DeSantis, Ron

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      ‘Ron DeSantis Has a Jekyll and Hyde Persona’: Our Columnists and Writers Weigh In on His Candidacy

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      As Republican candidates enter the race for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who announced his bid for the Republican nomination on Wednesday.How seriously should we take DeSantis’s candidacy?David Brooks Ron DeSantis was overvalued before and is undervalued now. He’s still the most likely Trump alternative since he spans the Trump wing and the non-Trump wing of the G.O.P. But it would take a Trump implosion to bring that about. I doubt there’s much that DeSantis can affirmatively do to control his destiny.Jane Coaston Extremely seriously, and very literally.Michelle Cottle About as seriously as a moderate to severe case of shingles. (So, pretty seriously.)Ross Douthat More seriously than any Republican not named Donald Trump. Ron DeSantis’s weaknesses are obvious — social awkwardness above all — but even as his poll numbers have sagged, nobody else has emerged from the pack, so he enters the race as the only currently plausible vehicle for Republicans who don’t want Trump again.David French We should take Ron DeSantis more seriously than many pundits are taking him today. He has struggled under Trump’s relentless attacks, but he’s still the clear second choice, and it’s way too soon to write his campaign obituary.Michelle Goldberg A few months ago, before it became clear what a problem his personality was going to be, I thought he was very likely to be the nominee. And until 6 p.m. on Wednesday, I still thought he had a decent chance. But I don’t see how he comes back from that catastrophic Twitter launch.Rosie Gray Ron DeSantis is the only Republican so far who appears capable of putting up a credible challenge to Trump. But his pre-candidacy wasn’t very encouraging: He’s allowed Trump to define him as a personality-challenged weirdo, and he has made politically questionable moves like the six-week abortion ban he signed.Katherine Mangu-Ward He’s a capable governor of a successful state who has a good eye for the places where political points can be scored — mostly authoritarian culture-war stunts — even if he isn’t always successful in scoring them.Daniel McCarthy He would be the front-runner any other year. He’ll be the front-runner next year if luck somehow takes Donald Trump out of the race. As things stand, Ron DeSantis is as serious a contender as anyone can be with the ex-president in the contest.Bret Stephens Three months ago, I would have predicted that Ron DeSantis, fresh from his resounding re-election as governor of Florida, would beat Trump for the Republican primary. Now he looks more like the Ted Cruz of this electoral cycle, pompous, mean and not nearly as clever as he seems to think he is.What matters most about him as a presidential candidate?Brooks DeSantis’s problem is that he can’t attack Trump, because a chunk of his support is Trumpy, and he can’t not attack Trump, since Trump is flailing him day after day. I can’t think of a candidate who took down a front-runner without criticizing him. DeSantis has locked himself into a posture in which he looks weak and passive.Coaston He is in almost every way a standard presidential candidate — a successful governor of a big state looking to make the leap to the national stage. That seeming regularity makes him seem familiar, recognizable, even.Cottle He has long been the great hope of the many, many G.O.P. donors and other establishment Republicans desperate to move the party beyond Trump. As the cliché goes, they see him as Trump without the crazy — a hard-edge conservative who has a gift for playing to the base’s angriest, most revanchist tendencies, but isn’t totally cracked.Douthat Almost alone among the not-Trump candidates, he has a case that could actually work in a G.O.P. reshaped by Trumpism: namely, that he fought the key battles of the Trump era more effectively than Trump himself. That line may not be enough to win, but it’s an argument that actually meets Republican voters where they are (or, for now, seem to be).French He’s the most likely Trump alternative in the race.Goldberg Anti-wokeness is the glue that holds the modern right together, uniting people who disagree about economic organization or foreign policy. DeSantis — who loves to say that Florida is “where woke goes to die” — is betting that anti-wokeness alone can power a presidential campaign. But his official campaign launch suggests he’s so far down the right-wing rabbit hole that he can’t communicate with people who aren’t upset about college “accreditation cartels” and central bank digital currency.Gray DeSantis will be the clearest test so far of how much Trumpism without Trump actually appeals to voters.Mangu-Ward In his self-published 2011 book, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers,” DeSantis writes like a normie Tea Party conservative — and much of his record in Florida is consistent with those values, including during Covid. But the title, which tweaks Barack Obama’s memoir “Dreams From My Father,” is a hint that the Trumpish troll always lurked within and may be all voters care about. The DeSantis candidacy is a test of whether there is anything left of the G.O.P. besides Trump fandom.McCarthy DeSantis is as much an heir as a rival to Donald Trump. He shows that the changes Trump began as president will continue and expand under the next generation of Republican leadership, with DeSantis at the fore. The governor is an immigration restrictionist and foreign-policy restrainer, and he’s more systematic than the former president about attacking progressivism’s institutional strongholds in corporate America and higher education.Stephens DeSantis is running on the theory that the best way to beat Trump is to imitate Trump, minus the obvious personal flaws. But it might just be that the only way to beat Trump is to run directly against him, pointing out all the ways in which he has been a disaster for the Republican Party and a disgrace to the United States.What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about his vision for America?Brooks The modern G.O.P., like many populist-right parties across the West, is built around