Ron DeSantis set to officially enter 2024 presidential race

Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the contest for the Republican presidential nomination on Wednesday, setting up a months-long battle in a campaign trial with former president Donald Trump.

Desantis, 44, is expected to enter the race in an unusual way – at an event with billionaire Elon Musk on Twitter. The Florida governor also plans to file documents declaring his candidacy with the Federal Election Commission, aides said.

DeSantis will defy some history if he wins the Republican nomination for 2024. No president has been born in Florida, nor has a president been a Florida governor or senator – Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio both tried but were defeated by Trump in 2016. (Trump’s fervent supporters will argue that he is the first president from the state despite spending decades in his native New York, as Florida has been his primary home for years.)

When he is inaugurated in 2025, DeSantis will be 46 years and four months old, making him the youngest president since John F. Kennedy in 1960 and the third youngest overall. However, for every question about his experience on the national or international stage – he was a member of the US Congress for five years with a modest profile – the contrast in the general election with Joe Biden, whose enthusiasm at the age of 80 has been questioned, may be useful. .

To be clear, there are other candidates announced in the race, but everyone should know how the appeal to the mainstream Republican Party was killed by Trump while also attracting the attention of conservative voters who may not be sure about supporting Trump in 2024, even if they already support it. he was before.

“[DeSantis] can’t win the nomination with only non-Trump votes,” said Sarah Isgur, a veteran of several Republican presidential campaigns. “They have to pill voters away from Trump.”

A very important start

Nationally, Trump has been the overwhelming frontrunner in polls of loyal or likely Republican voters. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this month showed Trump with 49 percent of Republicans and DeSantis with 19 percent.

Former White House aide Karl Rove told Fox News this week that there are still many voters, even Republican-leaning ones, who don’t know about DeSantis beyond the headlines.

“It’s wrong, in my opinion, to spend too much time on the polls and not enough time on whether President Trump deserves a second term in office because of his forward-looking vision,” he said.

More importantly, national polls only apply to races that will be decided by each state.

DeSantis is polling at a respectable rate in the first Iowa, because he has not announced a bid, where Governor Kim Reynolds and Sen. Joni Ernst attends one of her most recent speeches. It is a state that Trump lost in the 2016 Republican race, to Ted Cruz.

Unlike the Democratic primary — where candidates who receive at least 15 percent of the vote in a state collect delegates that advance in the race — the Republican process involves many win-win states where the losing candidate receives no delegates, either. is another aspect that rewards name recognition. Therefore, a strong start is crucial for DeSantis or any Trump challenger.

Their relationship must have been sour

Polls in the states trailing Iowa — New Hampshire and South Carolina — are looking better for DeSantis, but the first candidate debate is still three months away. A lot can happen before early 2024.

“It’s a tough road, but he’s off to a good start,” Rove said.

The two of them have a history, they used to like each other. Trump considers himself the king of DeSantis, who endorsed him in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial contest. But narrow attack ads focused on one or the other – and not the entire Republican field – have appeared on the US airwaves, thanks to political action committees that support the two men.

Trump’s legal troubles are the X factor. There are no signs through surveys that Republican primary voters have been affected by the setback so far – including a civil trial that this month found him liable for sexual abuse and a pending 2024 criminal trial for falsifying business records in money case. However, a decision still needs to be made, whether charges will be filed in a more important probe related to Trump’s pressure campaign to change the results of the 2020 election or his refusal to become a private citizen to part with classified White House records.

Cumulatively, more charges can result in more victims. There is speculation, based on legal findings, that Georgia prosecutors will decide on charges in the 2020 election probe in August, when the Republican primary debates begin.

‘Government is not about entertainment’

In a speech clearly aimed at a national audience, DeSantis has focused on what he has accomplished in Florida, as well as his public choices.

Trump narrowly won the 2016 election and lost in 2020. Some parties consider his poor performance as president a key factor in the Republicans’ poor results in the 2018 midterms and, at best, mixed results in the 2022 midterms.

In addition, Trump’s name has not been tested on the ballot because he encouraged his supporters not to accept the results of the 2020 election, which led to riots in the Capitol.

“Governing is not about entertaining. Governing is not about building a brand or talking on social media and virtue signaling,” DeSantis said at a recent Iowa event. “At the end of the day it’s about winning and getting results.”

DeSantis has been busy running for governor. He signed measures that restricted abortion in Florida, made it easier for citizens to carry concealed weapons, expanded voucher programs to allow students to attend private schools, and eliminated funding for diversity programs at public universities, among other moves.

He also remains at war with Walt Disney Co over criticism of a law banning the teaching of gender identity concepts in public schools.

While some liberals see the move as a use of state power to punish opponents or opposing views, that criticism won’t surface in a Republican primary contest that some political scientists say has moved further to the right than conservative parties. in Canada, England and Europe.