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      Ron DeSantis landslide victory brings Trump and 2024 into focus

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      Ron DeSantis landslide victory brings Trump and 2024 into focusCrowd in Tampa chant encouragement to run for president as Florida governor revels in big win and even channels Churchill At Ron DeSantis’s election victory party in Tampa on Tuesday night, supporters of the rightwing Florida governor chanted: “Two more years!”Donald Trump warns party rival Ron DeSantis not to run for president in 2024Read moreGovernors serve four-year terms, but DeSantis is widely seen as a possible challenger to Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. DeSantis’s strong performance in Florida on Tuesday – as other Republicans across the US faltered – has greatly strengthened that position.In a landslide victory, with more than 95% of votes in, DeSantis won 59.4% of the vote with 4,607,597. Meanwhile, the Democratic candidate, Charlie Crist, won just 40% of the vote with 3,100,603.Trump has been reported to be planning a 2024 announcement this month, seeking to capitalise on Republican success in the midterm elections. At a rally in Ohio on Monday, he trailed an announcement on 15 November.But on the night when the Republicans’ hoped-for “red wave” seemed unlikely – though control of the House and the Senate remained in the balance – the atmosphere at Trump’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, was reported to be anxious.In Tampa, meanwhile, celebrations of DeSantis’s convincing win over his Democratic challenger Crist were raucous.In a speech laden with allusions to his handling of the Covid pandemic – a source of great controversy and under which 82,541 Floridians have died, the third-highest total of any US state – DeSantis said: “We chose facts over fear, we chose education over indoctrination, we chose law in order over rioting and disorder.“Florida was a refuge of sanity when the world went mad. We stood as the citadel of freedom for people across this country and indeed, across the world. We faced attacks, we took the hits, we weathered the storms but we stood our ground.“We did not back down. We had the conviction to guide us and we had the courage to lead. We made promises. We made promises to the people of Florida and we have delivered on those promises. And so today, after four years, the people have delivered their verdict.”01:41DeSantis has refused to say if he intends to serve a full second term, awkwardly so in his debate with Crist. In Tampa, when supporters chanted “two more years”, the governor smiled broadly and said: “Thank you very much.”He did not address Trump at all, let alone the former president’s threat, reported earlier in the day, to reveal “things about him that won’t be very flattering” if DeSantis does mount a White House run.Polling of the notional Republican field for 2024 gives Trump big leads but DeSantis is the only other name to regularly attract double-figure support. The Florida governor regularly wins polls when Trump is left out.News outlets have reported that DeSantis has indicated to donors he may seek to avoid confronting Trump, waiting for 2028 instead.But the measure of DeSantis’s success on Tuesday, coupled with an easy win for the Republican senator Marco Rubio over his Democratic opponent, the congresswoman and former Orlando police chief Val Demings, may have changed the equation.In Tampa, DeSantis nodded to startling successes in previously solidly Democratic areas, most prominently Miami-Dade county, when he said: “Thanks to the overwhelming support of the people of Florida we not only won the election, we have rewritten the political map. Thank you for honoring us with a win for the ages.”He also nodded to policies that have proved controversial but profitable, particularly regarding Covid and cracking down on the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues and the history of race in America.“We have embraced freedom,” he said. “We have maintained law and order. We have protected the rights of parents. We have respected our taxpayers and we reject ‘woke’ ideology.”The speech had the ring of a politician with one eye on the national and therefore global stage. Given conservative Americans’ long-established veneration of Winston Churchill, it was perhaps not surprising that in a speech delivered with notable confidence, DeSantis echoed the wartime British prime minister.In a speech largely devoted to crowing over the American left, DeSantis echoed Churchill’s famous promise from 1940, when he said Britain would fight “on the beaches … on the landing grounds … in the fields and in the streets”.“We fight the woke in the legislature,” DeSantis said, to steadily mounting cheers. “We fight the woke in the schools, we fight the woke in the corporations. We will never ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022FloridaRepublicansRon DeSantisUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      'Florida is where woke goes to die': Republican Ron DeSantis re-elected as governor – video