one idea: The progressive highly educated elites are awful; they serve themselves and condescend to everyone else. DeSantis has embraced this belief up and down the line. It’s served him well politically.Coaston His belief is that America is a problem that must be solved by the state. He appears to believe that American companies, business and schools and universities were once deserving of freedoms and liberties, but some of them have failed (in his view) and thus must be punished until they submit to the will of the state. He reminds me of Woodrow Wilson, another former governor who believed in the perfectibility of the American populace by government intervention.Cottle He is just as thirsty for power as Trump — and just as cruel and cynical in pursuit of that power. Fly planeloads of hapless migrants to Martha’s Vineyard? Make schoolteachers pawns in his culture war? Use the levers of government to threaten and punish those who say things he dislikes? It’s all good in DeSantis Land.Douthat The thing that many of his critics loathe most about DeSantis, his willingness to use political power directly in cultural conflicts, represents the necessary future of conservatism in America. The line between politics and culture is always a blur, and a faction that enjoys political power without cultural power can’t serve its own voters without looking for ways to bring those scales closer to a balance. There are good and bad ways to do this, and DeSantis’s record is a mixture of the two. But the project is a normal part of democratic politics, not an authoritarian betrayal.French Ron DeSantis has a Jekyll and Hyde persona. He ran an extremely MAGA first campaign for governor, then governed as Dr. Jekyll, squarely in the mainstream. Even his divisive Covid response was within the norms for Southern G.O.P. governors. Then, as his star rose, Mr. Hyde emerged, and he began to run to the edge of the populist G.O.P., trying to outflank Trump from the right. He’s now the avatar of a more authoritarian G.O.P., eager to wield state power against his ideological enemies, often in unconstitutional ways.Goldberg Of all the Republican candidates, DeSantis is the most likely to govern as an American Viktor Orban. He’s been relentless and at times very effective — despite his Twitter broadcast — in using the power of the state to persecute his enemies and impose his ideology. A DeSantis presidency would represent a more orderly and disciplined kind of authoritarianism than we saw with Trump.Gray His vision is an America under dire threat from woke teachers and Disney. He’s spent his time as governor engaged in emotionally charged culture war by wielding executive power (with the assistance of a Republican legislature) — something that raised his profile in the conservative media.Mangu-Ward I love to hear a candidate talk about freedom, but it would be more exciting if I believed his policies would match his rhetoric. For someone who has a lot to say about liberty, DeSantis has scored his biggest hits on the national scene in an overwhelmingly authoritarian vein — book bans, border walls, punishments for dissenting speech, restriction on the internal policies of private companies and more.McCarthy Higher education wields enormous power over American life but is disproportionately the preserve of a single party and political outlook. DeSantis has a vision of greater representation, balance and intellectual diversity in Florida’s universities, and ultimately America’s. It’s an inspiring vision that shifts conflict from the culture, and all its private and public institutions, back to the realm of ideas. More ideological balance on campus means more of it in corporations, journalism and beyond.Stephens DeSantis minus the bombast could be an effective governor, never more so than when he defied conventional wisdom and required public schools to open up in the fall of 2020. But his pinched view of democracy — whether it comes to freedom of speech, abortion rights or the importance of supporting Ukraine in its struggle for survival — disqualifies him as someone I could think of supporting.Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a DeSantis candidacy?Brooks Many fast-growing states are run by Republicans — Texas, Georgia, Florida. Florida has passed New York in population, Miami is becoming a tech hub, times are good. We need a president who has a record of economic success, not someone a majority of Americans have already rejected.Coaston He’s like Donald Trump with a plan.Cottle He knows how to use theatrical jerkiness to own the libs without getting himself impeached.Douthat He turned Florida a deeper shade of red. He knows how to govern. And nobody else who can win is walking through that door. If you don’t get behind DeSantis, you might just as well get behind Trump.French He’s the only man who can unite every faction of the party. Anti-Trump or Trump-weary Republicans will vote for him despite their reservations, and he’s the only other candidate who can pry the populists from Trump’s grasp.Goldberg He’s still the leading Trump alternative, so if you don’t want an insurrectionist loser who’s fighting off felony charges, it’s time to coalesce.Gray DeSantis has shown that he can run a state that attracts hundreds of thousands of new residents while at the same time making the MAGA right feel good.Mangu-Ward DeSantis: He’s Trump, but also not Trump!McCarthy Ron DeSantis is sternly disciplined, strikes an irresistible contrast between his own youth (44) and vigor and Joe Biden’s age (80) and infirmity, and can serve two consecutive terms if elected. He’s primed to be the most transformative president since Franklin Roosevelt.Stephens To beat a creep takes an even bigger creep.Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) is a staff writer in Opinion.Michelle Cottle (@mcottle) is a member of the Times’s editorial board.Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) is a political reporter.David Brooks, Ross Douthat, David French, Michelle Goldberg and Bret Stephens are Times columnists.Katherine Mangu-Ward (@kmanguward) is the editor in chief of Reason magazine.Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative 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 Plans Traditional Campaign Stops After Twitter Launch Glitches

