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      How Ron DeSantis Maximized the Might of the Florida Governor’s Office

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      Ron DeSantis methodically expanded his powers and pushed legal boundaries to enact his policies. He suggests he would do the same as president.Few knew what to expect from Ron DeSantis when he was first elected Florida governor in 2018 as a little-known congressman. He had barely eked out a victory. He had almost no ties to the State Capitol. His policy agenda seemed unclear.But he knew, at least, how he wanted to govern: He directed his general counsel to figure out just how far a governor could push his authority. He pored over a binder enumerating his varied powers: appointing Florida Supreme Court justices, removing local elected officials and wielding line-item vetoes against state lawmakers.Then he systematically deployed each one.Four years later, Mr. DeSantis is entering the 2024 Republican presidential primary race with a promise to make the country more conservative — just as he did Florida, using nearly every means necessary to muscle through his right-wing vision.“We proved it can be done. We chose facts over fear, education over indoctrination, law and order over rioting and disorder,” Mr. DeSantis said on Wednesday, as he announced his candidacy in a repeatedly delayed and awkwardly glitchy livestream on Twitter, with its owner, Elon Musk. “We also understand governing is not entertainment. It’s not about building a brand or virtue-signaling. It is about delivering results.”Mr. DeSantis’s willingness to exert that power in extraordinary ways has led him to barrel through norms, challenge the legal limits of his office and threaten political retribution against those who cross him. Unlike former President Donald J. Trump, the 2024 Republican front-runner who considers the governor his top rival, Mr. DeSantis is a keen student of American government who has expanded his influence tactically and methodically, using detailed knowledge of the pliable confines of his office to his advantage.“What I was able to bring to the governor’s office was an understanding of how a constitutional form of government operates, the various pressure points that exist, and the best way to leverage authority to achieve substantive policy victories,” Mr. DeSantis, a Harvard-educated lawyer, wrote in his recent book, “The Courage to Be Free,” which described his systematic approach to using executive power.Jeff Brandes, a former state senator and a rare Republican who has raised concerns about Mr. DeSantis’s use of power, called Mr. DeSantis “the most powerful governor Florida has ever seen. Democrats have been scathing in their assessment, describing the governor with words usually reserved for foreign demagogues.“Americans want to live in a democracy with freedoms,” Nikki Fried, the chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, wrote this week on Twitter, “and not under an authoritarian regime.”Jeremy T. Redfern, the press secretary for the governor’s office, rejected the assertion that governor has pushed the boundaries of his authority, calling it “nonsense” and a “leftist talking point.”Removing elected officialsMr. DeSantis was elected by a mere 32,463 votes in 2018 — a margin so narrow that it required a recount and could have prompted him to not “rock the boat,” the governor wrote in his book. Instead, three days after being sworn into office in January 2019, he suspended the elected Democratic sheriff of Broward County over his handling of the Parkland high school shooting a year earlier.That moment put the state on notice that Mr. DeSantis did not intend to govern like his predecessors, who typically suspended elected officials only if they had been charged with crimes.Mr. DeSantis removed from office the Democratic elections supervisor of Palm Beach County for her handling of the 2018 recount.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“I earned 50 percent of the vote,” Mr. DeSantis told Republicans at a dinner this month, “but that entitled me to wield 100 percent of the executive power.”Mr. DeSantis has continued targeting local, elected officials. In 2019, he removed from office the Democratic elections supervisor of Palm Beach County for her handling of the 2018 recount. Mr. DeSantis called the suspensions necessary for accountability.Last August, Mr. DeSantis suspended four members of the Broward County school board — citing a special grand jury investigation on school security failures that he had requested from the Republican-majority state Supreme Court. All four of those ousted were Democrats who had been elected since the shooting; Mr. DeSantis replaced them with Republicans.That same month he suspended Andrew H. Warren, the top prosecutor in Tampa, after Mr. Warren, a Democrat, vowed not to criminalize abortion. The governor did not cite any specific case that Mr. Warren had failed to prosecute, and records showed that the removal had been fueled by politics.A federal judge ruled that while Mr. DeSantis went too far in suspending Mr. Warren, the court had no authority to reinstate him. Mr. Warren has appealed.Amassing power during a pandemicWhile Mr. DeSantis showed an early interest in consolidating power in his office, the Covid pandemic allowed him to centralize and expand his authority. During the declared emergency in 2020, the governor had the authority — and used it — to spend $5 billion in federal aid without legislative approval.He went beyond that, prohibiting local mask and vaccine mandates, calling the Legislature into special session to write those bans into law, and threatening to withhold pay for administrators of public school districts that tried to defy him.His hard line helped him build a larger national profile and appeared to propel Mr. DeSantis to govern more assertively, especially when it came to heated cultural issues popular with his political base. He reached deep into his administration to compel obscure agencies and boards to enact his policies.The governor filled state boards for hospitals and colleges with like-minded appointees, eventually orchestrating a takeover of New College of Florida, a public liberal arts school in Sarasota that he and his allies hope to turn into a conservative bastion. Two state medical boards whose members were appointed by the governor prohibited gender-transition care for minors and education regulators expanded a prohibition on classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.More recently, he has used the Department of Business and Professional Regulation to try to take away the liquor licenses from a Miami restaurant, a Miami hotel and an Orlando theater because children have attended drag shows at the venues.