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      Ultra-conservative Republican Ron DeSantis defeated Democrat Charlie Crist in the midterm elections, granting him a second term as Florida’s governor. DeSantis’s win could serve as a launchpad for a White House bid in 2024, after being hailed as a rising star in the Republican party. The US midterms have been seen largely as a referendum for Biden’s presidency with Democrats beating expectations since voting closed

      Midterm elections 2022: Democrats beating expectations as John Fetterman wins crucial US Senate race – live More

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      DeSantis Wins Florida Re-election in a Rout

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      Ron DeSantis won a second term as Florida’s governor in a rout on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, cementing Republicans’ grip on power in a state that was once a premier battleground and his own reputation as a top contender for the presidency.Mr. DeSantis became governor four years ago in a contest so narrowly decided, by a mere 32,463 votes, that it required a recount. This time, he clobbered Charlie Crist, a Democratic former representative and governor with wide name recognition in the state. The Associated Press called the race right after the polls closed, a rarity in recent election cycles in Florida, a swing state that has shifted to the right.Unlike past statewide candidates, who moderated their positions to appeal to the center of a divided electorate, Mr. DeSantis campaigned as an unapologetic culture warrior willing to fight the “woke left” and as a brash executive eager to defy public health experts during the coronavirus pandemic.So confident was he of victory that he spent part of the past few weeks traveling out of state to attend political events for other Republican candidates.His political ascent over the past decade from a backbencher in Congress to a presidential hopeful has placed Mr. DeSantis increasingly at odds with former President Donald J. Trump, whose endorsement secured Mr. DeSantis the Republican nomination for governor in 2018. The two men did not campaign together in the days before the election, and Mr. Trump, a Florida resident, tested out a derisive nickname against the governor: “Ron DeSanctimonious.”Mr. DeSantis’s ability to position himself as Mr. Trump’s heir without his baggage has turned him into a darling of Republican donors hedging their bets against the former president, or looking for an alternative. Mr. DeSantis raised some $200 million for the governor’s race, a staggering amount that he did not come close to spending and that could seed a presidential run. More

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      Rubio Is Re-elected to Senate, Defeating Demings in Florida

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      Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, defeated his Democratic challenger, Representative Val Demings, on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. The win secures his third term in Congress and further cements the G.O.P.’s grip on the state.Ms. Demings, a Black woman who served as Orlando’s first female police chief, was seen as a formidable opponent to Mr. Rubio, a polished mainstay of Florida politics. Ms. Demings mounted a serious challenge in which she highlighted her law enforcement credentials in a midterm cycle in which Republicans tried to paint Democrats as soft on crime.In the final days of the race, Ms. Demings campaigned with President Biden, who had considered her during the 2020 campaign as a potential running mate. Mr. Rubio held a rally with former President Donald J. Trump.But Ms. Demings struggled for months to narrow Mr. Rubio’s lead in the polls in a state that has shifted rightward. Mr. Rubio, who held few campaign events while the state was recovering from Hurricane Ian and delivered a gaffe-free performance in the single debate between the candidates, gave her few opportunities to undercut his campaign.Mr. Rubio painted his opponent as extreme, calling her a “puppet” of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and claiming that she would be “Florida’s most liberal senator ever” and was “dangerously radical.” More

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      Maxwell Alejandro Frost Secures Generation Z’s First House Seat

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      Generation Z officially has a seat in Congress.Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a 25-year-old Democrat, won his election on Tuesday in Florida’s 10th Congressional District over Calvin Wimbish, a Republican, according to The Associated Press. Mr. Frost will represent the Orlando-area seat being vacated by Representative Val Demings, the Democratic nominee for senator.His victory guarantees that the next Congress will include at least one member of Generation Z, whose oldest members were born in 1997 and are newly eligible for the House, which has a minimum age of 25. He could be joined by Karoline Leavitt, a Republican running in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District.It is rare for 25-year-olds to be elected to Congress. Before Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, won in 2020, it hadn’t happened in more than 45 years.Mr. Frost is a progressive Democrat whose campaign focused on issues of particular salience to many young voters: gun violence, climate change, abortion rights and Medicare for all. His background is in activism, including work with the student-led anti-gun-violence movement March for Our Lives.In an interview with The New York Times in August, he argued that he brought a different perspective to politics because of the era he had come of age in: one of mass shootings, increasingly frequent natural disasters and broad social upheaval.“I come from a generation that has gone through more mass-shooting drills than fire drills,” he said. “This is something that my generation has had to face head-on: being scared to go to school, being scared to go to church, being scared to be in your community. That gives me a sense of urgency.” More

