As the battle for who will win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination barrels through the summer, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is hoping that his wife Casey DeSantis will help him win back disaffected suburban female voters and that his relative youthfulness and energy will be enough to break former President Donald Trump‘s hold over the GOP.
DeSantis has become more forthright in his criticisms of Trump, the 2024 Republican front-runner now that he is a candidate. But Trump has not taken this lightly and has repeatedly lobbied his own attacks against DeSantis. Allies of the two lawmakers have ratcheted barbs on the other campaign through social media, ad buys, and opposition research emails to reporters.
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Yet, DeSantis will have to work hard to overcome Trump’s lead and convince Republican primary voters, especially those in first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, that not only is he a better nominee than Trump but he can also defeat President Joe Biden to reclaim the White House.
“There are three essential attributes in a successful primary run: money, message, and me (the candidate),” veteran strategist Frank Luntz told the Washington Examiner via email. “There’s no doubt Ron DeSantis was embarrassed by the worst executed campaign launch in modern presidential history. There is also no doubt that in the 72 hours that followed, DeSantis was a fundraising Juggernaut.”
Luntz is referencing DeSantis’s Twitter Spaces campaign launch with billionaire Elon Musk and moderator and venture capitalist David Sacks, which began with technical glitches leading to critical headlines. DeSantis allies brushed off the glitches, boasting that the campaign raised $1 million in its first hour and raised $8.2 million within the first 24 hours of launching.
“Skeptics have doubted the governor’s retail appeal. DeSantis has a pretty strong record to run on. The question is whether he can sway voters face-to-face, which is required in Iowa and New Hampshire,” Luntz added.
DeSantis immediately set forth on the “Our Great American Comeback” tour, which took him to 12 cities and towns in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — the early nominating states — following his presidential campaign launch last month. It’s a sign of how winning in those states will blunt Trump’s dominance and augment DeSantis’s claim that he should become the GOP’s next standard-bearer.
At 44 years old, DeSantis will likely make his youthfulness and the energy it affords as part of his argument that he is the better man for the nomination. DeSantis is decades younger than both Trump, 76, and Biden, 80, and voters have already indicated they are not eager to see a rematch of Trump vs. Biden in 2024.
If DeSantis were elected, he would be the third-youngest president in the nation’s history behind Theodore Roosevelt, who was 42, and John F. Kennedy, who was 43. A source close to DeSantis indicates he will likely use the phrase “energy in the executive,” a reference to Alexander Hamilton, who referenced the phrase as “a leading character in the definition of good government” in Federalist 70, more on the campaign trail.
In a radio interview on Friday, DeSantis referenced Biden’s lack of energy after a voter asked him about Biden tripping and falling during a graduation ceremony on Thursday.
“Well, isn’t it kind of just symbolic about the state of the country? You know, you have a president who lacks energy who’s stumped, stumbling around,” DeSantis said. “And unfortunately, you see an incident like that. But, you know, I’m running for president because we need to change all that. And we need an energetic executive. We need somebody that’s going to get in there on day one and spit nails and really take Washington by storm. Washington, D.C., has been imposing its will on us for so long. It’s about time we, the people, impose our will on it.”
DeSantis is also banking on his wife and chief confidant, Casey DeSantis, to help win over female voters, a crucial bloc that has defected from the Republican Party under Trump’s leadership and in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned last June. A Politico profile was more critical of Casey DeSantis’s political benefit.
But a source close to the campaign points to Casey DeSantis’s efforts signing up “1 Million Mamas” in Florida for the governor’s last election and her work launching four initiatives, Hope Florida, Resiliency Florida initiative, “The Facts. Your Future.” campaign, and the Hope for Healing Florida initiative, under the DeSantis administration as part of her appeal. Another appeal to women: Casey DeSantis is a young mother of three children and a breast cancer survivor. She brings a more compassionate persona to DeSantis, who has faced criticism for his retail politics. She also secured $100 million in recurring cancer research and care through the fiscal 2023.
“Ron DeSantis will bring the kind of energy in the White House that the American people deserve, as exemplified by this week stopping in 12 different cities in just four days,” said Bryan Griffin, DeSantis’s campaign press secretary, in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “His energy combined with First Lady Casey DeSantis, a young mother who has spearheaded multiple initiatives to improve health care and provide treatment to those suffering from addiction, makes two secret weapons no other candidate has.”
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Still, Republicans, including DeSantis, will need to overcome women’s unhappiness over the raging abortion debate in state legislatures, and DeSantis’s six-week abortion ban will be a factor that he will have to deal with on the campaign trail. Other 2024 hopefuls have noted the abortion debate doesn’t have national consensus and that a federal abortion ban, which evangelicals champion, is unlikely to move through Congress.
DeSantis also consistently trails Trump in polls, but as he continues to barnstorm the early-nominating states, he could overcome the deficit and gain momentum through the summer.