“What is scary in Florida is that we’re seeing the governor’s continued efforts to consolidate power under himself so that there are not any checks and balances for what he does,” said Kara Gross, the legislative director and senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.Political paybackMr. DeSantis has also relied on raw political power and threats of retribution — often aimed at allies.He has intervened in legislative races, where his endorsements have helped him stack the Legislature with loyal Republicans and sent a clear message to lawmakers to get in line or possibly face a primary challenge. Last fall, he turned to school board races, working with Moms for Liberty, a right-wing group, to publish a list of endorsements for seats that are technically nonpartisan.During redistricting last year, when senators drew a congressional map not to Mr. DeSantis’s liking, he vetoed it and forced the lawmakers to adopt a map that he had put forward — the first time anyone in the State Capitol could remember a governor taking such a brash step.The Senate initially resisted Mr. DeSantis’s map, which eliminated a majority Black district in North Florida and effectively gave Republicans four more seats in Congress. But lawmakers knew that Mr. DeSantis could use endorsements and primaries as a cudgel. In fact, he did not back the Senate president’s campaign for state agriculture commissioner until after the chamber gave the governor his map. (The map still faces a court challenge.)Yet the episode that most crystallized the Legislature’s deference to Mr. DeSantis involved a foe that Florida Republicans would have previously been loath to take on: the Walt Disney Company, one of Florida’s largest taxpayers.Last year, when Disney’s chief executive at the time opposed legislation restricting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, Mr. DeSantis did not hesitate to push back. Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesWhen Disney’s chief executive at the time opposed legislation last year restricting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, Mr. DeSantis did not hesitate to push back. He called on lawmakers to strip Disney’s special tax district from many of its powers, pitting traditionally business-friendly lawmakers against Florida’s most famous corporate giant.The standoff has spilled over into this year, with Disney making moves to limit the state’s new oversight board and the state countering to undo Disney’s plans. Disney recently sued Florida in federal court and canceled a $1 billion development near Orlando.It’s far from clear Mr. DeSantis will win his battle with Disney. Still, he sees political upside in boasting that he did not bow to corporate pressure.After the sugar industry backed his opponent in the 2018 Republican primary, Mr. DeSantis, in his first week in office, signed an executive order on water quality that took aim at some of the industry’s polluting practices.“While Big Sugar did not like it,” Mr. DeSantis wrote in his book, “most people across the political spectrum in Florida were thrilled.”Legal ‘cleanup’Legislators have been so quick to do Mr. DeSantis’s bidding that they have had to repeatedly return to the State Capitol to retroactively give the governor authority for actions already taken.“We had a recent seventh special session — which is supposed to be an extraordinary measure — basically to clean up all of the outstanding issues,” State Senator Jason W.B. Pizzo, a Democrat, said earlier this year. “A colleague referred to it as ‘cleanup on aisle five’ for the governor.”During that session, held in February, lawmakers passed legislation detailing their authority over Disney’s special tax district. But they also amended laws passed last year that had mired the DeSantis administration in court.Mr. DeSantis created an office of election crimes in 2022 that brought fraud charges against people who may have inappropriately cast ballots. But judges threw out case after case, saying that statewide prosecutors lacked the authority to bring those charges. Lawmakers changed the law this year to explicitly empower the prosecutors.Mr. DeSantis announced last year that the Office of Election Crimes and Security was arresting 20 people for voter fraud. After some of the cases were dismissed, the Legislature changed the law to empower prosecutors.Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesLegislators also did away with language that had complicated the governor’s legal justification for flying Venezuelan migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts last summer. The original language adopted in 2022 gave the DeSantis administration the authority to transport migrants “from this state” — not from Texas, Mr. Pizzo argued in a lawsuit after the Martha’s Vineyard stunt. In the special February session, lawmakers scrapped that phrase and expanded Mr. DeSantis’s authority to transport migrants from anywhere in the country.“He completely controls the Legislature,” Mr. Pizzo said.Last week, Mr. DeSantis used his influence to line up endorsements for his presidential campaign. His political team announced the backing of 99 of the state’s 113 Republican legislators, even as some said privately that they felt pressured to support Mr. DeSantis for fear that he might otherwise veto their bills or spending projects.Were Mr. DeSantis to win the White House, he would likely face tougher opposition in Washington than he has in Tallahassee. There have already been signs of division: Last month, 11 of 20 Republican representatives in Florida’s congressional delegation endorsed Mr. Trump over Mr. DeSantis.Alexandra Berzon 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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      DeSantis anunciará su candidatura para 2024 en Twitter y con Elon Musk