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      The key races to watch in the 2022 US midterms

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      ExplainerThe key races to watch in the 2022 US midterms Control of the Senate could hang on results in a handful of states while votes for governor and secretary of state could affect the conduct of future elections

      US midterm election results 2022: live
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      Arizona governor: Katie Hobbs (D) v Kari Lake (R)Hobbs is currently secretary of state in what used to be a Republican stronghold. Lake is a former TV news anchor who relishes sparring with the media and promoting Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Victory for Lake – who has appeared with figures linked to QAnon on the campaign trail – would be a major boost for the former president and ominous for 2024.US midterms 2022: the key candidates who threaten democracyRead moreArizona secretary of state: Mark Finchem (R) v Adrian Fontes (D)Secretary of state elections have rarely made headlines in past midterms but this time they could be vital to the future of American democracy. The battle to become Arizona’s top election official pits Fontes, a lawyer and former marine, against Finchem, who falsely claims that voter fraud cost Trump the state in 2020 and who was at the US Capitol on January 6 2021.Arizona Senate: Mark Kelly (D) v Blake Masters (R)Kelly is a retired astronaut who became well known in the state when his wife, then-congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot and critically injured at an event in Tucson in 2011. Masters, a 36-year-old venture capitalist and associate of mega-donor Peter Thiel, gained the Republican nomination with the help of Trump’s endorsement but has since toned down his language on abortion, gun control and immigration.Florida attorney general: Aramis Ayala (D) v Ashley Moody (R)Ayala is the first Black female state attorney in Florida history. Moody, the incumbent, is a former prosecutor and judge who recently joined 10 other Republican attorneys general in a legal brief that sided with Trump over the justice department regarding the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home. Like her predecessor Pam Bondi, Moody could be a powerful ally for Trump as the state’s top law enforcement official.Georgia governor: Stacey Abrams (D) v Brian Kemp (R)Abrams, a voting rights activist, is bidding to become the first Black female governor in American history. But she lost narrowly to Kemp in 2018 and opinion polls suggest she could suffer the same fate in 2022. Kemp now enjoys the advantages of incumbency and a strong state economy. He also has momentum after brushing aside a primary challenge from Trump-backed challenger David Perdue.Georgia Senate: Herschel Walker (R) v Raphael Warnock (D)Warnock’s victory in a January 2021 runoff was critical in giving Democrats’ control of the Senate. Now the pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist church – where Martin Luther King used to preach – faces Walker, a former football star with huge name recognition but scant experience (he recently suggested that China’s polluted air has replaced American air). Polls show a tight race between the men, both of whom are African American.Ohio Senate: Tim Ryan (D) v JD Vance (R)The quintessential duel for blue-collar voters. Ryan, a Democratic congressman, has run an energetic campaign, presented himself as an earthy moderate and accused Vance of leaving the state for San Francisco to make millions of dollars in Silicon Valley. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, seen as a kind of Rosetta Stone for understanding the Trump phenomenon in 2016, used to be a Trump critic but has now gone full Maga.Pennsylvania governor: Doug Mastriano (R) v Josh Shapiro (D)Mastriano, a retired army colonel and far-right state senator, led protests against pandemic restrictions, supported efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat and appearing outside the US Capitol during the January 6 riot. Critics say that, as governor, he could tip a presidential election to Trump in 2024. Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, is running on a promise to defend democracy and voting rights.Pennsylvania Senate: John Fetterman (D) v Mehmet Oz (R)One of the most colourful duels on the ballot. Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, is 6ft 8in tall, recovering from a stroke that has affected his speech and hearing, and running aggressive ads that mock Oz for his lack of connections to the state. Oz, a heart surgeon and former host of the daytime TV show The Dr Oz Show, benefited from Trump’s endorsement in the primary but has since backed away from the former president’s claims of a stolen election.Wisconsin Senate: Mandela Barnes (D) v Ron Johnson (R)This is Democrats’ best chance of unseating an incumbent senator: Johnson is the only Republican running for re-election in a state that Biden won in 2020. First elected as a fiscal conservative, he has promoted bogus coronavirus treatments such as mouthwash, dismissed climate change as “bullshit” and sought to play down the January 6 insurrection. Barnes, currently lieutenant governor, is bidding to become the first Black senator in Wisconsin’s history.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansDemocratsUS politicsArizonaFloridaGeorgiaexplainersReuse this content More

