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      Casey DeSantis Makes Solo Appearance in Iowa, Connecting With Moms and Promoting ‘Parents’ Rights’

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis’s wife, Casey DeSantis, held her first solo campaign event in Iowa, connecting with fellow moms and casting her husband as a champion of the “parents’ rights” movement. She was there to woo the conservative moms of Iowa. So Casey DeSantis, the wife of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, wasted no time in talking about her three young children — and how badly she wanted to leave them home.“It’s funny, somebody outside by the snowball machine was asking, ‘Did you bring your kids with you?’” she said, sitting on a small stage on Thursday in suburban Des Moines for her first solo appearance in her husband’s presidential campaign. Her answer was unequivocal: “No.”The last time she had the brilliant idea of doing a campaign event with one of her small children, she told the crowd, was at an event for her husband’s re-election campaign in Florida. For most of her remarks, Madison, then 5, squirmed by her side. In the final moments, Madison tugged on her sleeve and whispered that she had to go to the bathroom, Ms. DeSantis recalled.“What you’re having, moms, is one of those out-of-body experiences. Do I need to get up? Do I need to walk her?” she said, as the audience roared. “Like, what is happening?”Widely considered to be her husband’s most important adviser, Ms. DeSantis is the “not-so-secret weapon,” the “second in command” and the “primary sounding board” of his political operation. Now, in the early weeks of his presidential campaign, she’s added yet another position to her portfolio: humanizer-in-chief.Deploying a spouse to try to soften a prickly political image is a tried-and-true tactic of presidential politics. In 2007, Michelle Obama charmed Democratic primary voters with an everywoman pitch devised to ground her husband’s unusual life story. Four years later, Ann Romney toured Iowa and New Hampshire, offering “the other side of Mitt” — a caring, empathic family man who did not fit the caricature of the heartless corporate raider drawn by his rivals. And in the final days of the 2016 campaign, Melania Trump made a rare campaign appearance in the Philadelphia suburbs to counter her husband’s coarse image with female voters.But rarely does this strategy appear quite so early in the primary campaign, a reflection both of Mr. DeSantis’s struggles to connect with voters and the central role his wife has long played in his political career.During her husband’s first congressional race, Ms. DeSantis, then a local news reporter, crisscrossed neighborhoods in their northeastern Florida district on an electric scooter, knocking on doors and making his case. Years later, when he ran for governor, she narrated his most attention-grabbing campaign ad, a 2018 spot in which he encouraged their then-toddler to “build the wall” with large cardboard blocks. Her role expanded along with his: After he won, she secured a prime office in the governor’s Capitol suite, participated in personnel interviews as he hired staff for his new administration and shared the podium at hurricane briefings — some of the most high-profile gubernatorial appearances in storm-prone Florida.In recent weeks, she has joined her husband in embracing the quirky traditions of the early-state primary circuit, praising Iowa’s gas-station pizza and making headlines for sporting a black leather jacket emblazoned with an unofficial campaign slogan “Where Woke Goes to Die” at an annual motorcycle-themed Republican fund-raiser in Des Moines.Her high-profile role has created a war of conflicting spin, as supporters and detractors offer their assessment of the couple’s professional partnership. She’s his greatest asset. Or, depending on who’s opining, maybe his greatest liability. She’s the antidote to his much-documented struggles to connect. Or a virus infecting his insular campaign, encouraging her husband’s distrust of those outside his tight-knit political orbit.Yet for Mr. DeSantis, the hope is simply that his wife can offer a way to secure the holy grail of presidential campaigns: relatability.That message wasn’t subtle on Thursday in Johnston, Iowa, where Ms. DeSantis appeared alongside the state’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, for a question-and-answer session. “How in the world do you do it?” gushed the governor, herself a mother of three daughters and a grandmother to 11 grandchildren.“It’s a little bit of organized chaos. I’m not going to lie,” said Ms. DeSantis, before launching into a series of stories about her three young children — Madison, Mason and Mamie — and their adventures in the governor’s mansion.Then, it was down to business. Ms. DeSantis had come to officially roll out “Mamas for DeSantis,” a national version of the statewide group she started during her husband’s re-election bid in 2022. In her remarks, Ms. DeSantis attempted to position him as an avatar for the conservative anger at school administrators and school boards that exploded during the pandemic.Much of her remarks were focused on a loose social agenda often described as “parents’ rights,” a hodgepodge of a movement that includes efforts to limit how race and L.G.B.T.Q. issues are taught, attacks on transgender rights, support for publicly funded private school vouchers and opposition to vaccine mandates.“I care about protecting the innocence of my children and your children,” she told the audience on Thursday. “As long as I have breath in my body I will go out and I will fight for Ron DeSantis, not because he’s my husband — that is a part of it — but because I believe in him with every ounce of my being.”It was a message that resonated with some in the audience, which included many who were affiliated with Moms for Liberty, a group that’s emerged as a conservative powerhouse on social issues. Mr. DeSantis, said Elicha Brancheau, a member of Moms for Liberty, has been a strong champion for parents’ rights, and she said she was impressed by his wife’s commitment to the issue.“I like her a lot. She’s so smart, well-spoken,” said Ms. Brancheau, who met Ms. DeSantis before the event. “I love the dynamic of their family.”Not everyone was as convinced.Malina Cottington, a mother of five who started home-schooling her children after the pandemic, said she was seeking a candidate who would take the strongest position on preserving what she described as parental rights. She was impressed by Mr. DeSantis but liked the bolder plan of one of his Republican rivals, Vivek Ramaswamy, the multimillionaire entrepreneur and author who has pledged to abolish the Department of Education.“I think we need something that drastic,” said Ms. Cottington, 42, who lives in suburban Des Moines. “We just want to be able to make sure we can raise our kids the way we want to raise them.” More

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      Ron DeSantis Is Young, Has Little Kids and Wants America to Know It

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      At 44, he is more than three decades younger than Donald Trump and Joe Biden. He is subtly playing up that age gap, even if his right-wing views leave him out of step with many younger voters.As top-tier presidential candidates go, Ron DeSantis is something of a rarity these days. He was born after the Vietnam War, he came of age when computers were common in American homes and he still has young children of his own, rather than enough grandchildren to fill a basketball team.Mr. DeSantis would be 46 on Inauguration Day if elected, younger than every president since John F. Kennedy. It’s a fact he doesn’t state explicitly, but his campaign has set out to make sure voters get it.The Florida governor talks frequently about having the “energy and discipline” needed for the White House, keeping a busy schedule of morning and evening events. He and his wife, Casey DeSantis, often speak about their young children, who are 6, 5 and 3 and have joined their parents on the campaign trail. One of the few candidates with kids still at home, Mr. DeSantis regularly highlights his parental worries about schools and popular culture as he presses his right-wing social agenda.When he signed the state budget on Thursday, he joked that a tax break on one of parenthood’s most staggering expenses — diapers — had come too late for his family, though not by much.