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      Se espera que el gobernador de Florida aparezca en una conversación en vivo con el propietario de la red social el miércoles para lanzar su campaña.El gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, planea anunciar el inicio de su campaña presidencial para 2024 el miércoles en una conversación de audio en vivo en Twitter con Elon Musk, el polarizador propietario de la plataforma, según personas enteradas de sus planes.La entrada de DeSantis en la contienda de las primarias del Partido Republicano contra el expresidente Donald Trump ha sido ampliamente esperada, pero la decisión de hacerlo con Musk añade un elemento sorprendente y da a DeSantis acceso a una gran audiencia en línea. NBC News informó primero de los planes.El evento en Twitter Spaces, previsto para las 6 p. m., hora del Este, inyecta un nivel de riesgo en un lanzamiento que se espera que sea cuidadosamente ensayado y asegura que la primera impresión de DeSantis como candidato presidencial será alinearse con Musk, un excéntrico empresario que ha sido considerado en ocasiones como el hombre más rico del mundo.Uno de los retos para DeSantis al entrar en la contienda de 2024 será competir por la atención con Trump, quien durante décadas ha demostrado su habilidad para acaparar el centro de atención. Asesores de Trump han señalado durante meses que planea volver a Twitter más temprano que tarde. Musk ya levantó la prohibición que pesaba sobre el expresidente cuando Twitter era una empresa de capital abierto.Además de su evento en Twitter, se espera que DeSantis aparezca el miércoles por la noche en Fox News en una entrevista con Trey Gowdy, un excongresista de Carolina del Sur, según la cadena. El gobernador también ha reunido a donantes el miércoles en el Four Seasons de Miami para empezar a recaudar dinero para su campaña.Un súper PAC (como se conoce a los comités de acción política) que respalda a Trump se burló de los planes.“Este es uno de los lanzamientos de campaña más fuera de lugar en la historia moderna”, dijo Karoline Leavitt, portavoz de Make America Great Again, el grupo pro-Trump. “Lo único con lo que es menos fácil de identificarse que un lanzamiento de campaña de nicho en Twitter, es la fiesta posterior de DeSantis en el resort de uberélite Four Seasons en Miami”.Musk dijo en un evento con The Wall Street Journal el martes que no estaba lanzando formalmente su apoyo por DeSantis, o a cualquier otro republicano. El lunes, retuiteó un video del acto de lanzamiento presidencial del senador Tim Scott, de Carolina del Sur, otro aspirante republicano.Con Musk, Twitter ha cultivado una audiencia más republicana. Este mes, Tucker Carlson, la exestrella de Fox News recientemente despedida, anunció que presentaría su popular programa en Twitter.El acto de DeSantis con Musk estará moderado por David Sacks, un donante republicano partidario del gobernador y cercano a Musk. Sacks, empresario e inversor tecnológico, donó 50.000 dólares al comité político estatal de DeSantis antes de su reelección, según muestran los registros financieros de la campaña. Ha hablado positivamente del manejo del gobernador de la pandemia de coronavirus en Florida. “Fue el primer gobernador en detener estos confinamientos descabellados”, dijo Sacks en Bloomberg TV en 2021. “Respeto eso”.Al elegir Spaces, DeSantis está confiando en una herramienta de transmisión de solo audio con un historial de errores y fallas. Musk ha utilizado la función con regularidad en los seis meses transcurridos desde que, en octubre, compró Twitter por 44.000 millones de dólares, y ha aparecido en Spaces para hablar sobre el estado de sus diversos negocios y conceder entrevistas, que atraen a decenas de miles de oyentes.Musk ha dicho que votó por el presidente Joe Biden en las elecciones de 2020, pero desde entonces se ha mostrado crítico con él y con su gobierno, que mantiene una relación gélida con Tesla, su empresa de vehículos eléctricos. El multimillonario ha dicho que es difícil para Biden mantenerse en contacto con los votantes a la edad de 80 años.Cuando se le preguntó por Biden en una entrevista en CNBC la semana pasada, Musk dijo que solo quería “un ser humano normal” para dirigir el país.“No se trata simplemente de si comparten tus creencias”, dijo. “Se trata de si son buenos resolviendo cosas”.Aunque Musk se ha autodenominado moderado, donando cantidades relativamente pequeñas tanto a republicanos como a demócratas en el pasado, en los últimos años ha virado su apoyo hacia la derecha. En Twitter ha participado y compartido teorías de la conspiración de derecha, incluida una sobre el atentado de octubre contra Paul Pelosi, el esposo de Nancy Pelosi, la expresidenta de la Cámara de Representantes.Musk ha expresado su apoyo a DeSantis, incluso en julio del año pasado, cuando tuiteó que el gobernador de Florida “ganaría fácilmente” si se enfrentara a Biden en 2024. Y en noviembre respondió afirmativamente cuando un usuario de Twitter le preguntó si apoyaría a DeSantis en las elecciones en ese año.El verano pasado, cuando le preguntaron a DeSantis por el posible apoyo de Musk, el gobernador de Florida espetó: “Agradezco el apoyo de los afroestadounidenses. ¿Qué puedo decir?” (Musk es blanco y de Sudáfrica).En Florida, DeSantis ha apoyado legislación destinada, según sus palabras, a proteger a la gente contra las “élites de Silicon Valley”. También ha criticado a las empresas tecnológicas por sus esfuerzos para eliminar la desinformación de sus plataformas, que ha comparado con un asalto a la libertad de expresión y la verdad llevado a cabo en coordinación con funcionarios del gobierno.“Han visto al Estado administrativo confabularse con la Big Tech para censurar la información veraz, ya sea gente atacando los confinamientos por la covid, ya sea cuestionando la eficacia de los cubrebocas o los cierres de escuelas”, dijo DeSantis en un discurso en abril ante la Heritage Foundation, una organización conservadora. “Hubo un esfuerzo concertado para que las grandes empresas tecnológicas hicieran lo que al gobierno nunca se le permite hacer directamente”.El martes por la noche, la esposa del gobernador, Casey DeSantis, tuiteó un video de DeSantis preparándose para subir a un escenario, un claro guiño a su próximo anuncio. “Lo llaman fe porque frente a la oscuridad puedes ver ese futuro más brillante”, dice un narrador. En el video se pide a sus seguidores que envíen un mensaje de texto a un número de teléfono para obtener más información.“Gracias por suscribirse para recibir mensajes de texto de Ron DeSantis para presidente”, dice la respuesta automática. “Estado de prelanzamiento: PENDIENTE”.Shane Goldmacher es reportero político nacional y antes fue el corresponsal político jefe de la sección Metro. Antes de unirse al Times, trabajó en Politico, donde cubrió la agenda política del Partido Republicano a nivel nacional y la campaña presidencial de 2016. @ShaneGoldmacherMaggie Haberman es corresponsal sénior de política y la autora de Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Fue parte del equipo que ganó un Pulitzer en 2018 por informar sobre los asesores del presidente Trump y sus vínculos con Rusia. @maggieNYTRyan Mac es un reportero de tecnología centrado en la responsabilidad de las empresas del sector tecnológico mundial. Ganó un premio George Polk en 2020 por su cobertura de Facebook y vive en Los Ángeles. @RMac18Nicholas Nehamas es reportero de campaña enfocado en la candidatura emergente del gobernador Ron DeSantis de Florida. Antes de incorporarse al Times en 2023, trabajó durante nueve años en The Miami Herald, principalmente como reportero de investigación. @NickNehamas More