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      Mr. DeSantis will make stops next week in the three early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.After his digital kickoff went haywire on Twitter on Wednesday night, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is going analog next week for a more traditional rollout of his presidential campaign.Mr. DeSantis will make stops in the three early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina from May 30 to June 2. The four-day swing through 12 cities and towns is being billed as the first leg of his “Great American Comeback Tour.” Mr. DeSantis will start with his first in-person event of the campaign in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday. He will remain in Iowa on Wednesday, before traveling to New Hampshire on Thursday and South Carolina on Friday.“Our campaign is committed to putting in the time to win these early nominating states,” Generra Peck, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, said in a statement.Campaigning in a presidential primary is, especially early on, usually a grip-and-grin affair. Mr. DeSantis’s decision to declare his candidacy on a livestream Twitter Spaces event with Elon Musk, the platform’s billionaire owner, came with the possibility of spectacular failure — which seemed to take place, at least for the first 25 minutes, when the event was plagued by technical glitches, causing dead air and an intermittently hot mic.Mr. DeSantis’s return to a more traditional form of electioneering will still be closely watched. He has had some awkward moments on the trail so far while meeting voters, leading to mockery from the front-runner for the Republican Party’s nomination, former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. DeSantis is expected to need a victory in Iowa and a close second-place finish in New Hampshire, at least, to show that he can challenge Mr. Trump.On Thursday night, Mr. DeSantis is scheduled to attend a reception with major donors at a hotel in Miami. The donors are helping Mr. DeSantis begin his fund-raising efforts. Despite the Twitter mishap, his campaign said it had raised more than $1 million online during its first hour on Wednesday night. More

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      Takeaways From DeSantis’s 2024 Presidential Campaign Announcement