“I came home, and my wife’s like, ‘Why didn’t you do that in 2019 when our kids were still in diapers?’” Mr. DeSantis said.The evident goal is to draw a stark contrast with his main rivals, President Biden, 80, and former President Donald J. Trump, who just turned 77, both grandfathers who have sons (Hunter and Don Jr.) older than Mr. DeSantis. Voters have expressed concern about the age and fitness of both men, especially Mr. Biden.Roughly two-thirds of registered voters believe Mr. Biden is too old to effectively serve another four-year term as president, according to a national poll conducted by Quinnipiac University last month. Only 36 percent of registered voters said the same of Mr. Trump, suggesting that Mr. DeSantis’s relative youth might be more of an advantage in a general election than in the primaries.Still, Mr. DeSantis, 44, rarely talks directly about his age, and the party he represents — older and whiter than the country at large — has never been known for nominating young presidential candidates who ride a wave of energy to the White House, as Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did.Mr. DeSantis rarely talks directly about his age, and his views are out of step with many in his own generation. He relies on subtler means to remind voters of his relative youthfulness.David Degner for The New York TimesHis conservative views on abortion, climate change and how race is taught — among other issues — have left Mr. DeSantis out of step with many members of his own generation. Majorities of voters in his age bracket want abortion to be legal in all or most cases, think climate change is a very serious problem and support the Black Lives Matter movement. Only about one in four voters between the ages of 35 and 49 have a favorable view of Mr. DeSantis, according to the Quinnipiac poll.Mr. DeSantis also hardly seems to have a natural knack for capturing youthful enthusiasm in the way that Mr. Obama did. The last major candidate to run on a platform of generational change, the 44th president was able to count on the support of young and influential cultural icons, including hip-hop artists.Other than railing against “wokeness,” Mr. DeSantis scarcely mentions cultural influences like television shows, movies, music or social media. One of his attempts to reach younger people — announcing his campaign on Twitter with Elon Musk — went haywire when the livestream repeatedly glitched out. His rally soundtrack is a generic mix of country and classic rock, augmented by a DeSantis tribute anthem to the tune of “Sweet Home Alabama.” He doesn’t talk much about his love of golf or discuss his hobbies. His references to parenthood are often prompted by his wife.But his children — Madison, Mason and Mamie — are highly visible. Neat stacks of toys, including baseball bats and a bucket of baseballs, are usually arrayed on the front porch of the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, visitors say.No presidential family has raised children as young as the DeSantis brood since the Kennedys, prompting hopes among supporters of a conservative Camelot at the White House. The comparison is one Ms. DeSantis especially seems to be leaning into. The elegant gowns and white gloves she sometimes favors have seemed to evoke the wardrobe of Jacqueline Kennedy.The couple’s family-centric image has softened views of Mr. DeSantis among some Democrats in Florida. “I don’t like him as a politician,” Janie Jackson, 52, a Democratic voter from Miami who runs a housekeeping business, said in an interview this past week. “But I think he’s a good father and husband.”Mr. DeSantis handed one of his daughters to wife, Casey, at a rodeo in Ponca, Okla., this month. His young family is core to his image as a presidential candidate.Thomas Beaumont/Associated PressMr. Trump, who is twice divorced and has five children with three different women, could be particularly vulnerable to such comparisons.“Engaging with his family helps humanize him,” Dave Carney, a New Hampshire-based Republican strategist, said of Mr. DeSantis. “He’s a dad. People can relate to that. It gives him credibility to talk about family issues.”But voters can sniff out shtick, Mr. Carney added. “There’s a balance,” he said. “You don’t want your kids to seem like a prop.”Younger Republicans do seem to be responding to Mr. DeSantis. A recent poll by The Economist and YouGov found that the governor received his highest level of support from Republicans and Republican leaners aged 18 to 29, although he was still trailing Mr. Trump by 39 percent to 27 percent in that group.At almost every stop on their swings through the early nominating states, Mr. DeSantis and Ms. DeSantis, who often joins her husband onstage to deliver her own remarks, mention their young family.On a recent trip to Iowa, Mr. DeSantis and his wife, 42, arrived at the state fairgrounds with their children in tow. All three were wearing DeSantis-branded shirts with a “Top Gov” logo on the back. They signed a bus belonging to a pro-DeSantis super PAC — his son did so while wearing a baseball glove — as Ms. DeSantis, sporting a black leather “Where Woke Goes to Die” jacket despite the heat, knelt down to help. Their eldest, Madison, wrote her name in red and drew a heart above it.“Did you guys write your stuff on there?” Mr. DeSantis asked, after wading through attendees while lifting up one daughter. The kids then moved on to an ice cream giveaway organized by the super PAC.“Want me to hold you?” Mr. DeSantis asked his son, Mason, before picking him up as the boy continued to eat ice cream.On the stump, Mr. DeSantis usually talks about his children to emphasize policy points, particularly on education, or to accentuate his long-running feud with Disney, which he accuses of indoctrinating children.“My wife and I just believe that kids should be able to go to school, watch cartoons, just be kids, without having some agenda shoved down their throats,” Mr. DeSantis said on a visit to New Hampshire. “So we take that very seriously, and we’ve done an awful lot to be able to support parents.”Ms. DeSantis, who has played a prominent role in her husband’s campaign, usually prompts him to open up about their children. Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis’s approach to family issues appeals specifically to conservative Republicans and has been criticized by Democrats and civil rights activists. He has signed legislation banning abortions after six weeks, outlawing gender-transition care for minors, imposing punishments on businesses that allow children to see performances like drag shows and further limiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.On the campaign trail, the DeSantises often try to temper the polarizing nature of his political persona with tales of family life.Ms. DeSantis usually coaxes her husband to open up about their kids, including his adventures taking them for fast food at a restaurant populated by inebriated college students and, in a sign of the couple’s religiosity, having them baptized with water from the Sea of Galilee in Israel.At one stop in New Hampshire, Ms. DeSantis apologized to the crowd for her raspy voice, suggesting she had strained her vocal cords in an effort to protect the furniture in the governor’s mansion from one of her daughters.“I had a very long, in-depth conversation with that 3-year-old as to why she cannot color on the dining room table with permanent markers,” she said.On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis usually talks about his children to emphasize policy points, particularly on education, and temper the polarizing nature of his political persona.Thomas Beaumont/Associated PressNow, Mr. DeSantis has competition from another youthful, if far less known, candidate from his home state: Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, 45, whose campaign announcement video this past week shows him jogging through the city and mentioning his children.Another lesser-known rival, Vivek Ramaswamy, has promoted himself as the first millennial to run for president as a Republican. Mr. Ramaswamy, 37, also has young children, sons ages 11 months and 3 years who have joined him on the trail. Campaigning with kids sometimes requires special accommodations, Mr. Ramaswamy said in a recent interview. His campaign bus, for instance, features two car seats and a diaper-changing table.At the end of an event in New Hampshire this month, he turned away from the crowd to thank his older son, Karthik, for behaving so well during his speech.“He got a bigger round of applause than I did,” Mr. Ramaswamy recounted.Shane Goldmacher More

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      5 Takeaways From Ron DeSantis’s First Campaign Trip

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      He swung back at Donald Trump. He vowed to vanquish the “woke mob” and turn the country into mega-Florida. He had normal encounters with voters that didn’t become memes.After his unusual, buzzy and ill-fated presidential debut on Twitter last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida carried out a far more traditional campaign tour this week, barnstorming Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to sell himself as the strongest Republican alternative to former President Donald J. Trump.Along the way, he drew sizable, enthusiastic crowds of DeSantis-curious voters. He held babies. He got testy with a reporter. He threw some punches at Mr. Trump. He warned of a “malignant ideology” being pressed by liberals and vowed to “impose our will” to stop it.Here are five takeaways.He won’t cower against Trump — but how hard he’ll counterattack is unclear.For months, Mr. DeSantis held his fire against Mr. Trump. Those days are clearly over.“Petty,” he labeled Mr. Trump’s taunts. “Juvenile.” The former president’s criticisms of him? “Bizarre” and “ridiculous.”But Mr. DeSantis made those remarks not from the stage, in front of Republican voters, but behind the scenes in comments to reporters, suggesting that he is not quite ready to attack Mr. Trump head-on. Instead, his most direct shots were saved for President Biden (“We’re going to take all that Biden nonsense and rip it out by the roots”). When it comes to Mr. Trump, the governor has said he is simply defending himself from a man with whom he avoided public disagreements for years.“Well, now he’s attacking me,” a seemingly aggrieved Mr. DeSantis said outside Des Moines.There are risks to bashing Mr. Trump. For some voters, part of Mr. DeSantis’s appeal has been his willingness to avoid warring with a fellow Republican.“DeSantis has Trump policies, without all the name-calling,” said Monica Schieb, an Iowa voter who supported Mr. Trump in 2016 but now plans to back Mr. DeSantis.Mr. DeSantis drew healthy crowds on the trip, as he did in Gilbert. He often sought to highlight his relative youthfulness at age 44, in contrast to Donald J. Trump and President Biden. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesA key message: He’s young and energetic and can serve two terms.Mr. DeSantis packed his schedule with three or four rallies per day, covering hundreds of miles in each state and addressing a total of more than 7,000 people, his campaign said.The events did not quite have the MAGA-Woodstock energy of Mr. Trump’s arena rallies, but they were lively and well-attended. Tightly orchestrated, too: There was no chowing of hoagies or cozying up to bikers at diners. Up-tempo country music and occasionally cheesy rock (“Chicken Fried” by the Zac Brown Band and “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor) preceded him onstage.The message behind the rigorous schedule?Turning the country into a mega-Florida takes a “disciplined, energetic president,” in his words.It’s a phrase we’re likely to hear more of, given that it takes aim at both of the major obstacles in Mr. DeSantis’s path to the White House: Mr. Trump and President Biden.At nearly every event, Mr. DeSantis, 44, used comments about his energy level as an indirect swipe at his much older opponents. Mr. Trump is 76; Mr. Biden is 80. And Mr. DeSantis regularly noted that unlike his main Republican rival, Mr. Trump, he would be able to serve two terms.The messaging allowed Mr. DeSantis to set a clear contrast with the former president without necessarily angering Mr. Trump’s loyal supporters.Two terms, the governor says, would give him more time to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices and unwind the “deep state.” (Mr. Trump responded angrily to the new line of attack, saying in Iowa on Thursday that “you don’t need eight years, you need six months,” adding, “Who the hell wants to wait eight years?”)The case Mr. DeSantis is making, however, sometimes seems to be undercut by his own delivery. Even supporters acknowledge that he is not a natural orator, and on the stump he sometimes calls himself an “energetic executive” in a neutral monotone.Mr. DeSantis kicked off the tour with an event on Tuesday at an evangelical church in Clive, Iowa. Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesHumbly, he compares himself to Churchill, fighting ‘the woke mob’ on the beaches.If Mr. DeSantis had to summarize what he believes is wrong with America in one word, his three-state tour suggests the answer might be “woke,” a term that many Republican politicians find easy to use but hard to define. The governor frequently rails against “wokeness,” which he describes as a “war on the truth,” in distinctly martial terms.At several events, Mr. DeSantis, a military veteran, seemed to borrow from Winston Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech, given to exhort the citizens of Britain in their existential struggle against Nazi Germany.“We will fight the woke in education,” Mr. DeSantis said in New Hampshire. “We will fight the woke in corporations. And we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never surrender to the woke mob.”(Mr. Trump seemed to take a shot at his rival’s use of the word, saying on Thursday, “I don’t like the term ‘woke,’ because I hear ‘woke, woke, woke.’” He added: “It’s just a term they use. Half the people can’t even define it. They don’t know what it is.”)Earlier, at his kickoff rally outside Des Moines on Tuesday night, Mr. DeSantis seemed to put the various building blocks of his stump speech together into a coherent vision, one that portrayed the United States as a nation being assaulted from the inside by unseen liberal forces bent on reshaping every aspect of American life.“They are imposing their agenda on us, via the federal government, via corporate America, via our own education system,” he said. “All for their benefit and all to our detriment.”In turn, Mr. DeSantis promised to aggressively wield the power of the presidency in order to resculpt the nation according to conservative principles, much as he says he has done in Florida, where he has often pushed the boundaries of executive office.“It does not have to be this way,” he continued in his Iowa kickoff speech. “We must choose a path that will lead to a revival of American greatness.” The line drew cheers.Mr. DeSantis on Thursday in Manchester, N.H. Apart from a few contentious exchanges with reporters, he avoided awkward moments on the trip. David Degner for The New York TimesHis interactions: Pretty normal, overall.Both detractors and supporters were watching closely for how Mr. DeSantis, who sometimes appears uncomfortable with the basics of retail politics, interacted with voters. Democrats and Trump allies have made a legion of memes out of his uncomfortable facial expressions or clumsy responses to voters in casual conversations. (An emphatic “OK!” is often his answer to learning a person’s name or a child’s age.)But apart from a pugnacious exchange or two with the news media — episodes that are, of course, cheered by the Republican base — Mr. DeSantis avoided obvious awkward moments. He tried to make himself relatable, playing up his dad credentials. He told stories about taking his family out for fast food and contending with a 3-year-old who needed to use the “little potty.”After his speeches, he worked the rope line, talked with voters, snapped pictures and signed autographs. He always reacted enthusiastically when voters told him they lived part-time in Florida. “What part?” was his standard follow-up, before discussing how badly those areas had been hit by Hurricane Ian.While this all might be a low bar, it was set, in part, by Mr. Trump’s relentless mockery of Mr. DeSantis’s personality.Frank Ehrenberger, 73, a retired engineer who attended a DeSantis event in Iowa on Wednesday, said the governor had struck him as “genuine.”Still, Mr. DeSantis may need to do more. At events in Iowa and New Hampshire on Wednesday and Thursday, he did not take audience questions from the stage, leading to some criticism. Instead, at one stop in New Hampshire, Mr. DeSantis tossed baseball caps to the crowd.The early nominating states require a set of political skills different from the one that works in Florida, where politicians rely heavily on television advertising to get their messages across.By Friday, during his visit to South Carolina, he had seemed to shift his strategy, electing to answer voters’ questions from the stage alongside his wife, Casey DeSantis.Casey DeSantis has given remarks in the middle of Mr. DeSantis’s stump speeches at events, talking about both their family life and what she casts as her husband’s ability to clean up “the swamp” in Washington.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesYou’ll be seeing a lot more of Casey DeSantis.At his events, Mr. DeSantis has paused his stump speech to invite Ms. DeSantis onto the stage to deliver her own remarks. As she speaks, he usually stands smiling behind her before returning to the lectern to close out his speech. At one stop in New Hampshire, he kissed her temple after she had finished.These intermissions — not unprecedented, but unusual as a routine at presidential campaign events — underscore the high-profile role Ms. DeSantis is expected to play her in husband’s bid, after acting as an important adviser in his political rise.If this first tour is anything to go by, she is likely to be one of the most prominent and politically active spouses of a major presidential candidate in several election cycles, perhaps since Bill Clinton in 2008.Onstage, Ms. DeSantis tells the usual marital stories meant to humanize candidates and illustrate their family life — including an oft-repeated bit about the time one of their three children wielded permanent markers to decorate the dining room table in the governor’s mansion.But she is far from light entertainment. Much of her roughly five-minute speech is meant to portray her husband, whom she often refers to as “the governor,” as an authoritative, decisive leader, one capable of cleaning up “the swamp” in Washington.“Through all of the history, all the attacks from the corporate media and the left, he never changes,” Ms. DeSantis said Thursday in New Hampshire. “He never backs down, he never cowers. He never takes the path of least resistance.”Ann Klein More

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      The Strategic Fashioning of Casey DeSantis