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      How DeSantis Allies Plan to Beat Trump in the 2024 Presidential Election

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      As the Florida governor prepares to enter the 2024 race, his allies are building an army of organizers to flood the states with the first nominating contests.A key political group supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential run is preparing a $100 million voter-outreach push so big it plans to knock on the door of every possible DeSantis voter at least four times in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — and five times in the kickoff Iowa caucuses.The effort is part of an on-the-ground organizing operation that intends to hire more than 2,600 field organizers by Labor Day, an extraordinary number of people for even the best-funded campaigns.Top officials with the pro-DeSantis group, a super PAC called Never Back Down, provided their most detailed account yet of their battle plan to aid Mr. DeSantis, whom they believe they can sell as the only candidate to take on — and win — the cultural fights that are definitional for the Republican Party in 2024.The group said it expected to have an overall budget of at least $200 million, including more than $80 million to be transferred from an old DeSantis state political account, for the daunting task of vaulting the Florida governor past former President Donald J. Trump, who has established himself as the dominant early front-runner.Mr. DeSantis is set to enter the presidential race on Wednesday in a live audio conversation on Twitter, and the super PAC’s enormous cash reserves are expected to be among the few advantages that Mr. DeSantis has in the race.The group is already taking on many tasks often reserved for the campaign itself: securing endorsements in early primary states, sending mailers, organizing on campuses, running television ads, raising small donations for the campaign in an escrow account and working behind the scenes to build crowds for the governor’s events. Hiring is underway in 18 states and officials said plans were in the works to assemble various pro-DeSantis coalitions, such as for voters who are veterans or those focused on issues like abortion, guns or agriculture.“No one has ever contemplated the scale of this organization or operation, let alone done it,” said Chris Jankowski, the group’s chief executive. “This has just never even been dreamed up.”In Iowa, the group has opened a boot camp on the outskirts of Des Moines, giving the facility the code name “Fort Benning,” after the old Army training outpost, with 189 graduates of an eight-day training program the first wave of an organizing army to follow. Door knocking begins on Wednesday in New Hampshire.The endeavor echoes the “Camp Cruz” that Senator Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign set up near Des Moines.As Mr. DeSantis prepared for his first campaign events as a declared candidate, his allies for the first time detailed the show of force they are mustering to advance their strategy for prying away supporters of Mr. Trump.Mr. DeSantis at a round-table discussion last week in New Hampshire. Before his 2024 campaign is official, he has been making routine stops on the campaign trail.Sophie Park for The New York TimesAt the helm of the DeSantis super PAC is Jeff Roe, a veteran Republican strategist who was Mr. Cruz’s campaign manager in 2016. In an interview, Mr. Roe described an ambitious political apparatus whose 2,600 field organizers by the fall would be roughly double the peak of Senator Bernie Sanders’s entire 2020 primary campaign staff.Mr. Roe also previewed some of the contrasts that Never Back Down planned to draw with Mr. Trump. He argued that Mr. Trump had shied away from key fights that motivate the Republican base and on which Mr. DeSantis has led, including on L.G.B.T.Q. issues, schools and taking on corporate America.“How do you beat Trump?” Mr. Roe said, pointing to Mr. DeSantis’s assertiveness on those cultural issues. “Well, you beat Trump by beating Trump. And where Ron DeSantis has beaten Trump is by doing what Republican voters want him to do the most.”Mr. DeSantis has steadily lost ground so far in 2023 and is trailing Mr. Trump nationally in polls by an average of 30 percentage points. And as the governor’s standing has diminished, more candidates have jumped into the race, an ever-expanding field that could make the sheer math even harder for Mr. DeSantis to topple a former president with a significant base of loyalists.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, mocked the group as “Always Back Down,” calling it “a clown show of epic proportions.”Mr. DeSantis at a speech last week in Orlando. “Ultimately, politics is a team sport,” he told donors recently.Saul Martinez for The New York Times“If DeSantis runs his campaign the same way as his super PAC, he’ll be in for a rude awakening,” Mr. Cheung said.In framing the 2024 race, Mr. Roe acknowledged that Mr. Trump has been “the leader of a movement.” But, in Mr. Roe’s telling, it is Mr. DeSantis alone who “has the opportunity to be the leader of the party and the movement.”“That is a key difference,” he said. “I don’t believe people fundamentally understand that you can be a leader of a movement and not be the leader of your party. Ron DeSantis has the ability to be both. Trump does not.”That is a line that Mr. DeSantis himself articulated last week in a private call with donors that was organized by Never Back Down. He played up the money he has raised for state parties, including in New Hampshire.“Ultimately, politics is a team sport,” Mr. DeSantis told donors, adding an oblique shot at Mr. Trump. “You know, there’s some that kind of raise money just for themselves.”Republican primary voters, Mr. Roe said, see the battle against the progressive left as an existential fight. He argues that Mr. DeSantis, not Mr. Trump, has led on three touchstone issues in that fight: taking on corporate America, engaging in what is being taught in schools and confronting shifting norms and acceptance around sexual orientation and transgender medical care.The governor’s clash with Disney touches on all three: battling a big corporation over what began as a fight over classroom discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary schools. Mr. Trump sees the Disney battle as futile and has recently cheered on the company as it hit back against Mr. DeSantis.Mr. Roe added that the intensity of the threat that Republicans perceive to their way of life is what makes electability a more salient issue for the party in 2024, and what makes Mr. DeSantis’s ability to fight those fights and still win in Florida so appealing.