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      Ron DeSantis’s long-awaited entry into the presidential race showed some potential strengths as a Republican candidate, after an embarrassing start on Twitter.Gov. Ron DeSantis’s glitch-marred 2024 debut on Twitter was a distraction from his chance to introduce himself as a serious contender to take down former President Donald J. Trump.It was a much-anticipated moment for the Florida governor to reset after months of dropping in the polls, which made the painfully long 20-plus minutes of Twitter malfunctions on Wednesday all the more disappointing to his supporters.For all the media attention on the Twitter fiasco — The Daily Mail called it a “De-Saster,” Fox News a “disaster,” Breitbart News a “DeBacle” — Mr. DeSantis appeared to have later found his footing on the familiar airwaves of Fox News, a far more traditional — and effective — method of communicating to primary voters. His appearance there was the first time he laid out a substantive case for what a DeSantis presidency would look like.Still, it was a night his team will be eager to put behind them. And it highlighted both Mr. DeSantis’s potential successes as a candidate but also a campaign still in formation while under intense attack from a dominant Republican front-runner.Here are five takeaways.Taking risks on Twitter backfiredThe delay was longer than some campaign speeches.For more than 25 minutes, Twitter wheezed its way through what was supposed to be Mr. DeSantis’s grand pronouncement of his 2024 candidacy, with long stretches of dead air interrupted by frantic, hot-mic whispers before they pulled the plug and started over.The Twitter event with Mr. DeSantis was marred with technical problems.A presidential announcement is the rarest of opportunities. It is the moment when a candidate can draw all the attention on themselves and their vision. Instead, Mr. DeSantis wound up almost as a panelist at his own event, sharing the stage with Elon Musk and his malfunctioning social media site.Fox News splashed a banner headline at one point on its website that featured a photo of Mr. Musk, not Mr. DeSantis. “Want to actually see and hear Ron DeSantis?” read a breaking news alert on the site. “Tune into Fox News.”Even in advance, the decision to begin his campaign on Twitter with Mr. Musk had drawn mixed reviews. It was innovative, yes — and a chance to reach a potentially huge online audience — but also risky.The technically challenged result obscured some of Mr. DeSantis’s arguments and sapped him of listeners, and potential donors. For a candidate whose promise of competence is a Republican selling point, it was a less-than-ideal first impression. Mr. Trump and President Biden both mercilessly mocked the rollout.His aides said Mr. DeSantis raised $1 million in an hour, a sizable amount but far from the record for a presidential kickoff, with no details provided about how many individual donors gave small contributions.Mr. Biden’s campaign was also seeking to capitalize, buying Google ads to show Biden donation pages for those searching for terms like “DeSantis disaster” and “DeSantis flop.”The candidate of educated right-wingersThe DeSantis-Musk discussion on Twitter meandered at times into a cul-de-sac of the hyper-online right.Here’s a taste of the highly ideological and wonky message Mr. DeSantis delivered:“Some of the problems with the university and the ideological capture — that didn’t happen by accident, you can trace back all the way to the accreditation cartels. Well, guess what? To become an accreditor, how do you do that? You’ve got to get approved by the U.S. Department of Education. So we’re going to be doing alternative accreditation regimes, where instead of saying, ‘You will only get accredited if you do D.E.I.,’ you’ll have an accreditor that will say, ‘We will not accredit you if you do D.E.I. We want a colorblind, merit-based accreditation scheme.’”Got that?Mr. DeSantis repeatedly highlighted his blue-collar roots. But it has long been apparent that Mr. DeSantis polls far better with college-educated Republicans than he does among those without college degrees, who heavily favor Mr. Trump and form the increasingly rural base of the Republican Party. And his campaign introduction night showed why that’s the case.The conversation detoured into complaints about the horrors of The Atlantic and Vanity Fair magazines and into discussions of cryptocurrencies and the “de-banking” of “politically incorrect businesses.”Later, in his interview with Trey Gowdy on Fox News, Mr. DeSantis rattled off acronyms — E.S.G. (environmental, social and governance investing) was just one — without explaining what they meant.DeSantis is ready to hit Trump — only indirectlyMr. DeSantis made clear on Wednesday that he isn’t ready to punch Mr. Trump just yet — but he signaled where he will aim once he does.He went through the Twitter Spaces session and two interviews — one on Fox News with Mr. Gowdy, his former congressional colleague, and the other on the radio with the conservative host Mark Levin — without uttering Mr. Trump’s name. (The word did come out of his mouth at one point: “Merit must trump identity politics,” the governor said during the Twitter talk.)But his attempts to contrast himself with the nameless one were frequent.Mr. DeSantis said on Fox News that the reason Mr. Biden could get away with “shenanigans” at the southern border was because there was not a wall protecting it. Mr. DeSantis promised to build a “full” border wall — a rebuke of Mr. Trump’s failure to keep that signature promise.Mr. DeSantis also previewed a line of attack he is expected to center his campaign on: Mr. Trump’s personnel appointments in his first term.Mr. DeSantis blamed the Federal Reserve — Jerome H. Powell was appointed the Fed’s chair by Mr. Trump — for exacerbating inflation. And he said he would fire the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, another Trump appointee, on Day 1. (A Trump senior adviser noted on Twitter that Mr. DeSantis publicly supported the selection of Mr. Wray at the time.)Mr. DeSantis took his sharpest jab at Mr. Trump in the final moments with Mr. Gowdy, who asked him what he would say to candidates who may not want to debate. It was a clear reference to Mr. Trump, who has indicated he may skip one or both of the first Republican debates. Mr. DeSantis, who needs the debates in order to have breakout moments, called for people to take part.“Nobody’s entitled to anything in this world, Trey, you’ve got to earn it,” Mr. DeSantis said. “That’s exactly what I intend to do, and I think the debates are a big part of the process.”DeSantis made his case as a China hawkMr. DeSantis previewed his hard-line policies to confront the Chinese Communist Party. While Mr. Trump focused largely on the trade dimension of the relationship during his presidency, Mr. DeSantis talked more broadly about countering China’s influence, territorial expansion and military ambitions.On Fox News, Mr. DeSantis called for a 21st-century version of the Monroe Doctrine to counter China’s influence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine, laid out by President James Monroe in the early 19th century, warned European countries not to colonize America’s backyard.Mr. DeSantis also said the U.S. needed to form stronger partnerships with India, Australia and other allies to counter Chinese expansion in the Pacific. And he called for the reshoring of critical manufacturing — saying the U.S. was too closely mingled, economically, with China.His remarks indicated that as president, Mr. DeSantis would be more comprehensively aggressive against China than Mr. Trump was in his first term. Mr. Trump spent the first three years of his presidency mostly averting his gaze from China’s military expansionism and human-rights abuses because he wanted a trade deal with Beijing. Mr. DeSantis has signaled he wants to confront China from the outset on all fronts.DeSantis plans broad use of executive powerMr. DeSantis laid the groundwork for what his allies say will be one of his most important contrasts against Mr. Trump: his skill in using power effectively.In his Twitter Spaces live chat, Mr. DeSantis talked about his extensive record of enacting conservative policies as governor in Florida. He cited his talent for using governmental power for conservative ends. He said he had studied the “different leverage points under Article 2” of the Constitution and would put that knowledge to work if elected president. On Fox News, he repeated his plans to use Article 2 to remake the government.Mr. DeSantis hinted that he would be more heavy-handed than Mr. Trump was with the federal bureaucracy. It is part of one of his core arguments: that not only will he fight harder than Mr. Trump but that he’ll deliver sweeping change where the former president fell short.In his interview on Fox News, he portrayed the F.B.I. as one of many federal agencies run amok, and said he would exert much stronger control over the entire Justice Department.He rejected the notion that presidents should view these agencies as independent and said if, as president, he learned that F.B.I. officials were colluding with tech companies — a reference to requests by government officials to Twitter to take down content viewed as harmful — then “everybody involved with that would be fired.” More

