was good at math. “And to watch them transform in school here in Miami is probably the best gift Miami has given to my family,” Griffin said.
Primary Underdog
Just four years ago, DeSantis was a House member who was an underdog in the primary race for governor — until he was endorsed by Trump. He went on to win his first term by a mere 0.4%. Trump’s view of DeSantis’ seemed to sour as the governor became a potential rival for the 2024 nomination.
In the closing weeks of the gubernatorial campaign, DeSantis framed a multitude of proposals around clamping down on “woke” attempts to inject race, gender and sexual orientation into school curriculum.
“We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob in the state of Florida,” he said.
In the final days of the race, a 96-second video released by his campaign talked about how “God made a fighter” — Ron DeSantis — to save Florida, and suggests by extension, to save America, further fueling talk of a potential presidential campaign.
DeSantis’s record shows he could be a formidable candidate against Trump with a work ethic and voracious appetite for details in briefing papers that contrasts sharply to Trump’s freewheeling style. At the same time, people who know him say he can seem curt and ill-tempered, with little patience for the schmoozing required of a politician that Trump has mastered.
But he’s used a Republican legislature that bends to his will to impose policies that resonate with Republicans nationally, lifting Covid restrictions on schools and businesses well before most states and attacking mask and vaccine mandates at times more aggressively than Trump.
He’s also taken stances on culture and social issues that are anathema to many Democrats — like restricting abortion and clamping down on teaching about race and gender in schools, including through a bill critics derided as “Don’t Say Gay.” He went after Walt Disney Co. for supporting transgender rights. DeSantis says more companies could face his wrath in a second term.
The governor is the top choice for the Republican nomination after Trump, with more than 30% support, according to a FiveThirtyEight survey of recent polling.
“If Trump wasn’t running, DeSantis would enter the race as the front-runner,” said GOP strategist Alex Conant, a former staffer for Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican.
Many donors “see the governor as a reset and an alternative,” said Nick Iarossi, a Florida lobbyist and longtime DeSantis fundraiser. “He’s literally taken on all these issues, and a lot of people wish their governor would do that.”
Harvard Law
A Florida native, DeSantis was raised in the Tampa suburb of Denedin, the son of a Nielsen TV ratings box installer and a nurse. He was captain of the Yale University varsity baseball team before heading to Harvard Law and eventually to the US Navy, where he was deployed to Iraq in 2007 as a lawyer to advise SEAL Teams in combat missions.
Elected to the US House in 2012, DeSantis championed conservative Republican causes and helped to found the conservative Freedom Caucus. It was also there that DeSantis caught Trump’s eye, aggressively defending him against Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
DeSantis brought that combativeness to Tallahassee, despite his narrow win in 2018. His supporters expect a second term much like the first – like ordering more migrant flights or using his new elections police to go after alleged voter infractions. Democrats call these cheap ploys that don’t actually improve the immigration system or increase election security and betray a cruel streak in DeSantis who they say is willing to sacrifice vulnerable people for political gain.
DeSantis also hasn’t shied away from taking on his party’s traditional business allies, including by punishing banks that try to restrict oil and gas investments, much like Texas has.
“I think he’s not going to back down from his posture, which is that corporations and people can’t take cheap shots at Florida,” said Tallahassee lobbyist Brian Ballard, who’s been an unpaid fundraiser for DeSantis for years.
DeSantis has worked relentlessly to boost his national prominence, traveling the country to raise money and endorse Republican candidates, only adding to his appeal. “He is a leader who likes to help others like him,” said David Clark, a former DeSantis deputy chief of staff.
He is known for getting up at 4 a.m. to read up on the day with a wonkish obsession for facts and data. Piccolo, the former communications director, recalls delivering 200-page daily pandemic briefings, early in the morning, and within hours DeSantis would quote detailed findings in meetings.
People who’ve worked for him say DeSantis relies little on aides or consultants for guidance, and one of his top advisers is his wife, former Jacksonville television reporter and anchor Casey DeSantis. But one thing is clear, said one former aide who declined to be quoted speaking about the governor: He has limitless ambition and is a believer in seizing the moment when opportunity is there. And he seems sure, the person said, that this is his time to run for president.
–With assistance from Amanda Gordon, Felipe Marques, Bill Allison and Mark Niquette.
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