“That is a manifest separation between the two candidates,” he said.Unlike a candidate’s campaign committee, which has to abide by strict caps for each donor, there are no limits on how much a super PAC is allowed to raise.And this one begins with unmatched financial firepower. Never Back Down is expected to begin with around $120 million — $40 million it says it already raised and $80 million from Mr. DeSantis’s old state political committee — a sum that is equal to what Jeb Bush’s super PAC spent in total in 2016.But there are several legal impediments to this financial freedom. The people who run super PACs are prohibited from discussing strategy with the candidate or the campaign staff. Of course, if Mr. DeSantis disagrees with any super PAC decisions, he can always say so publicly and urge them to change course.As a result, the biggest super PACs — entities that have existed for just the last roughly 12 years — have often essentially become independent vehicles to buy expensive television advertising. That model, however, is extremely inefficient. When the election nears, the airwaves are cluttered and candidates are guaranteed, by law, far lower rates than super PACs. It is one reason the pro-DeSantis group plans to spend so heavily on its field program, officials said, citing studies that show personal voter contact has far greater return on investment.Hiring is underway in 18 states and officials said plans were in the works to assemble various pro-DeSantis coalitions, such as for voters who are veterans or those focused on issues like abortion, guns or agriculture.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“That’s not to say that we won’t do TV, it’s that it’s not all that we’ll do,” said Kristin Davison, the chief operating officer of Never Back Down. “We understand that in the first four states that peer-to-peer, neighbor-to-neighbor conversation and conversion is going to be extremely important.”Strategists with Never Back Down have been consulting lawyers and studying precedent to see exactly how far the group can stretch the legal bounds of what tasks it can perform without tripping any legal wires. One overlooked twist in election law is that super PAC advisers can move to the campaign, so it is possible entire departments at Never Back Down could eventually join the DeSantis campaign.The hand-in-glove efforts were on display during Mr. DeSantis’s recent trip to Iowa. After Mr. Trump canceled a rally near Des Moines, the governor decided he wanted to swoop in for a last-minute event in the area. But it wasn’t the governor’s staff that scrambled to bring people to the location but employees of the super PAC, who, working with Mr. DeSantis’s team, sent a flurry of texts and calls to assemble a crowd at Jethro’s BBQ that evening.“On like two hours’ notice, at some local pizza joint or barbecue joint, we got like 200 people to show up,” Mr. DeSantis raved to donors on the call, which The New York Times listened to.Despite Mr. DeSantis’s professed aversion to political consultants, particularly those who work around Washington, and his history of asking questions about what people who work for him are making, his team has anointed one of the Republican Party’s most famous consultants to oversee Never Back Down.Mr. Roe has emerged as an unusual lightning rod, among DeSantis allies and rivals alike. His aggressive approach to both campaigning and business development was the subject of a recent Washington Post article that detailed his firm’s efforts to vacuum up ever more revenue, including from its political clients.Mr. Trump himself obsesses over Mr. Roe, who is the only political consultant that he regularly talks about, according to people who have discussed the matter with the former president. Advisers so regularly feed him stories about the money spent on Mr. Roe’s losing campaigns that Mr. Trump has coined a nickname for him: “the kiss of death.”Never Back Down has already spent more than $10 million on pro-DeSantis television ads this spring. The early spending has been the subject of second-guessing from some DeSantis allies as it coincided with a drop in the polls. But Never Back Down advisers defended the ads as not just propping up Mr. DeSantis before he enters the race but as part of an enormous experiment — including mail, text messaging and control groups — to study what means of communicating works against Mr. Trump.Officials said voters were surveyed before and after in tens of thousands of interviews to determine the impact. 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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Why It’s Far Too Soon to Say DeSantis Is Done

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      Despite his struggles, fortunes can change very quickly in presidential primaries.Will Ron DeSantis start attacking Donald Trump?Sophie Park for The New York TimesIs the Ron DeSantis campaign already over?After the last few months, it’s hard not to wonder. His poll numbers have plummeted. Would-be donors seem skeptical. Pundits have questioned whether he should even run at all.But as he finally announces a presidential bid, expected later today, it is worth mulling his path back to contention. Despite it all, Ron DeSantis could still be the next Republican nominee.That might seem hard to imagine, but fortunes can change astonishingly quickly in presidential primaries. There are still more than six months until the Iowa caucuses, and there will be plenty of opportunities for him to right his ship.In the end, the factors that made Mr. DeSantis formidable at the beginning of the year could prove to be more significant than the stumbles and miscues that have recently hobbled him. The damage is not yet irreparable.Of course, the fact that he could mount a comeback doesn’t mean he will come back. His campaign’s decision to announce his bid on Twitter tonight forfeits a rare opportunity to be televised live on multiple networks in favor of a feature, Twitter Spaces, that I don’t even know how to use as a frequent Twitter user. And even if his campaign is ultimately run differently than it has been so far, it’s not clear that even a perfectly run Republican campaign would defeat Donald J. Trump — at least if the former president survives his various legal challenges politically unscathed.But if you’re tempted to write off Mr. DeSantis, you might want to think again. The history of primary elections is littered with candidates who are written off, only to surge into contention. Unknown candidates like Herman Cain briefly become front-runners. Early front-runners like Joe Biden and John McCain are written off, then come back to