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      Trump, Biden and Others Troll DeSantis’s Twitter Announcement

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      Former President Donald J. Trump called it a “disaster,” President Biden’s campaign took a sly shot to raise a little extra cash, and low-polling Republicans tried to use Gov. Ron DeSantis’s glitchy, delayed campaign rollout to steal some attention for themselves.As technical difficulties derailed Mr. DeSantis’s attempt to make a splash by appearing in a Twitter livestream with the platform’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, much of the internet couldn’t resist poking fun — including the two leading presidential candidates and other trailing wannabes.The mix of 26 minutes of mostly dead air, followed by an intermittent celebration of Mr. Musk, made the livestream feel “a bit like an ad for Twitter,” Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump administration official who has turned sharply against Mr. Trump, wrote on Twitter. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump ally, called his governor “DeSedative.”But perhaps nobody enjoyed the stumbling start to Mr. DeSantis’s presidential bid more than his current and potentially future rivals.Mr. Trump — still shunning Twitter in favor of his Truth Social platform — called the DeSantis announcement a “catastrophe.” “His whole campaign will be a disaster,” he added. “WATCH!”On Instagram, Mr. Trump posted a satirical video of a fake Twitter Spaces event that included Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Musk, the liberal philanthropist George Soros, former Vice President Dick Cheney, the Devil and Adolf Hitler, among others. Not surprisingly, Mr. Biden’s campaign took a more understated approach: “This link works” it wrote, pointing to a site where supporters could make donations.Mr. DeSantis received support from some corners of the right-wing media universe. Ben Shapiro, the podcast host with more than five million Twitter followers, suggested the technical meltdowns were a distraction from what Mr. DeSantis was trying to say.“If you’re obsessed with the optics of the Twitter Spaces glitch, then you’re probably not going to vote DeSantis,” Mr. Shapiro wrote. “If you’re interested in political substance, DeSantis is likely your candidate.”And some of the other attention-starved, low-polling Republican White House hopefuls tried snagging some of the rubbernecking attention for themselves.Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas took a similar approach to Mr. Biden, writing — on Twitter, of course — “Just like my policies, this link works,” with a link to his donations page. And Vivek Ramaswamy accused Mr. DeSantis of sitting for softball interviews and what sounded like reading prepared remarks.“Challenge to the GOP field,” Mr. Ramaswamy wrote on Twitter. “No pre-written speeches. No teleprompters. No pre-scripted interviews. That’ll be good for authenticity, good for America. I promise to abide.” More

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      Ron DeSantis Joins 2024 Race, Hoping to Topple Trump

