Campaign

The Memo: DeSantis confronts moment of truth

by Niall Stanage - 08/10/23 4:00 AM ET

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has arrived at an early moment of truth in his presidential campaign.

DeSantis replaced his campaign manager earlier this week, moving Generra Peck aside to be supplanted by his chief of staff in Florida, James Uthmeier.

This is the latest moment of drama for a White House quest that has stumbled badly in its early stages.

DeSantis is further behind former President Trump than he was when his campaign began. With other rivals edging a little closer to DeSantis’s second place in opinion polling, and no shortage of people willing to condemn him for various missteps, the Florida governor needs to right the ship fast.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) speaks at the Heritage Foundation 50th Anniversary Leadership Summit at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., on Friday, April 21, 2023.

DeSantis’s allies contend the predictions of doom are way overdone and that things will come right in the end. They argue that he remains the sole serious competitor to Trump, in part because he has significant organizational muscle. They note the campaign has a long way to run and claim to see evidence of on-the-ground enthusiasm for him in the early states.

DeSantis World contends that 10,000 Iowans have already committed to caucus for the Florida governor. Even if some of those people break their word or change their mind, it is a notable statistic if true. The last time there was a contested Iowa GOP caucus, in 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) won with fewer than 52,000 votes.

Trump aides and allies for their part evince bullish confidence. With the former president leading DeSantis by almost 40 points in national polling averages, Team Trump is eager to keep its collective boot on the Florida governor’s neck.

“Bless his heart, but Governor DeSantis doesn’t have a campaign staff problem, he has a candidate problem,” Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told this column. “You can’t coach personality.”

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DeSantis’s campaign has been beset by missteps and a growing impression that the GOP electorate simply may not be interested in buying what he is selling — essentially, a Trump-like stance with less chaos.

Trump has now been criminally indicted in three separate cases, and none of them have whittled away at his advantage over DeSantis.

The Florida governor has at times offered a measure of sympathy for Trump, echoing his complaints about the alleged “weaponization” of the justice system.

However, in an NBC News interview broadcast Monday, DeSantis was firmer than usual in pushing back against Trump’s fictitious claims of widespread election fraud in 2020.

“Of course he lost,” DeSantis told reporter Dasha Burns. “Joe Biden’s the president.”

Those are the kind of assertions that Trump-skeptical Republicans believe DeSantis should have been making all along.

“Instead of attacking and bludgeoning Trump for the indictments, he has more or less defended him,” said former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.). “He essentially empowered Trump and helped him.”

Still, DeSantis’s allies contend that much of the chorus of disapproval is premature or wrongheaded. They cite how early polls have been misleading in previous nomination battles.

Meanwhile, debate season has not even started. The first clash is set for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee. Whether or not Trump participates, the debate at least gives DeSantis — and other Trump rivals — the chance to create a galvanizing moment.

Kristin Davison, the chief operating officer of Never Back Down, the main super-PAC supporting DeSantis, told this column in a phone interview that Trump’s strength is being exaggerated in media coverage and Beltway chatter.

“It is clear that this is a two-person race,” Davison said, “and 50 percent of Republicans want to vote for people not named Donald Trump.”

Davison further insisted that DeSantis had weathered an early barrage of Trump-affiliated attacks.

“He was hit with about $22 million of negative advertising originally — that number is probably closer to $26 million right now — from the Trump campaign and the Trump super-PAC,” Davison said. “Any other candidate would not have survived that.”

As for the change in campaign leadership, DeSantis communications director Andrew Romeo said that the new head, Uthmeier, “has been one of Governor DeSantis’s top advisors for years and he is needed where it matters most: working hand in hand with Generra Peck and the rest of the team to put the governor in the best possible position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden.”

Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a fundraising event for U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, Sunday, Aug. 6, 2023, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

DeSantis supporters note there has been a shift toward more intimate events on the campaign trail in recent times, and that the governor has increased the cadence of his visits to the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in recent weeks. DeSantis has also become more accessible to the mainstream media, as evidenced by the NBC News interview among others.

One more line pushed by people close to DeSantis is that he is not so heavily dependent upon the outcome in a single state as are other Trump rivals such as former Vice President Mike Pence in Iowa, or former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in New Hampshire.

Still, DeSantis’s failure to make progress so far is telling. It also raises the question of whether Trump is simply too popular with the GOP base for any other contender to emerge as a serious rival.

Some people with completely disparate ideologies find common ground on this point.

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said that the problem for DeSantis could be as simple as him running against Trump in the first place.

Any Trump rival has, in the eyes of the MAGA battalions, committed “unforgivable sins,” Carville said. “Their guy [Trump] was at war and [DeSantis] was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They will punish all of them.”

A GOP operative supporting Trump separately made a near-identical point.

“DeSantis’s popularity with the GOP base was always tied to the view that he was pro-Trump,” the operative said. “The moment he started leaning into being anti-Trump, he began losing support.”

DeSantis, the pro-Trump operative claimed, has been trying to paint himself as a more hard-line conservative than the former president on hot-button social issues.

“They are going to say Donald Trump is too weak in the culture wars,” the source said. “But for our voters, Donald Trump IS the culture wars.”

The next phase of the campaign will be make-or-break for DeSantis. Time is already beginning to run short.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Alex Gangitano contributed.