The rightwing Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, will officially begin his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next week, it was widely reported on Thursday.
According to Reuters, DeSantis, 44, is expected to file Federal Election Commission paperwork declaring his candidacy next Thursday, 25 May, to coincide with a donor meeting in Miami, with a more formal launch the following week.
The invitation for the 25 May event stated that donors would be put to “work”, a source told Reuters. The Wall Street Journal said DeSantis donors were beginning “a fundraising blitz”. CNN said 100 hotel rooms had been reserved for the Miami event. The New York Times said DeSantis was likely to release a video accompanying his entry to the race.
CNN and ABC cited Republican sources as saying a formal announcement would follow in Dunedin, Florida, the governor’s home town. CNN also said a source “cautioned that the planning remains a moving target and DeSantis is known to surprise even his closest allies with last-minute changes”. ABC said the governor’s plans were “in flux”.
DeSantis did not comment.
A run has been long expected, particularly since DeSantis won a landslide victory over his Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, in his re-election campaign last year.
DeSantis is a clear second in Republican primary polling, though he has fallen far behind the frontrunner, the former president Donald Trump. On Thursday, the RealClearPolitics polling average put Trump more than 36 points ahead.
Trump faces unprecedented legal jeopardy but has eagerly capitalised on it.
In separate cases in New York, the former president pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal counts related to a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels and was found liable, and fined $5m, for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll.
Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, including inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, are the subject of state and federal investigations. The US Department of Justice is investigating his retention of classified material. The attorney general of New York launched a civil lawsuit over his business practices.
Trump has stepped up attacks on DeSantis but the rest of the Republican field continues to lag far behind.
Declared candidates include the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas. Tim Scott, a South Carolina senator, is expected to announce next week. Mike Pence, a former Indiana governor and Trump’s vice-president, is reported to be close to announcing.
In a detailed report about DeSantis’s preparations, the New York Times recently said: “In six short months from November to May, Mr DeSantis’s 2024 run has faltered before it has even begun.
“Allies have abandoned him. Tales of his icy interpersonal touch have spread. Donors have groused. And a legislative session in Tallahassee designed to burnish his conservative credentials has instead coincided with a drop in the polls.”
On Thursday, Reuters said DeSantis’s insistence on staying out of the race until the Florida legislature completed its spring session rattled some donors who wanted him to start firing back at Trump.
Nonetheless, DeSantis and his advisers hoped to use the Florida session as a springboard to an announcement. In turn, Florida Republicans gave the governor a string of political victories.
They expanded a state school voucher program, prohibited the use of public money in sustainable investing, scrapped diversity programs at public universities, allowed for the permitless carry of concealed weapons and banned almost all abortions.
On Wednesday, DeSantis signed a slate of bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights.
“We need to let our kids just be kids,” DeSantis said at the signing, at a Christian school in Tampa. “What we’ve said in Florida is we are going to remain a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy.”
In response, Joe Saunders, senior political director of Equality Florida, an advocacy group, told reporters DeSantis sees freedom “as a campaign slogan … the nation should be on high alert, because, today, we are all Floridians”.
Democrats think such actions – also including a high-profile fight with Disney over its opposition to his policies on the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues – could place DeSantis too far right of the mainstream to beat Joe Biden in the general election.
Even Trump has suggested so, telling the Messenger this week “many people within the pro-life movement feel [the Florida abortion ban] was too harsh”.
DeSantis has also made high-profile missteps, including on foreign policy, for example telling Fox News the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a “territorial dispute” – a position from which he swiftly retreated.
But in general election polling, DeSantis and Biden are in a near dead heat. The RCP average gives DeSantis the lead, by half a point.
The governor also has powerful help. According to the New York Times, he is “likely to start with more money in an outside group than any Republican primary candidate in history”.
DeSantis, the paper said, “has more than $80m expected to be transferred from his state account to his Super Pac, Never Back Down, which has also raised more than $30m, in addition to having tens of millions more in donor commitments”.
Never Back Down, which can raise unlimited funds, has been hiring staff in early voting states and running TV ads.
The Journal reported that on Thursday the Super Pac was due to host a call for potential supporters and donors. An invitation read: “All solicitations of funds in connection with this event are by Never Back Down … and not by Governor Ron DeSantis.”
Nonetheless, DeSantis was due to join the call.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