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      With an eye to the Kennedys, and the Trumps. Sometimes, a wardrobe is a strategy.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has finally, officially, entered the presidential race. The long-anticipated Trump-DeSantis matchup is about to hit prime time. Which means that so, too, is what Mr. DeSantis himself called in his recent book, “The Courage to Be Free,” the “Ron and Casey traveling road show,” a Camelot-meets-Mar-a-Lago by way of Disney series that is now going national. And while Mr. DeSantis may be the nominal star, it is his wife, in her supporting role, who has been making the most notable entrances.At least judging by the previews that have been playing for the past few months at most of Mr. DeSantis’s major public events, including his re-election night celebration in November 2022, his inauguration in January, his State of the State speech in March and his trip to Japan last month. Throughout, Ms. DeSantis, 42, a former television news anchor, mother of three and breast cancer survivor, has demonstrated a facility with the power of the visual statement, and the way it can tap into the national hive mind, that has been as strategic, and big picture, as that of any political spouse in modern memory.“She understands the image game and how to play it,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist who masterminded communications for the confirmation of the Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch. “How to maximize the levers of attention and the media.”Put another way, while Mr. DeSantis may be talking presidential policy, Ms. DeSantis has been making him look the part, primarily by “dressing her part,” said Kate Andersen Brower, the author of “First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies.” By using all sorts of synaptic cues to connect what we see to what we think, she triggers associations with terms like “Kennedy” and “Trump” and even “royalty” — not as odd a grouping as it may first appear, given that Kennedy was the first TV president, Trump the first reality TV president and Ms. DeSantis clearly a student of both.Ms. DeSantis with her husband at a meeting with the Japanese foreign minister in Tokyo in April, wearing an ice blue Badgley Mischka dress that looks similar to …Pool photo by Eugene Hoshiko… the ice blue dress Jacqueline Kennedy wore to meet Prime Minister Nehru in the gardens of the presidential palace in New Delhi in 1962.Getty ImagesShe has the bouncing, glowing Breck locks of Belle from “Beauty and the Beast” (the 1991 animated version) and Catherine, Princess of Wales mixed up with the full-skirted pastel wardrobe of a well-mannered debutante, some fleece and a cape or two. She’s “dressing to be either princess of the world or first lady,” said Tom Broecker, the costume designer for “Saturday Night Live” and “House of Cards,” who has made something of an art of studying and replicating the style of first ladies. “There’s so much intentionality and purpose behind everything.”To acknowledge that is not to undercut her substance — the work she has done for mental health, cancer research, hurricane relief — but to credit her with understanding a basic truth of modern campaigning. “Presidential campaigns are M.R.I.s for the soul,” said David M. Axelrod, the founder of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and a former senior adviser to Barack Obama. “Folks are not just evaluating your positions, they are evaluating you as a person.” To that end, he said, “spouses play a really important role in filling out that picture.”Picture, in this case, being the operative word.The Camelot ConnectionThough Ms. DeSantis has always been a considered dresser, a lesson from her days as a local anchor with WJXT in Jacksonville, Fla., when she and Mr. DeSantis met, she has ratcheted up her style over the past year. On election night in 2022, she wore a floor-length gold and yellow one-shoulder ruched gown that made her look as if she were on her way to a state dinner, rather than simply taking the stage in the Tampa Convention Center.It was her outfit on inauguration day in January, however, that really foreshadowed the couple’s ambitions in the public eye: a mint-green dress by Alex Perry, an Australian label, with a built-in cape flowing from the shoulders, worn with white gloves. In its color and line, it seemed to draw its lineage straight from the Kennedy era. This was only compounded by the bright pink dress Ms. DeSantis wore to her husband’s State of the State address, with a portrait neckline and more white gloves, another seeming nod to Jacqueline Kennedy, one of the most recognizable, revered and stylish first ladies in American history. Ditto the ice-blue dress she wore to accompany Mr. DeSantis to Japan, another caped style, this time with floral epaulets at the shoulders.It’s a smart move, even if it can also seem like a cliché (clichés are clichés, after all, because they are part of common parlance). As Michael LaRosa, a communications strategist who was Jill Biden’s spokesman during her husband’s 2020 primary campaign for the White House, said: “Americans love glitz, glamour and attractiveness, celebrities and TV. Casey DeSantis understands all of that.”Déjà vu dressing: (clockwise from top left) Casey DeSantis at the governor’s State of the State address in May; Jacqueline Kennedy on a boat ride in Udaipur, India, in 1962; Mrs. Kennedy at her daughter’s wedding in Hyannis Port, Mass., in 1986; Ms. DeSantis at the her husband’s inauguration in January. Clockwise from top left, Phil Sears/Associated Press; Cecil Stoughton/FK Presidential Library/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; PL Gould/Getty Images; Lynne Sladky/Associated PressBy connecting herself and her husband implicitly to the Kennedy tradition, Ms. DeSantis connects to myriad ideas rooted in the American narrative: youth and generational change (not incidental when two of the other candidates are setting records as the oldest in history), glamour and taste. Blink, and a button deep in the cerebral cortex gets pushed.Never more so than when she dons her capes and gloves, accessories from the costume department freighted with meaning, trailing whiffs of kings and queens as well as old-fashioned morality and gender roles. The clothes both act as a “disguise for how political and strategic she is,” Ms. Brower said, and support her husband’s position as a warrior for conservative values.So while Ms. DeSantis may be, as The New York Post called her, the governor’s “not-so-secret political weapon” and, according to Politico, a “superstar of a political spouse” who is “unusually important and uncommonly involved,” with her own portfolio, the broad-stroke portrait is of the classic helpmeet smiling charmingly in the background.“She has been able to use her position to showcase what they could be,” Mr. Bonjean said.According to Mr. Broecker, she is “manifesting the message.”Beyond TrumpAnd the image-making is not limited to herself. Like Catherine, Princess of Wales, Ms. DeSantis is adept at color-coordinating the couple’s young children for their public appearances, the better to present a snapshot of family unity: the two little girls wearing matching dresses and pinafores, their brother echoing their father. She and Mr. DeSantis even wore matching white rubber shrimp boots when viewing the damage after Hurricane Ian.It all makes for an implicit contrast to the current Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump, whose own children have been divided during the campaign (Ivanka staying away, Tiffany largely absent) and whose wife, Melania, has been largely absent since his announcement.Ms. DeSantis wearing a Republican red Trina Turk caped dress at a news conference with Governor DeSantis in Miami in May, 2022, which looked very much like …Joe Raedle/Getty Images… the red caped Givenchy gown Melania Trump wore when she and President Trump attended a dinner with Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles in London in 2019.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnd though Ms. DeSantis shares a certain style ethos with Ms. Trump, her clothes are more aspirational than elitist, sourced largely from the contemporary, as opposed to luxury, market, with an emphasis on brands like Ted Baker (the blue coat she wore for her husband’s first inauguration), Badgley Mischka (the caped dress and white floral pantsuit she wore in Japan) and Shoshanna (that gold and yellow ruched gown).All of which fits with the more accessible narrative the campaign is building around her — especially when combined with the zip-up athletic jackets with the Florida state flag on the breast that she tends to wear with jeans when meeting constituents on the road.Put another way, both Ms. DeSantis and Ms. Trump may have worn Republican-red caped gowns at different times, but while Ms. Trump’s was Givenchy, Ms. DeSantis’s appears to have been Trina Turk. Ms. Brower called the effect “Melania lite” — easier for most people to digest.Yet Ms. DeSantis also chose a label for her official portrait — Chiara Boni La Petite Robe — that is the unofficial uniform of the women of Trumpland, a favorite of Lara Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Kayleigh McEnany and Jeanine Pirro, thanks to its ability to play to both boss lady and the male gaze. All of which underscores her husband’s pitch that he is the palatable alternative to Trump: familiar, but less baggage.Casey DeSantis in an official portrait as Florida’s first lady, in 2019, wearing Chiara Boni La Petite Robe.Colin HackleyThe DeSantis team declined to comment on Ms. DeSantis’s role, but for those who think her image-making is simply happenstance or a fortuitous coincidence, consider the fact that in his book Mr. DeSantis notes that it was Ms. DeSantis who asked him to wear his naval “dress white uniform” for their wedding, complete with all his medals, though he had planned on wearing a tux.She also held an on-air competition, he wrote, so viewers could vote on what wedding dress she should wear. When it came time to walk down the aisle, Mr. DeSantis wrote, she looked “less like a TV anchor and more like a princess.” Together, however, they looked like nothing so much as cosplay from the triumphant finales of both “An Officer and a Gentleman” and “A Few Good Men.”In other words, from the beginning Ms. DeSantis was thinking about the images that would be captured for posterity and their public repercussions, and “I was happy to defer to my bride on that call,” Mr. DeSantis wrote. Odds are that pattern will continue.After all, when you can deploy a spouse in a primary, Mr. LaRosa said, “it’s the equivalent of having the advantage of two candidates.” You get twice the airtime and twice the eyeballs.Indeed, Mr. Bonjean said, “The team will do everything they can to get attention. And she will be a big part of that.” More

