The Florida governor looks to be well positioned to head into a hypothetical presidential primary in 2024. But past Republican darlings rose just as fast — only to fall quickly.
-
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have “>10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
Give this articleGive this articleGive this article
In polls, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida consistently rates as the second choice of Republican voters, behind former President Donald Trump but well ahead of any putative rivals.
In March 2015, the Republican National Committee held a donor retreat in Boca Raton, Fla. The belle of the ball was a Republican governor with a penchant for owning the libs, delighting Fox News and playing bare-knuckle politics.
One speaker, a New York real estate mogul widely seen as an unserious blowhard, drew eye rolls among those present as he groused about how the R.N.C. should have held the event at Mar-a-Lago, his private club just down the road.
The governor, who was polling well in Iowa, was running for president on a simple platform: Your enemies are my enemies, too. Almost universally, pundits speculated that he would be the one to beat in a G.O.P. primary that would be dominated by cultural resentment and anger over the current president’s policies.
Well, that governor, short on cash and charisma, flamed out months before any 2016 primaries were even held. His name was Scott Walker. And the real estate mogul who bored the crowd was, of course, Donald Trump.
American politics is no longer as predictable as it once was. Each day seems to violate one bit of received wisdom or another. But Walker’s rise and fall nevertheless offers a cautionary tale for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the current favorite to be the G.O.P. nominee in 2024.*
“There are a lot of folks who have buzz right now,” said Bob Vander Plaats, president of The Family Leader, a social conservative organization in Iowa. “Will they have buzz a year from now?”
Vander Plaats, who has met DeSantis and said he was well regarded within Iowa Republican political circles, added, “I would rather be peaking at this stage versus not peaking at all.”
Charlie Sykes, a conservative former radio host in Wisconsin who now works at The Bulwark, a website that has become a refuge for anti-Trump Republicans, said that despite his image as a fighter, Walker in person was “quite genial.” In his memoirs, Walker said he rejected Sykes’s advice to be more of a political pugilist because it just wasn’t his style.
The fundamental question for DeSantis — a more combative person in private as well as in public — Sykes said, was, “How does that personality scale up? How will that wear?”
*Key caveat: in a hypothetical world where Trump doesn’t run.
The DeSantis buzz
On paper, DeSantis has a lot going for him.
The State of the 2022 Midterm Elections
With the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.
- The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.
- A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.
- Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.
- Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.
He has amassed a campaign hoard worthy of Smaug, the dragon in “The Hobbit.” A stocky former college baseball player and Navy judge, he projects the sort of strength that plays well in Republican politics. And he emerged from the pandemic bolstered, on the right at least, by the perception that he navigated the coronavirus relatively successfully in defiance of experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci.
In polls, DeSantis consistently rates as the second choice of Republican voters, behind Trump but well ahead of any putative rivals. And in focus groups, voters often describe him as “Trump without the baggage,” according to Sarah Longwell, a G.O.P. strategist who opposes Trump.
Like Walker, though, DeSantis risks peaking too early. Walker’s operation made a strategic error early on by parking much of its cash in a 527 committee, a tax-exempt organization that was barred from certain campaign activities. When the money dried up in the summer of 2015, his official campaign had trouble paying for the extensive apparatus it had built in anticipation of better fund-raising success.
The early infatuation of Republican voters (and pundits!) with shiny objects is a timeworn tradition, too. Remember Marco Rubio, the “Republican savior”? Rand Paul, “the most interesting man in politics”? Rick Perry, the hot stuff of the early 2012 hustings? And it remains to be seen whether DeSantis, a wooden speaker with a reputation for burning through his staff, has the personal skills to go the distance.
In interviews, Republican strategists and donors said that DeSantis looked to be in a strong position for 2024. His home in Florida gives him access to a deep-pocketed donor community that Walker lacked, several noted. He’s won allies in the political influencer community on the right. And his ability to appeal to both the Trump and Mitch McConnell wings of the party affords him room for maneuver in a Republican Party divided between two mutually hostile camps.
