Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was once a darling for conservatives who wanted an alternative 2024 candidate to former President Donald Trump.
But in just two months of launching a presidential campaign, DeSantis is facing a harsh new reality where some donors are skeptical he has the stamina to last, prominent conservative voices appear to be turning on him, and national polls show him still significantly behind Trump, the undisputed front-runner to become the GOP’s next standard-bearer.
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DeSantis launched his presidential campaign in May with a botched Twitter Spaces event that led to harsh headlines that were then followed by reports that he needed to increase his retail politicking skills. Now two reports from the New York Times and Rolling Stone this week suggest DeSantis may be losing support from the highly influential Rupert Murdoch family, which owns conservative-leaning outlets such as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.
And another CNBC report that donors such as billionaire Citadel CEO Ken Griffin continue to “evaluate the field” is raising questions about DeSantis’s 2024 viability. But whether this is just a rough patch or the beginning of a death knell for DeSantis remains to be seen, especially given the first GOP nominating race in Iowa isn’t until January of next year.
Gregg Keller, a Republican consultant based in Missouri who is unaffiliated with any campaign, said the GOP primary campaign is comparable to the NCAA basketball tournament brackets. “In this particular instance, there are two brackets. There’s the Donald Trump bracket, which he, by definition, has already won,” Keller said. “The other bracket is the non-Trump candidate. And there are a handful of candidates who are going to have to duke it out in that semifinal for the opportunity to take on Trump in the final.”
Competitive presidential primaries are generally expensive, hard-fought, and come with unexpected developments. Trump faced 16 other candidates to claim the GOP mantle in 2016. But on his third presidential campaign, Trump’s team is moving in a competent manner that is helping thwart DeSantis’s presidential ambitions. “DeSantis is not dead, but he needs to write the ship fairly quickly,” Keller added.
The governor’s campaign and allies have pushed back against the reports arguing that this is a smear tactic from the “Washington elites” and not the actual will of Republican voters.
“The media is caught up in phony palace intrigue because they fear Ron DeSantis and are desperate to take him down. For the sake of the American people, it’s too bad serious reporting consistently takes a back seat to tabloid-style agenda-pushing,” said DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Similarly, Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting DeSantis, claimed that the governor is the only candidate who could block President Joe Biden‘s reelection bid.
“With six months still until the first caucus, Governor DeSantis is better positioned than any other candidate to go the distance, secure the Republican nomination, and send Joe Biden back to his basement,” said the group’s spokeswoman Jess Szymanski in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Never Back Down has organized the largest nationwide political movement ever seen in presidential politics with over 690,000 doors knocked across the country and over 7,000 Iowans already secured to caucus for the Governor, as well as $150 million raised between NBD and the campaign to elect DeSantis as our next President.”
The super PAC’s multimillion-dollar war chest is targeting Republican voters in four early nominating states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada — where DeSantis will need a strong showing in order to build a campaign narrative that he can credibly wrestle the nomination away from Trump.
“We are light years ahead of every other political operation, including Trump, and nobody else will be able to keep up,” Szymanski continued. “Much to the dismay of the Washington elite and political pundits, the movement behind Governor DeSantis is catching fire and will carry him to victory in the early primary states.”
Jason Roe, a Republican strategist who worked on Sen. Mitt Romney‘s (R-UT) and Sen. Marco Rubio‘s (R-FL) presidential campaigns, said the first Republican National Committee debate on Aug. 23 in Milwaukee will give DeSantis another chance to show voters his strengths compared to Trump.
“He has to remind people of how effective he has been governing in Florida. I think he has to remind everyone that he has had historic victories in Florida,” Roe said on what DeSantis should do at the debate. “Our Republican majority is there because of the map that he imposed on the Florida legislature that netted out five seats.”
“Donald Trump since getting elected in 2016 cost us the House and the Senate and the presidency. And, you know, we’ve been trying to claw back from all the losses that came after his election,” he added.
Despite the onslaught of negative media headlines, DeSantis is Trump’s closest 2024 rival, no other competitive has consistently come in second place as DeSantis has. And the governor’s fundraising prowess can’t be ignored. His campaign raised $20 million in the first six weeks of launching, while Never Back Down raised $130 million since it launched in March. Trump, in contrast, raised $35 million during the second fundraising quarter, almost twice the money he raised in the first quarter, despite his mounting legal problems.
Yet DeSantis’s struggles may open the door to more Republicans joining the already large 2024 GOP field. Another popular governor, Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), who flipped Virginia’s governor’s mansion red in 2021, could jump into the ever-growing primary race if DeSantis can’t turn around his campaign narrative. “I think what Glenn Younkin is doing is pretty brilliant,” Keller said. “He is all but running for president although he hasn’t announced that he’s running for president. … He’s not taking all the slings and arrows from the Trump campaign.”
Jessica Colon, a Republican consultant who worked on former Pennslyvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum’s 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns, said peaks and valleys are par the course for a presidential campaign but that anything can happen. “One day in a campaign in a presidential race can turn everything around,” Colon said. “You might be going through a tough moment, but then you break out in a debate and it’s a whole new ballgame.”
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The first RNC debate will likely make or break some campaigns and “is going to be a real test for the candidates who can make it on the stage, who can survive on the stage and who can become a breakout star and possibly even redefine our candidacy through the course of that one debate,” she added.
“Depending upon these debate performances, is where the campaigns will discover if they’re going to have the oxygen to continue to move forward. And you might see some candidates decide that seeking the presidency now is not the best option for them,” Colon said. “And you will see some candidates galvanize on that and use that type of void to propel their campaigns forward.”
