Washington Wednesday: DeSantis hits the restart

MARY REICHARD, HOST:  It’s Wednesday the 9th of August, 2023.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up on The World and Everything in It…restarting the Ron DeSantis campaign.

Many Americans first heard about the Florida governor during the pandemic, when he decided to end lockdowns earlier than any other state. And then in 2022, after a projected red wave resulted in a red trickle, Ron DeSantis was the big Republican winner by 19 percentage points. Many saw his victory speech as something more…the beginning of a campaign for president.

DESANTIS: Now thanks to the overwhelming support of the people of Florida we not only won election, we have rewritten the political map.

REICHARD: For months, analysts speculated about the timing of DeSantis’s inevitable announcement that he would run for president. All the while, polls indicated that if DeSantis jumped into the race, he would be neck and neck with former President Donald Trump.

On May 24th he jumped in…making the unusual decision to announce his campaign in a Twitter Spaces event…and it got off to a rough start.

TWITTER SPACES: Yeah, I mean, so Governor DeSantis can, are you there? Can you hear us? I think you, I, I know, I think, I think you broke the internet there. We had over half a million people in one Twitter space and it was growing by like 50,000 a minute.

BROWN: Instead of boosting his polling numbers, DeSantis’s campaign announcement was followed by a steady drop. Trump now has a double digit lead over DeSantis nationally.

REICHARD: So, what happened? And what does DeSantis need to do to change the direction of his campaign?

It’s Washington Wednesday, and joining us to talk about it is WORLD Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno.

LEO BRICENO, REPORTER: Hey Mary, thanks for having me.

REICHARD: Well, what's been the DeSantis strategy since he announced his candidacy, in particular, anything to distinguish himself from the other candidates?

BRICENO:

Well, sure, in the three months since he's launched his campaign DeSantis has been running the primary gauntlet, right, that looks like campaigning heavily in Iowa. That's the first state that will vote in the GOP primary. He's been shoring up support, and more traditionally, Republican states like South Carolina, and getting his message across to the Republican voter base. So far, that message focused on pitching the success that he's had in Florida to the rest of the country. When DeSantis first came onto the national stage, much of the country was under the grip of COVID-19, right? And there was a lot of uncertainty about how to best balance business and public safety. And as the governor of Florida DeSantis made some really tough calls, didn't shut down the state in the same way that California and New York other states had. And in terms of economic performance, that decision paid off. And in the years since, Florida has become a magnet for businesses. It's topped rankings and higher education. And it's been an increasingly popular moving destination for families. So DeSantis's performance on things like economic strength and education have given him this platform that he's using now to pitch that same success to the rest of the country. Of course, some of that pitch is more reflective of the issues facing America at large, not just Florida. He's he's placing a lot of emphasis on competing with China, for instance, standing by American allies internationally, like Israel, and he paid a visit to Israel just recently in April. And he's focusing on increasing American energy production, things like that.

REICHARD: So DeSantis is zeroed in on policy…but that’s not what the media wants to talk about.

BRICENO: That's right. Actually, when the media talks about DeSantis, it's rarely ever because they're taking a look at what he's pitching, right. A lot of screen time has gone to Trump his indictments and the comparisons between former president and the Florida Governor. That's dominated the news cycle when it comes to DeSantis. Almost every headline I've seen in association with him has been about that polling. And speaking of which, if we're if we're going by an average, something like a FiveThirtyEight poll that takes an aggregate of a number of polls, DeSantis is hovering at around 15%. Trump, by comparison, looking at the same kind of poll is around 51-52%. That disparity is really taking center stage when it comes to DeSantis. And he's having a hard time getting coverage that's about his ideas or platform, as opposed to that campaign in the moment that it's in presently.

REICHARD: That’s a story in itself; may need to follow up on that later. Leo, based on past primary races, is Trump’s lead too large for DeSantis to catch up?

BRICENO: Well, overtaking a candidate that's performing 25 points better than anyone else would be historic in this case. There have been a few instances where candidates have caught up to a front runner with a lot of momentum. Right off the top of my head John McCain comes to mind, right, in 2008, the Republican primary he overcame a 12 point deficit to beat Rudy Giuliani. Earlier still, Bill Clinton, he did something similar when he won the Democratic nomination for president. That was a 15 point lead that he overcame and ultimately beat out Mario Cuomo. But the reality is these kinds of comeback stories are a rare occurrence when it comes to primaries. Let's put it this way. I mean, no candidate with a 20 point lead has lost in the past 50 years. That's a telling statistic right there.

