Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has had a tumultuous campaign in his battle to take on former President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination.
The Florida governor originally appeared to be the strongest candidate to challenge Trump as a principled conservative without the ex-president’s legal baggage. But 2023 proved that taking on Trump isn’t quite as easy as some Republicans were hoping after his loss in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden and despite the 91 criminal indictments the former president faces across four cases.
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DeSantis’s campaign has been plagued by multiple setbacks throughout 2023, but it has also seen some wins as the Florida governor seeks to dethrone Trump as the front-runner of the Republican primary. Here are the top three moments that have defined DeSantis’s campaign.
A botched campaign launch
In hindsight, DeSantis’s campaign woes first started the moment he announced he was running for the nomination in late May. The disastrous moment did not take place at a rally but when DeSantis joined Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk and DeSantis backer David Sacks, an unconventional approach that did not pay off. The event, an audio-only livestream, suffered from several technical difficulties throughout the event.
The Twitter Space shut down soon after the initial launch, with more than 400,000 users unable to hear DeSantis. A second livestream was started when the governor could finally be heard. “Congrats on breaking the internet there,” Sacks told DeSantis.
Trump allies seized on the technical difficulties to mock DeSantis, as did Biden’s campaign.
“This link works,” Biden posted on X (the social media website once called Twitter) with a link to his fundraising page.
DeSantis campaign resets
During the summer, DeSantis’s campaign began the first of a series of campaign “resets” that were meant to shake up his campaign amid falling poll numbers and donor skittishness.
The campaign nixed roughly a dozen staffers in mid-July before letting go of more staffers later that month, bringing the total to 38 staffers who were relieved of their duties — almost a third of the campaign. Reports from the New York Times and Rolling Stone suggested the highly influential family of Rupert Murdoch, who owns conservative-leaning outlets such as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, was souring on DeSantis.
In early August, DeSantis replaced campaign manager Generra Peck with his gubernatorial chief of staff, James Uthmeier. Peck remained as a chief strategist.
Meanwhile, Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting DeSantis, began to shed staff this fall as DeSantis continued to lose ground against Trump. The group, which once bragged over a $200 million war chest, fired its CEO Kristin Davison in early December, less than nine days after she took over for former CEO Chris Jankowski. Two other officials, Erin Perrine, the former communications director for the group, and Matthew Palmisano, its former director of operations, were also fired in the shake-up.
Adam Laxalt, a former Republican senatorial candidate who lost to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) in 2022, resigned as chairman of the group the same week that Davison departed.
Jeff Roe, a chief strategist for Never Back Down, resigned from the super PAC in mid-December after a Washington Post story included comments from Scott Wagner, the PAC’s chairman, that key allies of Roe’s firm Axiom had been fired over “mismanagement and conduct issues.”
“I cannot in good conscience stay affiliated with Never Back Down given the statements in the Washington Post today,” Roe wrote in a social media post announcing his resignation.
I can’t believe it ended this way. I’m so proud to have worked alongside these men and women at NBD 24/7 the past nine months to save the country. Good luck the next 28 days and a wake up. I’m so sorry I can’t be there with you. pic.twitter.com/Rh4oQQ1tAE
— Jeff Roe (@jeffroe) December 17, 2023
Nevertheless, a bright spot for DeSantis’s campaign came when he received the endorsement of Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA), a coveted endorsement in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. The endorsement from Reynolds, which came on Nov. 6, helped bolster support for DeSantis.
A debate against Newsom helps reinvigorate DeSantis’s campaign
Ahead of the fourth GOP primary debate this year, DeSantis found time for a one-on-one matchup against Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). The debate was moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity in Alpharetta, Georgia, a key swing state in the 2024 race. It was a gambit that successfully paid off and prepared the Florida governor for the final primary debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
DeSantis spent the majority of his debate contrasting his leadership with Newsom’s, particularly emphasizing the numerous Californians who have fled to Florida, including Newsom’s father-in-law.
“You almost have to try to mess California up,” DeSantis said. “They actually, at one point, ran out of U-Hauls in the state of California because so many people were leaving!”
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Newsom, at one point, shot back that neither he nor DeSantis would be the 2024 nominees. “There are profound differences tonight, and I look forward to engaging them. But there’s one thing in closing, that we have in common, is neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024,” Newsom said.
The debate would help DeSantis aggressively take on former Ambassador to United Nations Nikki Haley during the fourth GOP primary debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in early December. It would be the best debate performance from the Florida governor in 2023.