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      Casey DeSantis, Florida’s First Lady, Is the Governor’s Chief Adviser, Too

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      During a recent appearance in South Carolina, after Ron DeSantis played up his state’s economic and education policies and bashed a litany of ideological adversaries, his wife settled into an armchair next to him onstage, reflecting on her role as the first lady of Florida.“I didn’t want to be that proverbial potted plant,” Casey DeSantis said.No one — fan, skeptic or critic — would accuse her of that.Ms. DeSantis, 42, is widely seen as perhaps Mr. DeSantis’s most important adviser. In the governor’s mansion, she advised on media strategy and helped vet personnel. She has narrated some of his more attention-grabbing ads and taken on wide-ranging projects about issues like mental health, disaster relief and cancer, surviving a bout with it herself.Now, as Mr. DeSantis enters the presidential contest, people who know Ms. DeSantis or who have encountered her on the nascent campaign trail expect that she will play a vital role in his most important race yet, seeking to shape perceptions of the campaign, build relationships with party stakeholders and to illuminate the personal side of her hard-edged husband, who sometimes struggles to connect.“You have the first ladies that are kind of more in a supportive posture, they are not ones that are out there stumping,” said Steven Wright, the Republican chairman in Dorchester County, S.C., who encountered Ms. DeSantis during the couple’s swing through the area. “And then you have the first ladies that are similar to Casey DeSantis.”Ms. DeSantis visiting the fire department in Pine Island, Fla., during Hurricane Ian relief efforts in October. Hilary Swift for The New York TimesIn recent weeks, she has gushed over Iowa’s gas station pizza and highlighted her personal connections to South Carolina, the first-in-the-South primary state (she attended the College of Charleston, where she competed on the equestrian team).She has met with local Republican officials and offered public glimpses of family life as the mother of three children. When Mr. DeSantis spoke at a Republican dinner in Ohio last month, Ms. DeSantis joined the trip too, swinging through her hometown, Troy, Ohio, where the family met with the mayor.“She shows the human side of the governor and his personal side,” Mr. Wright said.And she and Mr. DeSantis recently hosted Bob Vander Plaats, an influential social conservative from Iowa, for lunch at the governor’s mansion.“They could free her up to go on her own to represent the governor at different campaign stops where he can’t be,” said Mr. Vander Plaats, citing her “ability to be very poised in front of a crowd.” He recalled that they dined on arugula spring salad, prosciutto-wrapped scallops with green beans and a strawberry fruit salad dessert.Mr. DeSantis met Jill Casey Black, a local news reporter at the time, at a driving range complex in Florida, he wrote in his recent book, “The Courage to Be Free.” They were married at Walt Disney World, years before Mr. DeSantis went to war with Disney. (“Casey’s family was what one might call a family of Disney enthusiasts,” he wrote.)Casey DeSantis built a career as a television personality in Florida, though that background has not stopped her from echoing Mr. DeSantis in lashing the “woke corporate media.” Ms. DeSantis with the crowd at an event for Iowa Republicans this month in Cedar Rapids.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“She’s keenly aware of public-facing events, the news cycle, optics,” said Stephen Lawson, who served as Mr. DeSantis’s spokesman during his 2018 race for governor. “So much of who he is and where he’s come from and his story centers around her, and I think she’ll continue to play a pivotal role in how that story unfolds.”“She is his primary sounding board,” he added.In that 2018 contest, she narrated an ad that highlighted Mr. DeSantis’s fealty to President Donald J. Trump by showing him encouraging his young child to “build the wall” out of blocks.Last year, she recorded an emotional direct-to-camera spot, her voice wavering as she described how her husband had helped her through cancer.She also promoted a video that cast his political rise as divinely inspired.Ms. DeSantis has also been linked to political drama, and some have questioned the scope of her portfolio in office, wondering whether she has too much influence inside the governor’s insular inner circle.“She assumes authority that she does not have,” said Mac Stipanovich, a Republican-turned-independent who served as a longtime Florida strategist and lobbyist, though he said he was sharing his impressions rather than firsthand knowledge. “From whence came this woman’s strategic political genius?”“People would always question, who is the closest person to Ron, who is somebody who can get his ear?” added Nikki Fried, now the chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party and a former agriculture commissioner who ran unsuccessfully for governor in the Democratic primary last year. The only name that ever came back, she said, “was Casey’s.”Lindsey Curnutte, a spokeswoman for the DeSantis team, did not respond to a request for comment.But Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat who worked with the DeSantises as Florida’s director of emergency management, said he had found Ms. DeSantis to be someone who was receptive to ideas and whose “door was always open.”“The first lady, who has a significant background in communications, comes into a room and really just captivates,” said Mr. Moskowitz, who is supporting President Biden’s re-election bid. There is a long history of politicians navigating the complexities of family members’ involvement in their campaigns or administrations, including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris, whose sister was a key adviser during her presidential primary campaign.In New York City, Chirlane McCray was the closest adviser to her husband, Bill de Blasio, as he ran for mayor and then during his time at City Hall, an arrangement that at times stoked controversy.In an interview, Mr. de Blasio — a Democrat who is “energetically” supporting Mr. Biden — defended the art of the political power couple, saying that “when it feels natural, it’s kind of irreplaceable.”“You need someone who understands your goals, your motivations, what you can handle, what you can’t, all that, and that’s all subsumed in a spouse under good conditions,” Mr. de Blasio said.But he acknowledged that, depending on the couple, spouse-advisers could also be “too close to the situation.”“There’s a huge tradition of spouses being very protective and defensive for their loved one in office,” he said. “Sometimes that can create a blindness or a kind of knee-jerk reaction, or a sense of vengeance that is not always productive.”“It can be a beautiful model, it can be a powerful model,” he added, “or it can really backfire.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Ron DeSantis’s Presidential Campaign Is Not Dead Yet

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      It’s never a good sign when political analysts are writing “What Went Wrong?” stories about your presidential campaign before it’s announced.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has endured more than his share of pre-mortems as the conventional wisdom has turned decisively against his imminent campaign and his standing has dropped into the teens and low 20s in recent national polls of the Republican primaries from above 30 percent in March.Despite the increasingly loud chorus of doubters the last couple of months, though, the DeSantis bid still has the makings of a strong campaign. In the weeks ahead he could well change the narrative of the 2024 Republican nomination fight from “Trump is burying DeSantis” to “He’s still kicking despite Trump doing everything he can to bury him.”He’ll be lavishly funded; his favorable ratings remain quite high among Republicans; he can draw a crowd; he’ll finally actually be in the race; and perhaps most importantly, it seems he has the correct theory of how to try to topple Trump.We’ve gotten used to the idea of DeSantis running but it’s worth remembering how audacious his campaign is. He’s not in the same position as, say, Nikki Haley, who can duck Trump as much as possible, hope that lightning strikes for her and if it doesn’t, that maybe she’ll still be in Trump’s good graces if he’s the nominee.This evasion isn’t available to DeSantis, whom Trump is already accusing of grooming teenage girls and of maybe being gay. DeSantis is signing up for the possibility of getting his reputation tarnished and his political career forever blighted. A friendly rapprochement is very unlikely at the end. If they do come to terms after a Trump victory, it will surely be humiliating to DeSantis — think of a defeated foreign king being paraded as one of the props in an ancient Roman triumph.And he’s getting in when Trump is once again making his dominant position in the party unmistakable. Earlier this year, it looked as if the 800-pound gorilla had perhaps slimmed down to 400 or 500 pounds, but now he’s clearly back at his accustomed weight.If Trump is clearly the odds-on favorite, though, it’s too early to declare him inevitable, and there is a big element of the party that is still open to someone else, at least in theory. How DeSantis campaigns will matter.At the mechanical level, he’ll need to post a big fund-raising number out of the gate, continue to roll out endorsements by state officials (he’s had impressive hauls in Iowa and New Hampshire), and win the contest for the