win. Even Barack Obama spent six months struggling and trailing an “inevitable” Hillary Clinton by double digits.Perhaps one day we’ll say something similar about Mr. DeSantis’s candidacy. As with the candidates who ultimately surged back to victory, the strengths that made Mr. DeSantis seem so promising after the midterms are still there today. He still has unusually broad appeal throughout the Republican Party. His favorability ratings remain strong — stronger than Mr. Trump’s — even though his standing against Mr. Trump has deteriorated in head-to-head polling. He is still defined by issues — like the fight against “woke” and coronavirus restrictions — that also have broad appeal throughout his party. If this was enough to be a strong contender in January, there’s reason it might be again.While it’s easy to see Mr. DeSantis’s decline over the last few months as a sign of profound weakness, the volatility of the polling can also be interpreted to mean there’s a large group of voters open to both candidates. They might be prone to lurch one way or the other, depending on the way the political winds are blowing.Mr. DeSantis’s strategy so far this year may have also increased the likelihood of big swings. As I wrote last week, there are two theories for defeating the former president — Trumpism without Trump, and a reinvigorated conservative alternative to Trump. Of the two, the proto-DeSantis campaign can more easily be interpreted as a version of Trumpism without Trump. If his campaign has done anything, it’s to narrow any disagreement with Mr. Trump — even to a fault. Mr. DeSantis hasn’t really made either an explicit or implicit case against the former president. Perhaps worse, he hasn’t punched back after being attacked.This combination of choices has helped set up an unusually rapid decline in Mr. DeSantis’s support. After all, the only thing that unifies a hypothetical Trumpism without Trump coalition is opposition to Mr. Trump and the prospect of beating him. If you’re not attacking him and you’re losing to him, then you’re not saying or doing the only two things that can hold your supporters together.The evaporating basis for Mr. DeSantis’s support has played out subtly differently on two different fronts. On the right, conservative voters open to someone other than Mr. Trump nonetheless have returned to the side of the former president. What kind of conservative wants Trumpism without strength? Toward the center, the many relatively moderate and neoconservative establishment Republicans who yearn for a candidacy opposed to Trumpism, not just to the conduct of the man himself, have withheld crucial support for Mr. DeSantis and flirted with other options, from Chris Christie to Chris Sununu.But if the DeSantis campaign can revitalize the case for his Trumpism without Trump candidacy, he might quickly reclaim many of the voters who backed him a few months ago. Indeed, it’s even possible that the current media narrative and low expectations are setting the stage for a DeSantis resurgence.Imagine what it might feel like if he launched a successful, vigorous attack against Mr. Trump after all of these months on defense. What might have otherwise been a routine sparring match would be imbued with far greater significance, unleashing months of pent-up anxiety among his supporters. What if part of the reason he’s announcing his candidacy on Twitter is to mock Truth Social? Silly as it sounds, successfully putting down Mr. Trump might breathe life into his candidacy — and the media loves a comeback story.One important factor keeping Mr. DeSantis’s path open is that, so far, none of the potential moderate alternatives to him have gained a foothold in the race. If they did, it would deny him the moderate and neoconservative voters who supported the likes of John Kasich and Marco Rubio in the last primary. He would essentially become another Ted Cruz.But for now, Mr. DeSantis is the only viable not-Trump candidate in town. As long as that’s true, he will have every chance to rebound among the voters who would prefer someone other than Mr. Trump — if there is a market for someone other than Mr. Trump.In the end, whether there’s sufficient demand for a Trump alternative may be the bigger question than whether Mr. DeSantis can resuscitate his campaign. With Mr. Trump already holding more than 50 percent support in the polls, actually defeating Mr. Trump might require some breaks, like the possibility that his legal challenges are worse than we might assume. It might also require a DeSantis win in Iowa to break Mr. Trump’s grip on a crucial segment of the party, much as the midterms seemed to temporarily crack Mr. Trump’s base last winter.But even if Mr. Trump is a clear favorite, it’s easy to see how Mr. DeSantis can at least make this a competitive race again. When he’s able to focus on his own issues, he has a distinctive political brand with rare appeal throughout a divided Republican Party. With expectations so low, the groundwork for a recovery might even be in place. It’s happened before. More

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      Ron DeSantis to Announce 2024 Presidential Run With Elon Musk on Twitter

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      Adding a twist to the beginning of his presidential campaign, the Florida governor is expected to appear on a live audio conversation with Mr. Musk, the social platform’s owner, on Wednesday evening.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is planning to announce the start of his 2024 presidential campaign on Wednesday in a live audio conversation on Twitter with Elon Musk, the platform’s polarizing owner, according to people with knowledge of his plans.Mr. DeSantis’s entry into the Republican primary race against former President Donald J. Trump has been widely expected, but the decision to do so with Mr. Musk adds a surprising element and gives Mr. DeSantis access to a large audience online. NBC News first reported the plans.The event on Twitter Spaces, which is planned for 6 p.m. Eastern, injects a level of risk into a rollout that is expected to be carefully scripted and ensures that Mr. DeSantis’s first impression as a presidential candidate will be aligning himself with Mr. Musk, an eccentric businessman who has ranked at times as the world’s richest man.One challenge for Mr. DeSantis as he enters the 2024 race will be competing for attention with Mr. Trump, who for decades has shown a knack for commandeering the limelight. Mr. Trump’s aides have signaled for months that he plans to return to Twitter sooner rather than later. Mr. Musk already lifted the ban on the former president that was imposed when Twitter was a public company.In addition to his Twitter event, Mr. DeSantis is expected to appear on Wednesday evening on Fox News in an interview with Trey Gowdy, a former congressman from South Carolina, according to the network. The governor has also gathered donors on Wednesday at the Four Seasons in Miami to began raising money for his campaign.A super PAC backing Mr. Trump mocked the plans.