The long-awaited confrontation between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and US President Donald Trump is imminent.
DeSantis launched his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination on Wednesday and is expected to become Trump’s main rival.
The Florida governor presents himself as a conservative leader in the style of Trump, but without the negative background of the former president.
However, DeSantis takes on a race in which Trump remains the clear favorite and the dominant force in the Republican Party.
DeSantis’ banner is that he has a record of accomplishments on the priority list and conservative values he has won as Florida’s governor, in contrast to the four years of Trump’s presidency that saw few legislative victories.
During his tenure, DeSantis enacted high-profile conservative laws to loosen gun laws, restrict sexuality and gender identity education in schools, toughen voting rules and limit abortion.
culture warrior
His willingness to take on big corporations that he sees as promoting a liberal agenda suggests that he views contentious cultural issues as more of a concern to Republican voters than promoting more traditional pro-business politics.
This commitment was dramatically reflected in his confrontation with Disney. The fight began last year when the company criticized a Florida law that restricted the topics teachers could discuss in classrooms about sexuality and gender identity, after Disney employees protested the law.
“He is the ultimate culture warrior”said Myra Adams, a Florida-based columnist and political strategist who worked on the 2004 and 2008 Republican presidential campaigns.
“He was always considered a conservative, but it was a choice he made because he thought it would allow him to win over Trump voters,” he added.
DeSantis also emphasizes that he is a winner, undefeated in congressional and gubernatorial races.
“We must reject the culture of losing that has plagued our party in recent years”DeSantis said during his visit to Iowa two weeks ago. “The time for excuses is over.”
That was a dig at Trump, who refuses to accept that he lost the 2020 election and whom many blame for the disappointing results of Republicans in last year’s congressional elections.
Trump supporters
Overall, DeSantis is a formidable candidate, at least on paper.
However, campaigns are not fought on paper, but in front of the voters and under the harsh gaze of the media Communication national. After seeming like an unstoppable force in the days after his stunning re-election victory in November, the Florida governor’s popularity slowed.
Polls last year showed DeSantis on par with, or even leading, Trump. They now indicate that Trump has more than 50% support in many polls of Republican voters, while DeSantis trails by double digits.
Even if DeSantis captured non-Trump voters, he would trail Trump in the RealClearPolitics polls.
His challenge, therefore, is to convince some less enthusiastic Trump supporters that he is a better version than the original.
That could be a fine line to walk, given that there are other candidates trying to be the non-Trump option as well. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley attacked DeSantis in a campaign video posted Wednesday, saying “America deserves an election, not an echo.”
A common theme among those choosing the former president over the current governor is that DeSantis is too cold and unwilling to get involved in politics in a more personal way. An international trip meant to prove that DeSantis could hold his own on the world stage received lackluster reviews. It also didn’t make a good impression on some high-profile potential donors.
Nikki Haley’s campaign manager described him as “Trump without the charm,” according to a memo leaked to the media this week.
The donor challenge
“So many donors are so [molestos] because they paid a lot of money to be in a room with DeSantis and he didn’t give them enough time,” says political strategist Myra Adams. “He’s robotic and he doesn’t have an easy-going personality.”
“He should be the next generation,” Adams continues. “He should be the youngest, smartest, most agile Trump. But the numbers just don’t indicate how he’s going to beat Trump.”
The numbers can change, of course. There is a chance that circumstances will improve or that the former president will stumble upon the weight of accumulated legal issues.
LThe Trump campaign clearly sees the Florida governor as the most pressing threat. It’s unclear how much money independent groups supporting Trump have raised, but for months they have attacked DeSantis on television in battleground states.
The governor of Florida, however, has a lot of money of his own.
At the end of last month, he had $88 million in a fund, Friends of Ron DeSantis, which was raised for his re-election campaign in Florida and may roll over to his presidential bid. He also reportedly has around $30 million controlled by an independent committee that his allies can use to support his campaign.
Trump, by contrast, reported a combined fundraising of $18.8 million for the first three months of 2023, with $13 million in his main campaign account. Other Republican presidential candidates have even less cash on hand.
Florida’s governor is also courting local officials and power brokers in key early-voting states in the race for the Republican nomination.
On his most recent trip to Iowa, for example, he announced the endorsements of more than three dozen state legislators, far more than any other candidate.
The formal launch of your campaign andste Wednesday is an opportunity to reset and regain momentum. His conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter and a subsequent interview with Fox News will be monitored by a series of early voting states in the coming weeks.
DeSantis could end up as the Republican nominee and find himself with a host of new challenges as he takes on Joe Biden and the Democrats.
While his endorsement of tough conservative social policies has earned him the support of Republicans, some positions could hurt his ability to appeal to moderate voters, particularly on abortion.
However, it is a problem that he will face next year. The Governor of Florida has many challenges in the coming months.
What will happen from now on?
The candidates will kick off a series of televised debates in the summer.
Then, Republican voters will choose who from their party will face Democrat Joe Biden in November 2024.
Primary elections in each state will begin in February 2024.
The eventual nominee will be proclaimed at the Republican Convention in the summer of 2024.
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See original article on BBC