best talent among activists and organizers while building robust organizations in the early states.None of that is easy, but, with significant backing from Republican donors, it’s doable.More fundamentally, a presidential candidate needs a personal narrative that dovetails with his political message in a way that candidates for lesser offices simply don’t. Without one, they rarely succeed. Barack Obama was a groundbreaking African American candidate for a country that needed the audacity of hope. Donald Trump was the outsider billionaire for a country that needed to be made great again.What is DeSantis? He has spent the last several months talking about his record in Florida more than about himself, which is admirable in a way — but policies don’t tell a story. At the moment, the average Republican knows little or nothing about his Yale baseball career, his military service during the war on terrorism, his wife’s fight against breast cancer or his life as a very busy father of three young children. In a recent trip through Iowa, his wife, Casey, talked in a more personal mode about their life together; there will have to be more of that.Much has been made lately of DeSantis’s standoffishness. Even if this has been exaggerated, there’s no doubt that he isn’t a Bill Clinton-style politician who feeds off people. For him, retail politics is clearly work, and he needs to do it. His team now has him staying after events, to glad-hand. He’ll have to do it wherever he goes, without showing any boredom or irritation, lest he confirm the idea that he lacks a personal touch.He’ll need to plant his feet firmly on tricky issues in a Republican primary: What does he think of the legitimacy of the 2020 election? Where he is now on entitlement reform? Perhaps his worst moment in the pre-announcement phase was his backtracking on a poorly drafted statement calling the Ukraine war “a territorial dispute,” which dismayed both G.O.P. supporters and opponents of large-scale aid to Ukraine.Then, of course, there’s the big, looming question of how to respond to Trump’s attacks. Ignoring them, as DeSantis has mostly done this spring, seems weak; responding risks playing Trump’s game. No Republican has yet figured out this conundrum, with the exception of Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia.When Trump put a bounty on Kemp’s head for the offense of defying him after the 2020 election, the governor responded deftly. He said that Trump had a beef with him, not the other way around, and when responding to Trump’s claims about the election, did it dispassionately and factually. He survived Trump’s onslaught, but had the advantage of fighting a proxy war in a primary battle on his home turf, rather than running directly against Trump himself.DeSantis would do well to study the Kemp example; while it shows it’s possible to win against Trump, it also underlines that he has to be fought with care to avoid triggering a defensive reaction from his fans. DeSantis won’t and can’t make the totalist case against Trump as unfit to serve that “Never Trump” Republicans and the press might like to hear. But so it is.Much of his anti-Trump case will be based on electability. There’s no doubt that Trump blew a winnable race in 2020 — DeSantis will need to say he really did lose — and had a large hand in the Republican Party’s disappointing midterm last year. In all likelihood, DeSantis would have a much easier time beating Biden than Trump would, based on the generational contrast alone. But there are limits to this argument. Trump is competitive with Biden in polling, and an electability message doesn’t usually move the type of self-identified “very conservative” primary voters DeSantis needs to pry from Trump.The risk to DeSantis is that his candidacy takes on the feel of an establishment front-runner — lots of donor enthusiasm, an electability message — when he’s running from behind against an insurgent populist who happens to have once been president of the United States.To counter that, DeSantis is obviously going to have to retain his hard edge on cultural issues. The continued fight against Disney, which has become a morass, may actually help him: With other candidates effectively taking the side of Disney out of principle or to score points against DeSantis, he can portray himself as the most committed warrior against woke corporations.And he needs to attack Trump from the right, both on the former president’s past record (Anthony Fauci, criminal justice reform, not building the border wall) and on current disputes. Even though it causes agita among some of his big donors, the issue of abortion is a clear opening for DeSantis. Trump is foggy, while DeSantis just signed a six-week ban. He should make maximum use of this contrast, especially in Iowa where social-conservative voters are so important.For all the talk of how DeSantis has modeled his combative political style on Trump, he’s a vastly different politician and character. His approach as a speaker and campaigner is conventional, whereas Trump is outlandish. DeSantis is highly professional, whereas even after being president of the United States for four years, Trump reeks of amateurism. All indications are that DeSantis is a dutiful family man, whereas Trump has been, at best, a playboy and a boor.It may be that Republicans decide that they still want the show that only Trump can provide. If that’s the case, DeSantis and all the other non-Trump candidates will indeed be done. But he’s not dead yet.Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      DeSantis Impresses Voters and Trolls Trump in Iowa Swing

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      The former president canceled a rally in Des Moines, citing a storm warning. The Florida governor made the most of his rival’s absence, as DeSantis allies taunted Mr. Trump.For the first time in months, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday showed the aggressive political instincts that his allies have long insisted he would demonstrate in a contest against former President Donald J. Trump.After headlining two successful political events in Iowa, Mr. DeSantis made an unscheduled stop in Des Moines — a move aimed at highlighting the fact that Mr. Trump had abruptly postponed a planned Saturday evening rally in the area because of reports of possible severe weather.Mr. Trump’s explanation for postponing the event drew skepticism from local Iowa officials and derision from DeSantis allies about the “beautiful” weather. And Mr. DeSantis — who has avoided direct conflict with Mr. Trump — essentially kicked sand in the former president’s face by coming to an area that Mr. Trump claimed to have been told was too dangerous for him to visit.After wrapping up his events on Saturday evening elsewhere in the state, Mr. DeSantis headed to Jethro’s BBQ Southside, where he and his wife, Casey DeSantis, stood on a table outside and spoke to a cheering crowd. The barbecue joint was a short drive from where Mr. Trump had planned to host his own rally.“My better half and I have been able to be all over Iowa today, but before we went back to Florida we wanted to come by and say hi to the people of Des Moines,” a grinning Mr. DeSantis said. “So thank you all for coming out. It’s a beautiful night, it’s been a great day for us.”Mr. DeSantis’s pointed pit stop was a clear rebuke to Mr. Trump, who has tried to torment the Florida governor for months, mocking him for his falling poll numbers and perceived dearth of charisma. Mr. DeSantis’s resistance to hitting back while not a declared candidate as he finished the state’s legislative session, combined with a handful of unforced errors, had allowed the former president to take control of the race for 2024 and frustrated some of Mr. DeSantis’s allies. But as he prepares to take on Mr. Trump, who has dominated every Republican he has campaigned against in the past, Mr. DeSantis moved to show he doesn’t intend to suffer the same result. “If someone’s punching you in the face, you better punch them back,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — a race in which Mr. Rubio was criticized for not fighting back enough against Mr. Trump.Mr. DeSantis has been outflanked by Mr. Trump’s team at various turns until now. Saturday was the first time Mr. DeSantis has taken advantage of an opportunity to show up Mr. Trump over a perceived misstep. Mr. DeSantis needs to string together many more days like Saturday in a campaign that will rely heavily on winning the Iowa caucus early next year. But Republican activists in the state say there is an opening with caucus-goers for someone other than Mr. Trump. And the visit Saturday, where he also traveled to Sioux Center — populated by Christian conservatives whose support he must gain — was seen as a positive development by Republicans who want to defeat Mr. Trump but have been dismayed by Mr. DeSantis’s stumbles as he steps onto the national stage.Casey DeSantis mingled with attendees at the event in Cedar Rapids on Saturday.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesDespite the unforeseen — albeit indirect — jab at Jethro’s, the governor is unlikely to criticize Mr. Trump directly until after he formally announces his campaign, according to two people familiar with his political operation. And even when he does jump into the race, which is expected to happen imminently, he will largely focus on contrasting his record with Mr. Trump’s — particularly on issues like the coronavirus pandemic — while making the case that he is the candidate better equipped to defeat President Biden in a general election. It’s a strategy that avoids relitigating Mr. Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, and one the governor is foreshadowing as he barnstorms Republican events around the country. It also positions Mr. DeSantis — who is decades younger than the 76-year-old Mr. Trump, who was recently indicted and faces the possibility of additional ones in other investigations — as interested in the future and not the past.“If we make this election about a referendum on Joe Biden and his failed policies, and we provide a positive alternative to take America in a new direction, I think Republicans will win across the board,” Mr. DeSantis said at a Saturday evening fund-raiser for the Republican Party of Iowa in Cedar Rapids. That event was shown on Fox News during time that Mr. Trump had claimed Fox News was reserving to show his rally. Mr. DeSantis’s message is already appealing to some voters, including Amy Seeger, who traveled from Milwaukee to see him speak earlier in the day at a picnic in Sioux Center.“I would vote for a shoe over Trump,” Ms. Seeger said in an interview. “It is time to move forward. Trump is very wrapped up in 2020 and playing the victim.”Mr. DeSantis also used the Iowa trip to show off the sometimes enigmatic lighter side of his personality, flipping burgers at the picnic and talking about his life as a family man with his wife at the evening fund-raiser in Cedar Rapids.At that second event, Ms. DeSantis joined her husband on stage for an interview conducted by the state Republican Party chair, Jeff Kaufmann, following remarks from the governor. Mr. DeSantis’s stump speech focuses almost exclusively on policy, leaving out the biographical details that politicians are generally expected to supply. His wife seemed to try to fill in those gaps, telling personal stories about Mr. DeSantis’s childhood in Florida, his military service, and their three young children.“When he gets home, don’t think for a second that he goes and goes right to bed,” she said. “I hand three small kids over to him and I go to bed.”The moment resonated with the crowd. “There was a tender side to him, a family side, that I didn’t really have an appreciation for,” said Bob Carlson, a physician from Muscatine who was in the audience.Mr. DeSantis greeted supporters after making an unscheduled visit to the Jethro’s BBQ Southside in Des Moines on Saturday.Bryon Houlgrave/USA Today NetworkAs Mr. DeSantis builds toward an announcement, he is beginning to show other signs of political strength in ways that matter beyond having financial backing. The outing to Iowa — where he is expected to make a return visit fairly soon — came as a super PAC backing his all-but-official presidential campaign announced support from 37 state lawmakers. Local elected officials tend to pay less attention to national polls than members of Congress, who have been slower to endorse the governor.In contrast, Mr. Trump — who had scheduled a rally to try to blot out Mr. DeSantis’s visit by appearing on the same day — abruptly called off his own event in the middle of the afternoon, citing a tornado watch.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said the Iowa event was sold out but that “due to the National Weather Service’s Tornado Watch in effect in Polk and surrounding counties, we were unfortunately forced to postpone the event. We will be there at the first available date.”But although it rained heavily at points, it was sunny mid-afternoon and no severe weather such as a tornado materialized, which raised questions among Iowans about whether Mr. Trump was concerned he would fail to draw the crowd he had anticipated. The lack of dangerous storms was noted by local activists who want to see the party move on from Mr. Trump. “We’re all outside on a nice night,” the influential podcast host Steve Deace wrote on Twitter from the scene of Mr. DeSantis’s barbecue victory lap. “Pretty big crowd too. No severe weather in sight. Planes landing and taking off as scheduled.”While Mr. Trump canceled his Iowa appearance, he later called in to an event hosted by the ReAwaken America Tour, a Christian nationalist, far-right movement led by Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the QAnon promoter and national security adviser who Mr. Trump forced out early in his term. The group, which helps promote conspiracy theories, paid one of Mr. Trump’s clubs in Florida, the Doral, to hold it there. Mr. DeSantis’s hope for a win in the Iowa caucuses involves uniting a careful coalition of social conservatives who backed candidates like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee in 2016, along with suburban moderates who went for Mr. Rubio.Yet Mr. DeSantis may be poised to pick up support from enough corners of the state to increase his support. For instance, the influential social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats has met with the governor and has praised him publicly.Mr. DeSantis’s day was also punctuated with appearances with Senator Joni Ernst and Gov. Kim Reynolds, both Iowa Republicans. Those visits don’t necessarily mean endorsements from those officials are in the offing, but they do indicate a willingness in the state to support someone other than Mr. Trump and less concern than once existed about retribution from the former president.Bret Hayworth contributed reporting from Sioux Center, Iowa. More

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      Why Ron DeSantis Is Limping to the Starting Line

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      In November, Representative Byron Donalds scored a coveted speaking slot: introducing Gov. Ron DeSantis after a landslide re-election turned the swing state of Florida deep red. Standing onstage at a victory party for Mr. DeSantis in Tampa, Mr. Donalds praised him as “America’s governor.”By April, Mr. Donalds was seated at a table next to another Florida Republican: Donald J. Trump. He was at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club, for a multicourse dinner with nine other House Republicans from Florida who had spurned their home-state governor to endorse the former president’s 2024 run. Red “Make America Great Again” hats decorated their place settings.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.His decision not to begin any formal campaign until after the Florida legislative session — allowing him to cast himself as a conservative fighter who not only won but actually delivered results — instead opened a window of opportunity for Mr. Trump. The former president filled the void with personal attacks and a heavy rotation of negative advertising from his super PAC. Combined with Mr. DeSantis’s cocooning himself in the right-wing media and the Trump team’s success in outflanking him on several fronts, the governor has lost control of his own national narrative.Now, as Mr. DeSantis’s Tallahassee-based operation pivots to formally entering the race in the coming weeks, Mr. DeSantis and his allies are retooling for a more aggressive new phase. His staunchest supporters privately acknowledge that Mr. DeSantis needs to recalibrate a political outreach and media strategy that has allowed Mr. Trump to define the race.Mr. DeSantis, on his book tour in Iowa in March, has made a series of missteps that has cost him the support of some donors and lawmakers.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesChanges are afoot. Mr. DeSantis is building a strong Iowa operation. He has been calling influential Republicans in Iowa and is rolling out a large slate of state legislator endorsements before a weekend trip there.“He definitely indicated that if he gets in, he will work exceptionally hard — nothing will be below him,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Iowa evangelical leader whom Mr. DeSantis hosted recently for a meal at the governor’s mansion. “I think he understands — I emphasized that Iowa’s a retail politics state. You need to shake people’s hands, look them in the eye.”Still, his central electability pitch — MAGA without the mess — has been badly bruised.A book tour that was supposed to have introduced him nationally was marked by missteps that deepened concerns about his readiness for the biggest stage. He took positions on two pressing domestic and international issues — abortion and the war in Ukraine — that generated second-guessing and backlash among some allies and would-be benefactors. And the moves he has made to appeal to the hard right — escalating his feud with Disney, signing a strict six-week abortion ban — have unnerved donors who are worried about the general election.“I was in the DeSantis camp,” said Andrew Sabin, a metals magnate who gave the Florida governor $50,000 last year. “But he started opening his mouth, and a lot of big donors said his views aren’t tolerable.” He specifically cited abortion and Ukraine.Three billionaires who are major G.O.P. donors — Steve Wynn, Ike Perlmutter and Thomas Peterffy, a past DeSantis patron who has publicly soured on him — dined recently with Vivek Ramaswamy, the 37-year-old long-shot Republican.The early months of 2023 have exposed a central challenge for Mr. DeSantis. He needs to stitch together an unwieldy ideological coalition bridging both anti-Trump Republicans and Trump supporters who are nonetheless considering turning the page on the past president. Hitting and hugging Mr. Trump at the same time has bedeviled rivals since Senator Ted Cruz tried to do so in 2016, and Cruz veterans fill key roles in Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and his super PAC.Allies of both leading Republicans caution that it’s still early.“The Murdochs encapsulated him in a bubble and force-fed him to a conservative audience,” Steve Bannon said of Mr. DeSantis. Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis has more than $100 million stored across various pro-DeSantis accounts. He is building good will with state party leaders by headlining fund-raisers. He remains, in public polls, the most serious rival to Mr. Trump. And a supportive super PAC called Never Back Down is staffing up across more than a dozen states, has already spent more than $10 million on television ads and has peppered early states with direct mail.DeSantis supporters point to polls showing that the governor remains well-liked by Republicans.“The hits aren’t working,” said Kristin Davison, chief operating officer of Never Back Down. “His favorability has not changed.”The DeSantis team declined to provide any comment for this story.Six months ago, as Republicans were blaming Mr. Trump for the party’s 2022 midterm underperformance, a high-flying Mr. DeSantis made the traditional political decision that he would govern first in early 2023 and campaign second. The rush of conservative priorities that Mr. DeSantis has turned into law in Florida — on guns, immigration, abortion, school vouchers, opposing China — is expected to form the backbone of his campaign.“Now, the governor can create momentum by spending time publicly touting his endless accomplishments, calling supporters and engaging more publicly to push back on the false narratives his potential competitors are spewing,” said Nick Iarossi, a lobbyist in Florida and a longtime DeSantis supporter.A turning point this year for Mr. Trump was his Manhattan indictment, which Mr. DeSantis waffled on responding to as the G.O.P. base rallied to Mr. Trump’s defense.Yet Mr. Trump’s compounding legal woes and potential future indictments could eventually have the opposite effect — exhausting voters, which is Mr. DeSantis’s hope. A jury found Mr. Trump liable this week for sexual abuse and defamation. “When you get all these lawsuits coming at you,” Mr. DeSantis told one associate recently, “it’s just distracting.”‘So God Made a Fighter’The DeSantis team seemed to buy its own hype.Days before the midterms, the DeSantis campaign released a video that cast his rise as ordained from on high. “On the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a protector,’” a narrator booms as Mr. DeSantis appears onscreen. “So God made a fighter.”For years, the self-confident Mr. DeSantis has relied on his own instincts and the counsel of his wife, Casey DeSantis, who posted the video, to set his political course, according to past aides and current associates. Mr. DeSantis has been written off before — in his first primary for governor; in his first congressional primary — so both he and his wife have gotten used to tuning out critics.Today, allies say there are few people around who are willing to tell Mr. DeSantis he’s wrong, even in private.In late 2022, the thinking was that a decision on 2024 could wait, and Mr. Trump’s midterm hangover would linger. Mr. DeSantis published a book — “I was, you know, kind of a hot commodity,” he said of writing it — that became a best seller. And Mr. DeSantis was on the offensive, tweaking Mr. Trump with a February donor retreat held only miles from Mar-a-Lago that drew Trump contributors.But it has been Mr. Trump who has consistently one-upped Mr. DeSantis, flying into East Palestine, Ohio, after the rail disaster there, appearing with a larger crowd in the same Iowa city days after Mr. DeSantis and swiping Florida congressional endorsements while Mr. DeSantis traveled to Washington.Representative Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, praised Mr. DeSantis as “America’s governor” in November 2022. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesOne Trump endorser, Representative Lance Gooden of Texas, backed the former president only hours after attending a private group meeting with Mr. DeSantis. In an interview, Mr. Gooden likened Mr. DeSantis’s decision to delay entry until after a legislative session to the example of a past Texas governor, Rick Perry, who did the same a decade ago — and quickly flamed out of the 2012 contest.“He’s relied, much like Rick Perry did, on local political experts in his home state that just don’t know the presidential landscape,” Mr. Gooden said.‘I’ve Said Enough’Mr. Trump has insinuated, without providing evidence, that Mr. DeSantis had inappropriate relationships with high school girls during a stint as a teacher in the early 2000s and that Mr. DeSantis might be gay.His team has portrayed Mr. DeSantis as socially inept, and a pro-Trump super PAC distributed a video — dubbed “Pudding Fingers” — playing off news articles about Mr. DeSantis’s uncouth eating habits.People close to Mr. Trump have been blunt in private discussions that the hits so far are just the start: If Mr. DeSantis ever appears poised to capture the nomination, the former president will do everything he can to tear him apart.Beginning with his response to the coronavirus outbreak, Mr. DeSantis’s national rise has been uniquely powered by his ability to make the right enemies: in academia, in the news media, among liberal activists and at the White House. But Mr. Trump’s broadsides and some of his own actions have put Mr. DeSantis crosswise with the right for the first time. It has been a disorienting experience for the DeSantis operation, according to allies.For the past three years, Mr. DeSantis has had the luxury of completely shutting out what he pejoratively brands the “national regime media” or “the corporate media” — though Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation does not, in his view, count as corporate media.This strategy served Mr. DeSantis well in Florida. But avoiding sit-down interviews with skeptical journalists has left him out of practice as he prepares for the most intense scrutiny of his career.“The Murdochs encapsulated him in a bubble and force-fed him to a conservative audience,” said Steve Bannon, a former strategist for Mr. Trump. “He hasn’t been scuffed up. He hasn’t had these questions put in his grill.”Even in friendly settings, Mr. DeSantis has stumbled. In a February interview with The Times of London, a Murdoch property, Mr. DeSantis cut off questions after the reporter pushed him on how he thought President Biden should handle Ukraine differently.The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was so irked by Mr. DeSantis’s evasion that he sent a detailed questionnaire to potential Republican presidential candidates to force them to state their positions on the war, according to two people familiar with his decision.In a written response, Mr. DeSantis characterized Russia’s invasion as a “territorial dispute.” Republican hawks and some of Mr. DeSantis’s top donors were troubled. In public, the governor soon cleaned up his statement to say Russia had not had “a right” to invade. In private, Mr. DeSantis tried to calm supporters by noting that his statement had not taken a position against aid to Ukraine.While Mr. DeSantis has stuck to his preferred way of doing things, Mr. Trump has given seats on his plane to reporters from outlets that have published harsh stories about him. And despite having spent years calling CNN “fake news,” Mr. Trump recently attended a CNN town hall.DeSantis allies said the governor would begrudgingly bring in some of the “national regime media.” Some early proof: The governor’s tight-lipped team invited a Politico columnist to Tallahassee and supplied rare on-the-record access.‘I Was a Bit Insulted’Not long after Mr. DeSantis had won in a landslide last fall, the incoming freshman Representative Cory Mills, a Florida Republican, called the governor’s team to try to thank him for his support. Mr. Mills had campaigned on the eve of the election with Casey DeSantis and had appeared with the governor, too. “I called to show my appreciation and never even got a call back,” Mr. Mills said in an interview. “To be honest with you, I was a bit insulted by it.”The lack of relationships on Capitol Hill became a public headache in April when Mr. Trump rolled out what eventually became 10 Florida House Republican endorsements during Mr. DeSantis’s trip to Washington.People who have recently met with Mr. DeSantis say he has been far more engaged, a sign that he is responding to criticism.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesDonors who contributed to Mr. DeSantis’s previous campaigns tell stories of meetings in which the candidate looked as though he would rather be anywhere else. He fiddled with his phone, showed no interest in his hosts and escaped as quickly as possible. But people who have recently met with Mr. DeSantis say he has been far more engaged. At recent Wisconsin and New Hampshire events, the governor worked the room as he had rarely done before.The governor and his team have had internal conversations acknowledging the need for him to engage in the basics of political courtship: small talk, handshaking, eye contact.For his part, Mr. Trump recently relished hosting the Florida House Republicans who had endorsed him.On one side of him was Mr. Mills. On the other was Mr. Donalds, who had introduced Mr. DeSantis on election night and who had been in Mr. DeSantis’s orbit since helping with debate prep during Mr. DeSantis’s 2018 run for governor.Mr. Donalds declined an interview. But footage of those private debate-prep sessions, first reported by ABC News, show Mr. DeSantis trying to formulate an answer to a question that will define his imminent 2024 run: how to disagree with Mr. Trump without appearing disagreeable to Trump supporters.“I have to frame it in a way,” Mr. DeSantis said then, “that’s not going to piss off all his voters.” More