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      Ron DeSantis’s long-awaited official entry into the 2024 presidential campaign went haywire at its start on Wednesday during a glitch-filled livestream over Twitter.Despite the problems, Mr. DeSantis, the combative 44-year-old Republican governor of Florida who has championed conservative causes and thrown a yearslong flurry of punches at America’s left, provides Donald J. Trump the most formidable Republican rival he has faced since his ascent in 2016. His candidacy comes at a pivotal moment for the Republican Party, which must choose between aligning once more behind Mr. Trump — who lost in 2020 and continues to rage falsely about a stolen election — or uniting around a new challenger to take on President Biden.But on Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis’s official run for the White House got off to an embarrassing start as the planned livestream with Twitter’s eccentric billionaire owner, Elon Musk, was marred by technical problems and dead air. The audio cut in and out amid talk of “melting the servers,” hot mic whispering and on-the-spot troubleshooting.When, after more than 25 minutes, Mr. DeSantis finally spoke, he declared, “I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback.”The extended social media hiccup — as more than 500,000 people were waiting — was gleefully cheered on the very platform Mr. DeSantis was supposed to be commandeering for his campaign. Donald Trump Jr. wrote a single word: “#DeSaster.” Mr. Biden posted a donation button to his re-election campaign with the words, “This link works.” The audience when Mr. DeSantis did deliver his remarks was smaller than it had been during the initial minutes when no one was speaking.Despite his inauspicious start on Wednesday and having slipped well behind Mr. Trump in polls in recent months, Mr. DeSantis retains a host of strengths: a mountain of cash, a robust campaign operation and a series of conservative policy victories in Florida after a landslide re-election triumph last fall. The governor, who rose to national prominence with his restriction-averse handling of the coronavirus pandemic, argues that his “Florida Blueprint” can be a model for reshaping the United States in a starkly conservative mold, especially on social issues.“American decline is not inevitable,” Mr. DeSantis said. “It is a choice. And we should choose a new direction, a path that will lead to American revitalization.” He accused Mr. Biden of taking “his cues from the woke mob.”Mr. DeSantis did not mention Mr. Trump by name. But he did sketch out some of the contrasts he is expected to sharpen in the coming months. “We must look forward, not backwards,” he said on the Twitter Space livestream. “We need the courage to lead and we must have the strength to win.”The DeSantis campaign had invited prominent donors to Miami on Wednesday for a fund-raising event, hosting them at a conference space at the Four Seasons as the Twitter discussion was projected onto a large screen. Then they waited. And waited.“Elon’s got to staff up a little more to boost that server capacity,” said Brandon Rosner, a donor from Milwaukee. He was not discouraged. “Once we got through the original glitch there, I think people were very excited,” he said.Mr. DeSantis is confronting the daunting endeavor of toppling a former president whose belligerence and loyal base of support have discouraged most leading Republicans from making frontal attacks against him. Mr. Trump, who has a mounting list of legal troubles, clearly sees Mr. DeSantis as a political threat and has unloaded on him for months, mocking him as “Ron DeSanctimonious” and slamming his stewardship of Florida.“Trump is not as invincible as he once seemed and DeSantis is a serious contender,” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist. “There are Republican voters looking for someone who can move beyond Trump, someone who can fight the liberals but also win elections. That’s the space DeSantis is trying to inhabit.”Mr. DeSantis’s chances of capturing the nomination may depend on whether the Republican primary becomes a crowded, Trump-dominated food fight — something similar to what unfolded in 2016 — or if he can turn the contest into a two-man race. The Republican field has slowly ballooned, with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina announcing a bid this week and Vice President Mike Pence expected to join soon.To winnow the field back down, Mr. DeSantis is likely to need strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two nominating states, with anti-Trump voters coalescing around him. His advisers and allies see a victory in socially conservative Iowa as a must, and believe he needs to follow with at least a close second-place finish in more moderate New Hampshire.Mr. DeSantis has the financial ammunition to compete: He is likely to start with more money in an outside group than any Republican primary candidate in history. He has more than $80 million expected to be transferred from his state account to his super PAC, which says it has also raised $40 million, in addition to having tens of millions more in donor commitments, according to people familiar with the fund-raising.A key focus of the primary, and the general election should Mr. DeSantis make it that far, will be his record as governor. He and a pliant Florida Legislature have passed contentious laws that have excited the right and angered many Democrats, including Black and L.G.B.T.Q. people, students and abortion-rights supporters in Florida. The bills seem to reflect Mr. DeSantis’s plan to run to the right of Mr. Trump in the primary, which could leave him vulnerable with moderates and independents.In the most recent legislative session alone, Florida Republicans banned abortion after six weeks of pregnancy; expanded the use of the death penalty; allowed Floridians to carry concealed guns without a permit; restricted gender-transition care for minors; limited teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation; defunded diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public colleges; and shielded records of his own scrutinized travel from the public.Mr. DeSantis has also shown a willingness to use executive power in ways little seen before in Tallahassee, the state capital, leading some Democrats and civil rights leaders to worry that he shares Mr. Trump’s strongman style but has a greater ability to carry out that vision.He has picked a long-running fight with Disney, one of Florida’s largest employers and a canny political adversary. He removed a local prosecutor from office in what records show was a decision motivated by politics, installed his allies at a public liberal arts university in a bid to transform it into a bastion of conservative thought, said he would reject a high school Advanced Placement course on African American studies for “indoctrinating” students and had state law enforcement officers monitor holiday drag shows for lewd behavior.While his stump speech focuses on a lengthy recounting of those and other conservative policy achievements, Mr. DeSantis is expected to start talking more about his biography, with help from his wife, Casey DeSantis, a former television journalist who plays an influential role in his office and decision-making.Raised in Dunedin, a suburb of Tampa, Mr. DeSantis grew up in a working-class home. He excelled at baseball, captaining the squad at Yale University as a hard-hitting outfielder.He later enrolled at Harvard Law School, then served in the Navy as a military lawyer, deploying to Guantánamo Bay and Iraq. He worked as a federal prosecutor in Florida before winning election to Congress in 2012. He was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of anti-establishment conservatives.After three terms in Washington, he ran for Florida’s open governorship, winning the Republican primary largely thanks to an endorsement from Mr. Trump. But they fell out when Mr. DeSantis began making noises about running for president in 2024.The pandemic turned Mr. DeSantis into a Fox News fixture. He has criticized social distancing measures, masks and vaccines — tools fitfully employed by the Trump administration — and has already hinted that he will contrast his actions in Florida with Mr. Trump’s approach. In particular, Mr. DeSantis has gone after Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who led the nation’s pandemic response.But the step-up from a statewide campaign, even one as successful as Mr. DeSantis’s nearly 20-percentage-point romp, to a presidential campaign is not easy. As the initial Twitter Space floundered on Wednesday, Mr. Musk was forced to post a new link, severely reducing the audience for Mr. DeSantis’s announcement.While more than 500,000 people tuned in to the first Twitter Space, the second one had only 163,000 listeners by the time Mr. Musk and the technology entrepreneur David Sacks began interviewing the governor. The conversation quickly turned into a surprisingly dry discussion about the overreach of federal agencies, the merits of Twitter and occasionally bizarre tangents like the license plate number of Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis and joined the online conversation.Mr. DeSantis’s campaign tried to put a positive spin on the technical mishaps, writing on Twitter: “It seems we broke the internet with so much excitement.” An aide announced they had raised $1 million in an hour. All the while, Mr. Trump’s team rejoiced. “This is criminal for a campaign,” said Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the former president.Mr. DeSantis had waited months to declare his candidacy, citing a need for Florida’s Legislature to first complete its session in early May. The delay allowed Mr. Trump to test out attacks on Mr. DeSantis and secure the endorsement of numerous members of Congress, including several from Florida.As Mr. DeSantis ramped up his presidential preparations this year with a book tour and a trip abroad, he has seemed to struggle at points.Awkward moments — including cringeworthy facial expressions — generated negative headlines. So did some poorly calculated policy pronouncements, particularly his declaration that defending Ukraine from the Russian invasion was not a vital U.S. interest. Some major donors who once saw him as the most suitable Trump challenger backed away.At the heart of the criticism is the perception that Mr. DeSantis, a supreme believer in his own abilities, can seem aloof and quick to anger. Even his allies acknowledge he is not the backslapping, baby-kissing type — concerns he has tried to address by spending more time greeting voters and taking selfies.“He is an introvert in an extrovert’s job,” said Alex Andrade, a Republican state representative from the Florida Panhandle who says he admires the governor’s reserved and analytical approach.In recent weeks, Mr. DeSantis has seemed to recover from his wobbles, hitting back with more force against Mr. Trump. He has criticized the former president for not endorsing Florida’s six-week abortion ban and has described a “culture of losing” overtaking the Republican Party under Mr. Trump. He also told donors in a private call that Mr. Trump could not beat Mr. Biden.In the Twitter event, Mr. DeSantis took some sideswipes at the former president, a onetime reality television star, at one point saying, “Government is not entertainment. It’s not about building a brand or virtue-signaling.”As they wrapped up the hourlong conversation, which meandered from Article 2 of the Constitution to Bitcoin, Mr. DeSantis said, “We should do it again. I mean, I think it was fun.”Mr. Sacks concurred. “It’s not how you start,” he added, “it’s how you finish.”Jonathan Swan More

