Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has announced his intention to run for President of the United States in 2024. The Republican leader has shifted from supporter to competitor to former US President Donald Trump. He has risen to national prominence in the last year, owing primarily to his run-ins with Disney, which has its most prominent theme park in Florida.
The announcement was made on Twitter Spaces, a Twitter feature allowing participants to have an audio chat. Twitter CEO Elon Musk hosted the event, but technical difficulties caused the sound to go out for a while, and hundreds of users were unable to join and listen in. On the website, the hashtag #DeSaster began to trend.
His declaration comes only days after another Republican, Tim Scott, declared his plans to run. Apart from them, Indian-origin former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and Trump are two other key Republican candidates. After a lengthy process, one of them will be picked to be the face of the elections, in which incumbent President Joe Biden will also run. Here are five things you should know about the fiery leader.
A Yale and Harvard graduate, he began his career in the Navy
The 44-year-old was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 2012. He was elected governor six years later, in 2018, and was re-elected for a second term in 2022.
DeSantis describes himself as a “blue-collar native Floridian.” He graduated from Yale University with honors, where he was captain of the varsity baseball team. He afterward attended Harvard Law School. During his time at Harvard, he worked as a JAG officer for the US Navy’s legal branch. In 2010, he was honorably discharged from the military.
He later worked as a federal prosecutor before running for a seat in Florida’s Sixth Congressional District in 2012. Early in his political career, DeSantis’ campaign was mostly focused on economic topics often championed by Republicans, such as small government and lower taxes. He was also a strong critic of the policies of former President Barack Obama.
From Donald Trump supporter to adversary
When DeSantis declared his candidacy for governor in 2018, he was backed by several notable Republican leaders, including Trump. In one of his campaign spots, he told his children to “build the wall” while playing with blocks, referring to Trump’s promise to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, and teaching them how to read using a ‘Make America Great’ sign. In his victory address, he also praised Trump, saying, “I think we’ll have a great partnership.”
However, with the start of the campaign season, that friendship has faded. “If I faced him, I’d beat him like I would beat everyone else,” Trump said in October 2021. Trump also reacted to the Disney feud, stating that when the company attempted to eliminate the power of the state board, DeSantis was “outplayed, outsmarted, and embarrassed by Mickey Mouse”, the BBC reported.
Disney’s feud
The “fight” began last year, when Disney openly opposed a Florida law that prohibited elementary school students from learning about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom. Critics have dubbed this law the “Don’t Say Gay” law. The law’s advocates argue it is intended to give parents more influence in the school curriculum, but DeSantis has stated that schools should not teach children about LGBTQ identities.
However, Disney’s resistance came after the company first remained silent in the run-up to the measure becoming law, which enraged its LGBTQ employees.
All of this has resulted in disagreements with Disney over the bill being presented as DeSantis taking on the country’s “woke” companies. The term was coined by Black Americans to express vigilance in the face of racist laws and beliefs, but it is now being used by conservative politicians to refer to anything that they consider goes too far against conservative ideals.
However, there is some tension because being pro-business and anti-government regulation is a core conservative philosophy. The governor has stated their dispute over Disney’s “special privileges” in this state. According to The New York Times, Disney recently abandoned plans to invest nearly $1 billion in an office complex planned for development in Orlando, Florida.“It would have brought more than 2,000 Disney jobs to the region, with $120,000 as the average salary, according to an estimate from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity,” it said.
Concentrate on conservative talking points
DeSantis has acquired a reputation as a leader who adheres to his party’s principles and gets things done swiftly in the short time he has governed the state.
For example, after the Covid-19 outbreak sparked a debate in the United States regarding the need for such instructions, DeSantis abolished obligatory mask requirements and quarantine limitations in 2020. Many Republicans, in particular, cited the losses incurred as a result of business closures. He has also advocated for restricting abortion access in his state.
The odds of him obtaining the Republican nomination are not encouraging, but he is still the most likely candidate
Polls show Trump leading the Florida governor, who has long been regarded as a rising Republican star and the herald of a new generation of leaders in the party, Reuters reported.
According to a recent CNN poll, Trump is the first pick of 53% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters in the primary, more than tripling DeSantis’ 26%. This is also a drop from a CNN poll conducted in March, in which the two men were more evenly matched. “But the survey also finds that wide swaths of Republican-aligned voters are willing to consider either of the two, as well as several other candidates,” it says.
“More than 8 in 10 either support or say they’re open to considering Trump (84%) and DeSantis (85%), and smaller majorities say they support or would consider former UN ambassador Nikki Haley (61%), Scott (60%) and former Vice President Mike Pence (54%),” it adds.