But everyone I interviewed emphasized that anything could happen. Several mentioned that they expected Trump to avoid announcing a re-election run as long as possible — freezing the potential G.O.P. field in place and, possibly, crippling any nascent campaign organizations they hope to build.
That could spell trouble for DeSantis, despite his fund-raising prowess, since he currently lacks the sort of national political operation necessary to win a presidential nomination. Under campaign finance rules, DeSantis won’t be able to reallocate much of his 2022 hoard to any presidential campaign, either.
“One big difference is Trump,” said Mike DuHaime, a former political adviser to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who noted that the large G.O.P. field in 2016 was an important factor in that primary.
But if Trump doesn’t run, he said, “I think a question for DeSantis is whether there will be other people in the same governors’ lane or ideological lane,” which could split the vote among similar candidates.
DeSantis might also find, as Walker did before him, that being a governor has advantages and disadvantages. Just because donors gave to his re-election campaign does not mean they would necessarily finance a presidential run, for instance. And his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Ian will be scrutinized carefully for any signs of mismanagement or callousness.
But on the positive side of the ledger, “being governor allowed him to strike a different path,” DuHaime said. “It gets you out of being a knee-jerk parrot for Trump, like many senators had to do.”
ImageGov. Chris Christie with President Barack Obama in New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
The Christie precedent
For DeSantis’s confidants — and, by most accounts, his wife, Casey, is his closest political adviser — the more salient cautionary tale is that of Christie.
The former New Jersey governor decided not to run in 2012, when he was at the peak of his popularity. He waited instead until 2016, when he ran into a buzz saw named Trump, and has long regretted it.
“You have a moment,” Casey DeSantis has told associates, according to my colleague Matt Flegenheimer. And the DeSantises apparently believe that moment is now.
Christie is making noises about running again in 2024. He told a reporter this weekend, “I don’t care who else runs. If I decide I want to run, I’m running.”
But his criticism of Trump could be fatal. Trump remains popular among Republican base voters: In the most recent New York Times/Siena poll, 53 percent of those who voted for him in 2020 said they had a “very favorable” opinion of him, and 36 percent said their opinion of him was “somewhat favorable.”
When Christie recently defended the Justice Department’s search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump fired back by posting a mocking photo.
One key lesson DeSantis seems to have learned from Christie’s defenestration: Don’t embrace a Democratic president, metaphorically or otherwise.
Photos of Christie warmly welcoming President Barack Obama when the two met after Hurricane Sandy devastated the New Jersey coastline in 2012 were weaponized against him four years later — with a handshake morphing into a “hug” that helped doom him in the 2016 G.O.P. primary.
When DeSantis met President Biden last week after Hurricane Ian wrecked much of the west coast of Florida, their body language was rather different — professional, but hardly warm.
“Mr. President, welcome to Florida,” DeSantis said as he handed over the lectern at their joint news conference. “We appreciate working together across various levels of government, and the floor is yours.”
If Biden had any inclination to embrace his potential rival, he betrayed none of that in his remarks.
“We have very different political philosophies, but we’ve worked hand in glove,” Biden said.
And when the president praised the governor’s recovery efforts as “pretty remarkable so far,” DeSantis offered only a polite smile.
Image
What to read
-
House Republicans have only a dozen members of color, but they are fielding a slate of 67 Black, Latino, Asian or Native American candidates in November, by the party’s count. Jonathan Weisman spoke to many of them.
-
In the two parties’ efforts to control Congress, New York has become surprisingly competitive. Nicholas Fandos writes about the districts that are in play.
-
Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, has drawn attention to the Jewish religion of his opponent, Josh Shapiro. Katie Glueck examines the alarm among Jewish voters.
-
The idea of sending migrants to left-leaning areas of the U.S. circulated in conservative circles for years. Maggie Haberman and Michael C. Bender look back at the traction it gained under Donald Trump and the path to Republican governors’ putting it into practice.
-
With less than a month until Election Day, candidates are meeting for debates. Alyce McFadden breaks down what has taken place so far and how to watch the debates to come.
Image
Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — Blake
Read past editions of the newsletter here.
If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.
Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected].
Image
Source: nytimes.com