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      Will DeSantis Need to Resign as Florida Governor to Run for President?

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      Hours after filing federal paperwork declaring that he was running for president — and shortly before his plan for a Twitter livestream to launch his campaign went haywire — Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a Florida elections bill that cleared a potential hurdle.Florida’s so-called resign-to-run statute could have compelled Mr. DeSantis to resign after he sought the presidency, even though the legal questions surrounding the rule have never been fully settled.But state lawmakers clarified the law’s language late last month so that it no longer applies to elected officials running for president or vice president. Democrats accused Republicans in Tallahassee of doing a favor for the governor, though with Republican supermajorities controlling both chambers, there was little they could do to stop the measure. Republicans said the old law was vague, and legal experts were divided about whether it would have applied to Mr. DeSantis.The change to the resign-to-run statute was included in a broader elections bill. It also contains provisions restricting how third-party groups can register voters.Voting rights groups have criticized the bill. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida said it would hurt voter-registration organizations “by dramatically increasing fines, implementing shorter deadlines on voter registration forms, and restricting who can assist with voter registration drives,” with a particular effect on efforts to sign up voters of color.Reflecting his now dual roles as presidential candidate and governor, Mr. DeSantis spent the morning in Tallahassee hearing clemency requests from people convicted of felonies. At 6 p.m. Eastern, he is expected to go on Twitter and join Elon Musk, the platform’s billionaire owner, to discuss his candidacy. More

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      Unprepared Republicans Are Flooding Into the Presidential Race