“This is one of the most out-of-touch campaign launches in modern history,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Make America Great Again, the pro-Trump group. “The only thing less relatable than a niche campaign launch on Twitter, is DeSantis’s after party at the uber-elite Four Seasons resort in Miami.”Mr. Musk said at an event with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that he was not formally throwing his support behind Mr. DeSantis, or any other Republican. On Monday, he retweeted a video of the presidential kickoff event for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, another Republican contender.Under Mr. Musk, Twitter has cultivated a more Republican audience. This month, Tucker Carlson, the fired former Fox News star, announced he would host his popular show on Twitter.The DeSantis event with Mr. Musk will be moderated by David Sacks, a Republican donor who is a supporter of the governor and is close to Mr. Musk. Mr. Sacks, a technology entrepreneur and investor, donated $50,000 to Mr. DeSantis’s state political committee ahead of his re-election, campaign finance records show. He has spoken positively of the governor’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in Florida. “He was the first governor to stop these insane lockdowns,” Mr. Sacks said on Bloomberg TV in 2021. “I respect that.”In choosing Spaces, Mr. DeSantis is relying on an audio-only streaming tool with a history of bugs and failures. Mr. Musk has used the feature regularly in the six months since he bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, appearing on Spaces to talk about the state of his various businesses and give interviews, which draw tens of thousands of listeners.Mr. Musk has said he voted for President Biden in the 2020 election, but has since been critical of him and his administration, which has a frosty relationship with Tesla, his electric car company. The billionaire has said it is difficult for Mr. Biden to stay in touch with voters at the age of 80.When asked about Mr. Biden in an interview on CNBC last week, Mr. Musk said he just wanted “a normal human being” to lead the country.“It’s not simply a matter of, do they share your beliefs?” he said. “But are they good at getting things done?”While Mr. Musk has called himself a moderate, donating relatively small amounts to both Republicans and Democrats in the past, he has shifted his support in recent years toward the right. On Twitter he has engaged with and shared right-wing conspiracy theories, including one about the October attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.Mr. Musk has voiced his support for Mr. DeSantis, including last July, when he tweeted that the Florida governor would “easily win” if matched up against Mr. Biden in 2024. And in November he responded in the affirmative when asked by a Twitter user if he would support Mr. DeSantis in that year’s election.Last summer, when Mr. DeSantis was asked about Mr. Musk’s potential support, the Florida governor cracked: “I welcome support from African Americans. What can I say?” (Mr. Musk is white and from South Africa.)In Florida, Mr. DeSantis has supported legislation intended, in his words, to protect people against “Silicon Valley elites.” He has also criticized tech companies for their efforts to remove misinformation from their platforms, which he has likened to an assault on free speech and truth undertaken in concert with government officials.“You’ve seen the administrative state collude with Big Tech to censor truthful information, whether it’s people attacking Covid lockdowns, whether it’s them questioning the efficacy of masks or school closures,” Mr. DeSantis said in an April speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation. “There was a concerted effort for Big Tech companies to do what government is never permitted to do directly.”On Tuesday evening, the governor’s wife, Casey DeSantis, tweeted a video of Mr. DeSantis preparing to walk onto a stage — a clear foreshadowing of his pending announcement. “They call it faith because in the face of darkness you can see that brighter future,” a narrator intones. The video asks supporters to text a phone number for more information.“Thank you for subscribing to receive texts from Ron DeSantis for President,” the automatic reply reads. “Pre-launch status: PENDING.” More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy’s Long Shot Run at the Republican Nomination

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      GOOSE LAKE, Iowa — “We’re like a bunch of blind bats. We human beings are, we millennials are, we Americans are,” Vivek Ramaswamy riffed. “We can’t see where we are.”Bats send sonar signals, which bounce off objects and allow the mammal to navigate. “So we do that, we send out our signals, and it bounces off something that is true, something that is real, like family. The two parents who brought me into this world, my mother and father. The two children who I brought into this world,” he went on. “That is real. That is true. That means something to me.”In person, Mr. Ramaswamy’s presentation is a lot more intense; it is also about a bleaker landscape of American life than the bright version of Trumpism he’s trying to project.“We’re hungry for a cause,” he said of millennials when he spoke on a recent Friday night in Iowa, in a navy suit and white dress shirt, not pausing too often for applause and walking the stage. “We’re hungry for purpose and meaning. And identity. At a point in our national history when the things that used to fill that void — things like faith, patriotism, hard work, family — these things have disappeared.” Instead, he said, “poison” and “secular cults” had taken their place.All of this — the bats and the void and the disappearance of our families from the collective American identity — was delivered to a county committee dinner in a friendly ballroom with an open bar, a buffet, patriotic decorations and a fun local musician playing country hits from the past.This is what a pro-capitalism candidate looks like in post-Trump Republican politics, in which the emphasis is on the creation of a national identity in the face of spiritual emptiness and the idea that big business and the customer aren’t always right.The next morning, at campaign events held at one of those cool digital driving ranges and at a pizza place with a beautiful old tin ceiling, the