Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign returns to Florida this weekend, but it’s not shaping up to be a happy homecoming as the governor continues to fall further behind Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
The state GOP’s 2023 Florida Freedom Summit at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Kissimmee on Saturday is scheduled to include all the major Republican candidates as speakers, meaning DeSantis has a rare opportunity to directly take on his biggest rival knowing that Trump will be waiting in the wings.
But the event comes as DeSantis continues to flounder in the polls, especially in Iowa, where he has focused his campaign seeking an early upset. After state party leaders sided with Trump in September to drop the loyalty pledge for GOP candidates in the Florida primary, DeSantis’ stature at home is diminishing.
“DeSantis won’t be the hero in the room,” said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from St. Petersburg and co-founder of the Forward Party. “That’s an unusual feeling for the Florida governor … But Donald Trump is the pick of Republicans, and that includes Florida Republicans. And Ron DeSantis knows that. Whether he’s accepted that or not, it’s just a matter of time.”
Iowa, the site of the first presidential caucus in January, was supposed to be DeSantis’ best hope heading into 2024.
But a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll released Monday showed 43% of likely Republican caucus voters in Iowa back Trump as their first choice, an increase from his 42% showing in August.
Instead of gaining ground, DeSantis actually did worse in the new poll, losing 3 points since August and coming in tied with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for second with 16% each. Trump and DeSantis had almost evenly split among independents, but now Trump leads DeSantis among independents 33% to 12%.
“He’s emphasized he was going to go to every county in Iowa, he spent a ton of money in Iowa, he sent most of his staff to Iowa, and he’s going backwards in Iowa,” said Mac Stipanovich, a Tallahassee consultant and former anti-Trump Republican-turned-Democrat. “It’s almost imponderable that someone could begin with such high name recognition, such high hopes, and so much money and just perform so badly.”
Haley has gained 10 points since August, leading the DeSantis campaign to see her as their biggest rival. The Boston Globe reported that the super PAC backing DeSantis, Never Back Down, is now targeting Haley more than Trump.
“He was going to be everybody’s second choice,” Stipanovich said of DeSantis. “Should Trump falter, he was going to be the guy. And it looks like, no, should Trump falter, Nikki Haley may be the gal.”
Turning up heat on Trump
After months of holding his fire on Trump, DeSantis had started to become more critical this summer. And this week, the Florida governor has turned up the heat.
The DeSantis War Room on X, formerly Twitter, launched a “Trump accident tracker” to mock Trump’s verbal miscues, claiming the 77-year-old lacks the “stamina” to be president.
In an appearance Monday on a podcast hosted by Patrick Bet-David, DeSantis said he would have won the governor’s race in 2018 even without Trump’s help, despite a huge turnaround in the polls after Trump endorsed him on social media.
DeSantis noted he won reelection four years later by a much larger margin even after Trump “attacked me three days before the election.”
“There’s no reason you should have been out there taking potshots at me or anybody in Florida,” he said of Trump. “And of course, he’s trashed Florida repeatedly. … [But] he’s not held accountable for anything. There’s a strain of people [for whom] he can go out and say whatever he wants, and somehow, that’s fine.”
He also said his most famous campaign ad from 2018, in which he repeated Trump slogans and quotes while reading to his children, was only done “to get as much free media as possible.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told Politico that DeSantis was trying to “rewrite history” with his comments and that DeSantis “needs to check himself into a mental institution.”
On Tuesday, DeSantis told conservative host Hugh Hewitt that he didn’t think Trump could beat President Joe Biden.
“I think he energizes the Democrats more than anybody,” DeSantis said. “You could have Jack Kennedy come back and show up, and he wouldn’t energize the Democrats as much as Trump does.”
The DeSantis campaign did not return a request for further comment.
‘Booed in your home state’
With his campaign in the shape it is, political analysts were stumped at what DeSantis should do at the summit to try to boost his chances.
J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said DeSantis has to weigh whether he wants to increase his attacks on Trump in a venue likely full of Trump supporters.
“Just in terms of the optics [of possibly] getting booed in your home state,” Coleman said.
In addition, the candidates won’t be on stage at the same time on Saturday, instead making appearances throughout the day. Trump is scheduled to be the final speaker, hours after DeSantis, so he will likely have the last word.
Coleman said Trump, who has repeatedly belittled DeSantis for months, would have no problem firing back at DeSantis by getting personal.
“If pokes the bear with Trump, it seems like Trump does have ammunition to hit back,” he said. “So I would say that’s a risk for sure.”
Stipanovich agreed that there was no real benefit of going after Trump before a Florida audience.
“I don’t think he helps himself by continually demonstrating his weakness in Florida,” Stipanovich said, citing Republicans such as state Rep. Randy Fine and state Sen. Joe Gruters becoming vocal critics of the governor.
“Legislators are finally finding enough courage to do it,” Stipanovich said. “And I think he ought to be careful about demonstrating how not popular he is with the Republican base.”
Joilly said DeSantis and other candidates will soon have to make the same decision former Vice President Mike Pence had to make when he suspended his campaign last week.
“What does his exit look like?” Jolly said. “… DeSantis and Haley don’t have a pathway that they can create to overtake [Trump]. I think DeSantis will feel that in the room at the summit. But I think he feels it in most rooms these days.”
Stipanovich succinctly summed up DeSantis’ dilemma.
“The question is, what can DeSantis do on the stage in Florida to begin to turn things around?” Stipanovich said. “The answer is nothing. There’s nothing he can do.”