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      On Wednesday, the charmless and awkward Ron DeSantis entered the presidential race. In 2024 Republican primary polling, he consistently comes in second to Donald Trump. He has built his legend on an easy re-election as Florida’s governor and an easy route by which he enacted a slate of bullying and regressive “anti-woke” legislation, thanks to Republicans’ supermajorities in Florida’s Legislature.He brandishes his record as evidence of his effectiveness, but all he’s done is win a series of fights in which his opponents had their hands tied by being in the minority.Yet many Republican commentators and donors, who’ve been desperate to move on from the toxicity of Trump, landed on DeSantis when casting about for alternatives. They inflated his ego, convincing him his big-footing in Florida made him formidable.He appears to be banking on Trump fatigue, or maybe Trump’s legal problems piling so high that even the former president’s most ardent supporters come to the conclusion that he is too encumbered to prevail. If he can’t outpace Trump, he’ll lie in wait to catch him limping.He’s not alone in that lane. The candidates (or potential candidates) Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson and Chris Sununu — all current or former governors — occupy the same lane. They are the in-case-of-emergency-break-glass cohort: If Trump winds up on the path to prison and Republicans must scrounge for a last-minute replacement, they’re hoping that voters see them as solid substitutes.They’re positioned as candidates who can deliver on Republican policy priorities without Trump’s baggage and Trump’s drama — but Trump’s drama is the thing that many of his supporters are addicted to. The policies are welded to the persona.Trump allows his supporters to feel and express their full range of emotion: He entertains them; he channels their rage; he reflects their oppressive urges; he’s an oracle of their self-perceived victimhood and their model of a warrior against a government and culture that they feel are turning on them.Trumpism is a whole-self experience, spiritual in its depth, so Trumpism without Trump would be akin to preaching Christianity without Christ.And then there’s Republicans’ other lane, in which racial absolution without racial repentance is offered. It’s occupied by candidates of color who advance some version of this simplistic and opaque absolution: “America is not a racist country.”Let me be clear: Is every person in America racist? No. Is race the superseding consideration and determinant for all negative outcomes for people of color? No. But was racism a foundational principle of our country? Does racism still permeate American society and its institutions? Yes.And racism abhors its own name; it hates to be called what it is.In recent election cycles, Republicans have embraced candidates who provided a version of that message — Herman Cain in 2012, Ben Carson in 2016 — even as their party has been rightly condemned for its tan-suit-faux-scandal-level anti-Barack Obama obsession, which was consistently colored by race.And now they have two candidates who’ve used those exact words: When she began her candidacy in February, Nikki Haley said, “Take it from me, the first minority female governor in history: America is not a racist country.” And when he announced his candidacy on Monday, Tim Scott — whom she appointed to his Senate seat — repeated a line he delivered in a 2021 speech: “America is not a racist country.”Scott’s policy positions — which straddle the Republican MAGA wing and the party’s limping Jack Kemp wing — are not his selling point. He sells a narrative, however distorted — a frozen smile for a fanatical party.Haley is also in this lane.She and Scott are using their own personal and political successes, not as exceptional examples of clearing hurdles, but to argue the height of the hurdles and to question the will of other runners.They, too, are probably waiting for legal lightning to strike, for Trump to become politically incapacitated and the Republican primary field to be thrown wide open.But Trump will fight to the last breath, maybe not because he wants to be president again, but because he wants to hedge against becoming a prisoner.All the Republican challengers are governed by ambition, but Trump is now governed by a more powerful force: panic.Yes, if he is elected again, he will get to claim that in the end he bested Biden. But he’s also aware that if he regains the presidency, he regains the power to blunt pending federal investigations swirling around him and to force a crisis over any state criminal proceedings, like one that may materialize in Georgia.He wants to complicate any potential prosecutions by arousing the anger of his followers, giving rule-of-law-following institutionalists pause about the consequences of penalizing a president. Trump has shown that he has no qualms about breaking the country to save himself, that patriotism is a distant second to self-preservation.Trump has spent his life swaddled in creature comforts, gilded and gauche as they may be. He’s bent the rules so often that he seems to have forgotten that the legal system has a gravity that few can escape forever.Now, with the prospect of being shamed and maybe even shackled, he’s going to spare nothing in his quest to clear the Republican field — and none of his opponents look as if they’re ready for it.If you thought the last two election cycles were ugly, strap up: This one will likely be worse. All creatures are most ferocious when backed into a corner.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Polls Have Shown DeSantis Trailing Trump

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has struggled in recent polling, receiving an average across polls of around 20 percent among Republicans, falling far short of former President Donald J. Trump’s roughly 50 percent. The gap between the two men has grown steadily over the past few months, as Mr. Trump’s share has increased and Mr. DeSantis has lost ground.In a Quinnipiac poll conducted May 18 to 22, Mr. DeSantis captured 25 percent of Republican voters compared with Mr. Trump’s 56 percent — doubling the former president’s lead over the Florida governor since late March. Still, Mr. DeSantis fares much better in the polls than the rest of his G.O.P. primary competitors, who remain in the low single digits.DeSantis Lags in the PollsPolling averages show Ron DeSantis’s support among Republicans dropping below 30 percent in recent weeks, as Donald J. Trump has gained strength in the primary contest.

      Source: New York Times analysis of polls aggregated by FiveThirtyEightBy The New York TimesWhile it is still early to consider the general election next fall, Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump fare similarly — roughly neck-and-neck against President Biden — in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.Still, Mr. DeSantis is viewed slightly more warmly by the American public: He has a net three percentage point favorability rating on average, while views of Mr. Trump remain underwater. While Mr. DeSantis enters the race with a fairly large polling hill to climb, there are a lot of reasons to believe it’s not too early to count him out. More