American identity crisis talk continued. “There’s more to life than just the aimless passage of time, going through the motions,” he said standing in front of what looked like a floor-to-ceiling image of a Pebble Beach fairway. “You’re more than the genetic attributes you inherited on the day you were born,” he went on to say. “You are you.”He is technically the business candidate, but not really. This is the elite corporate executive as culture warrior. Mr. Ramaswamy’s pitch in Iowa was not about the application of free-market principles to the federal government, at least not in the way you might expect from a pre-Trump Republican business candidate. Nor was it economic populism, either, not really, because his idea isn’t so much that corporations are ripping you off; it’s that they’re in bad-faith league with one another to advance liberal pieties.Thalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesTheoretically, he could be doing a business pitch. Mr. Ramaswamy started a pharmaceutical investment and drug development company that picked up pharmaceutical projects abandoned by other companies and aimed to bring the drugs to market. In 2020, as C.E.O., he refused to support Black Lives Matter and in 2021 was an author of a Wall Street Journal opinion essay arguing that online platforms were censoring people when they blocked accounts in the chaotic aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021. He has published three books critiquing the environmental, social and governance practices of BlackRock and other fund managers and started an anti-E.S.G. asset management firm.As Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review pointed out, Mr. Ramaswamy has chosen to “download and internalize” MAGA moods — shutting down the F.B.I., replacing the A.T.F., raising the voting age to 25 unless you pass a civics test or serve in the military or as an emergency worker. These are the kind of proposals that are drafted to please and anger the right people and never happen. He’s given $10,000 to the defense fund of Daniel Penny, the man accused of second-degree manslaughter in the subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely, and his campaign is selling a coffee mug that reads “truth,” with the words “wokeism,” “climatism” and “transgenderism” crossed out above. He has repeatedly portrayed trans people as mentally ill.As a Ramaswamy campaign memo recently said, “The mistake every other campaign is making is that they see their path to the nomination through Trump, when our path is alongside Trump.” In reality, many Republican politicians have seen their path alongside Mr. Trump as they wait for someone else to break him like a big piñata.Mr. Ramaswamy wants to restore an American identity that, in speeches, involves a lot of concepts but rarely anecdotes. That identity would involve the pursuit of excellence, which he described in an interview along vague, traditional lines — people achieving their maximal potential, free of societal hindrance. He contended this ethic is absent from corporate life. “I think that part of this is psychological, that in the moment people feel compelled to apologize for excellence,” he told me. To “be accepted as cool,” the most successful “have to apologize for the system that got them there by sticking the word ‘stakeholder’ in front of it,” he said, and called “the racial equity agenda” an “example of prioritizing a different value.”Mr. Ramaswamy came up in an elite world where some people employ the idea of charity or progressive impulses to get ahead, first in admissions, then in business, and they sometimes become deluded or self-interested ethical consumers. “Whatever justice is, surely it can’t be attained so incidentally, by just picking the right shirts, the right burgers and the right bankers,” he writes in the book “Woke, Inc.” He’s bothered by that thing many also dislike, which is a hedge fund putting in place a superficial diversity effort intended to disrupt as little as possible to prevent a lawsuit or make money, or a corporation with an aspirational brand made of cotton produced in the Xinjiang region of China.This is the world summarized by Sam Bankman-Fried last year in a DM he later claimed he thought was off the record: “this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”In “Woke, Inc.,” Mr. Ramaswamy’s solution is to separate politics and business. He argues that both stakeholder capitalists and Milton Friedman devotees miss something in the corporate system we have: A sole focus on fiduciary duty and profit maximization keeps corporations from becoming extragovernmental bodies like Dutch colonial trading companies.But it’s also not as if the only time anyone cares about racism in America is to sell Pepsi or to get into Columbia. The practical implications of keeping business and politics separate become complicated quickly for this reason; the economy is made up of millions of individuals who live in the larger world. “This is a business,” as Dolly Parton said of her decision to remove “Dixie,” the nickname for the South often associated with the Confederacy, from the Stampede, two dinner show attractions she owns. She didn’t want to offend prospective customers. What if Chick-fil-A wants to stay closed on Sundays? What if a company wants to market fratty beer to trans people and supporters as customers in and of themselves? What counts as maximizing profit or respecting the employees, and what counts as politics? What is politics?Over the past decade, many presidential candidates — especially the long-shot, unconventional kind in both parties — have talked in secular-spiritual ways about voids in American life and the corruption among elites. There are different theories of the case (technological change, inequality, institutional decline, loneliness), including the omnipresence of corporations and the emptiness of material goods for justice. The vision that markets and capitalism would liberalize the world and accelerate the realization of a pluralistic America, full of choice and privacy and respect, has begun to dim.Mr. Ramaswamy has isolated a problem in that vision (the hollowness of so much of corporate social policy). His national-identity-based explanation for the void is winning with some post-Trump conservative politicians who see the “power, dominion, control and punishment” that Mr. Ramaswamy said he believes are behind climate activism in much of American elite life. It’s a lean time for the sunnier version of a capitalist pitch — in which climate change is a problem but also a business opportunity, just like the valued employees and customers in a pluralistic, ever-changing American society.Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More