REICHARD: No candidate with a 20 point lead has lost in the last 50 years. I did not know that. Oh, well, we know that campaigns take money, they can only stay alive with funding. And I saw some news that DeSantis has run into some money trouble. What's going on there?

BRICENO: Yeah, on his first day as an official candidate DeSantis pulled big numbers, and we were talking money, he picked up 8 million and under 24 hours. According to disclosures from the Federal Election Commission, he's raised 130 million total to his political action committee called Never Back Down. And that sounds great. Right. But like you mentioned, part of DeSantis's problem right now is that he's also spending it faster than he's bringing it in. And those same disclosures, the same documents show that the campaign has already spent about a quarter of those funds. So do the math, that's about 32 million in three months. That's a lot of money. But, you know, that's hasn't really been accompanied by a jump in the polls. So maybe that money isn't really hitting the intended mark. Then again, he's not the only one spending hard and fast. Senator Tim Scott is planning a 40 million ad campaign, for example. Trump is a little bit of a unique situation, but his political action committee has spent close to 20 million on legal fees. DeSantis doesn't have to deal with that. So that could be an advantage for him in the long run.

REICHARD: Well, Leo, going back to the question we asked earlier…what happened to the DeSantis mojo? He seemed to be charging to the front, then he wasn’t. Is this a problem with DeSantis or is it really more about the way the political media is framing the story?

BRICENO: It could be a perception problem, sure. We've seen polls go horribly off course before. Think back to 2016 when we all thought we knew right, Hillary Clinton was going to win. And that could be happening here. But there are some troubling indicators for DeSantis. And here's just a list of few.

Number one, DeSantis was polling better before he announced his race than he has since. Pulling support as a hypothetical candidate - that's one thing; but finding support as an actual candidate is another. Somehow, someway DeSantis has to find a way to stoke the excitement, to stoke the buzz that was surrounding his, the possibility of his campaign before he started running. He's got to recreate that somehow. Two, he's behind Trump by 20 points in his home state of Florida, according to Atlantic University. Nationally, as I just mentioned, that number’s worse - around 35%. Now it's important to note that Trump is also from Florida, so that could throw a wrench into things, but most of the time, if you're a presidential candidate, you're expecting your home state to support you. And that just doesn't seem to be the case here for DeSantis. And third, since being indicted for the first time back in March, Trump's support has gone up by 10%, not down. If you're DeSantis, that's really not good.

REICHARD: So what is DeSantis doing about it? Has he grabbed the bull by the horns, acknowledged problems and shown a new direction?

BRICENO: Well for starters, just yesterday, he replaced his campaign manager, Gennera Peck [Jeh-NAIR-uh Peck]. Peck was his campaign manager during the 2022 reelection campaign for governor in Florida, but this time around, things are different. CNN reported that donors and supporters have been concerned about the campaign message lacking clarity, and there was some talk about DeSantis being reluctant to pull the plug on Peck. Now she’s been moved into a strategy role, and James Uthmeier [OAT-meyer], DeSantis’s gubernatorial chief of staff, is taking over.

Uthemeir yesterday told The Messenger that this isn’t a reboot, but more of a reload…quote “People have written Governor DeSantis’s obituary many times,” meaning that he’s been in situations like this before and managed to pull off a win.

Now, this is DeSantis’ third campaign shakeup in less than a month. So whether this newest change brings stability to his campaign will be interesting to watch in the next few weeks here.

REICHARD: Well, the next opportunity to change the narrative will be at the first Republican primary debate on August 23rd in Milwaukee. Who’s qualified for the debate and what can we expect?

BRICENO: So far, eight Republicans have qualified for the debates. That means a candidate must attract 40,000 individual donors and pull in a certain percentage across several polls. And right now those eight qualifying candidates are Donald Trump. Governor Ron DeSantis, Senator Tim Scott, former Governor Nikki Haley, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, Governor Doug Burgum, and Mike Pence. So, Donald Trump in this case has not officially agreed to participate just yet.

REICHARD: Leo Briceno is a politics reporter for WORLD’s Washington Bureau. Thanks for this report!

BRICENO: Sure thing, thanks for having me!

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