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      Expect the Trump-DeSantis animosity to evolve into open warfare after midterms

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      AnalysisExpect the Trump-DeSantis animosity to evolve into open warfare after midtermsRichard LuscombePolls show DeSantis positioned to win re-election on Tuesday but political opponents say his focus is locked on a White House run The simmering animosity between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor emerging as Trump’s most likely challenger for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, looks set to evolve into open warfare following the midterm elections.‘A new political hellscape’: sweeping gains for Republicans could stifle Biden’s presidencyRead morePolls show DeSantis comfortably positioned to win re-election on Tuesday but political opponents say his focus is locked on the national stage and a White House run.The two Republicans’ feuding became evident during a rally for Senate candidate Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania on Saturday, when Trump, who is expected to announce his presidential campaign imminently, introduced his new nickname for the rising conservative star: Ron DeSanctimonious.It is a tactic that has cowed previous pretenders to Trump’s crown as the Republican leader and kingmaker. In the 2016 election cycle, senior Republican hopefuls “Little Marco” Rubio, “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz and “Low Energy” Jeb Bush were derided then swept aside.“There it is, Trump at 71. Ron DeSanctimonious at 10%,” Trump said in Pennsylvania as he perused a screen showing what he claimed were approval ratings for the Republican 2024 nomination.“Mike Pence at seven. Oh, Mike’s doing better than I thought,” Trump added, mocking his former vice-president who he has castigated for refusing to endorse the lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.With no discernible irony, Trump called Rubio “my great friend” at a rally for the senator and other Republican candidates in Miami on Sunday, an event at which DeSantis was conspicuously absent.Until now, DeSantis and Trump have mostly kept each other at arm’s length. But clues to their fractured relationship were evident as early as August 2020, when the notoriously prickly DeSantis denounced as “a phony narrative” an assertion he was the then-president’s “yes man” in Florida.The governor subsequently criticized Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, saying earlier this year he regretted “not speaking out” sooner against Trump’s call for a nationwide lockdown. In response, Trump called DeSantis “gutless” for refusing to reveal if he had been given a Covid booster vaccine.In June, Trump began readying his anti-DeSantis rhetoric, telling the New Yorker he would beat his rival in a nomination contest and claiming it was only his endorsement that revived the three-term congressman’s faltering campaign for governor in 2017.Now, with the distraction of the midterms almost out of the way, and with Trump seeking a clear run for his third presidential run as a Republican, DeSantis too has been granted a derogatory nickname.DeSantis’s apparent focus on 2024 – notwithstanding reports he has told donors he may wait until 2028, when Trump will be out of the way – became an issue during the governor’s debate in Florida last month. Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee, repeatedly challenged DeSantis to say if he would commit to a full four-year term if re-elected.Seizing on DeSantis’s refusal to answer, Crist said: “It’s not a tough question. It’s a fair question. He won’t tell you.”DeSantis described Crist, a Republican Florida governor turned Democratic congressman, “a worn out old donkey” he was looking to “put out to pasture”.At the Miami rally on Sunday, Trump declined to criticize DeSantis again but offered only tepid support for him in Tuesday’s elections, compared to his comments about Rubio and other Republicans in congressional and state races.“You’re going to re-elect the wonderful, the great friend of mine, Marco Rubio to the United States Senate. And you are going to re-elect Ron DeSantis as your governor,” Trump said.Despite Trump’s attacks, DeSantis remains in a strong position, winning straw polls of grassroots supporters and becoming ever more visible on the national stage.According to Politico, he also has the backing for any presidential run of the Republican mega-donor Ken Griffin, who donated more than $60m to the party’s candidates during the midterms.“I don’t know what he’s going to do. It’s a huge personal decision,” Griffin said. “He has a tremendous record as governor of Florida, and our country would be well-served by him as president.”TopicsRon DeSantisDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsFloridaanalysisReuse this content More