If you haven't started paying attention, you've probably seen the pugnacious Florida governor likened to "Trump 2.0"
There is a combative attitude. There is an anti-woke agenda. The stunts are attention seeking. The hand gestures are odd.
He wasn't the next Donald. The governor of a key swing state who seemed determined to govern from the center of the environment, education, marijuana, criminal justice and public accountability seemed to have positioned himself as something else entirely.
180 campaign operatives, lobbyists, money-raisers, political scientists and other veterans of Florida politics graded the governor's performance as a B or better after he took office.
One Dem said that he was a different kind of Republican. I believe that Gov. DeSantis is trying to change the public perception of Republicans in Florida.
Bob Buckhorn said that he had taken a very pragmatic course. I have been very pleased and surprised by the decisions he has made.
Buckhorn is one of the Democrats who have changed their minds. The former mayor says they have been fed a steady diet of culture wars since then. Any attempt to tack to the center was either a plan that was abandoned or a plan that never came to fruition.
The moderate moment was a real thing. It was clear. It didn't expose the governor as a centrist, he's always been a conservative at heart, from the book-length rant against Barack Obama he published right before running for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 to his subsequent stint in congress as a founding member of the He pantomimed reading "The Art of the Deal" to his baby in one ad.
The political pivot shows that he has mastered it, as evidenced by his decision to shift to the center for much of the year.
Susan MacManus, a professor of political science at the University of South Florida and a long-time expert on Florida politics, says that DeSantis reads the sentiment of the public at the time and has the ability to react. He is very astute and very strategic.
The ability to maneuver through an evolving political landscape without getting on the wrong side of public opinion is what distinguishes the man from the man.
John Morgan is a Democratic donor and political rainmaker. He's smarter than Donald. Trump doesn't read anything. The man is reading a lot.
There are people who see things as black and white. You can see it clearly. It's all calculated. I believe that's how Ron DeSantis does his job.
This is the key contrast that could come to define the GOP primary contest if the Florida governor challenges the former president.
It may make it more difficult for Democrats to win.
March 2020 is when most Ron DeSantis stories begin.
COVIDs are implemented at first. He changed his mind three weeks later. He says that they won't do any of them again. mask mandates, school closings, vaccine boosters, and other measures are becoming more hostile to him as the Pandemic continues. Critics say he's called DeathSantis. What was DeSantis's response? Florida is not a colony. He's the future of the party, according to Fox News. How schools teach about race, how teachers talk about gender, how corporations handle LGBTQ rights, and how Floridians are allowed to vote are just a few of the culture war issues he can pick out. A new voting law is signed live on the show.
The story ends with DeSantis winning reelection by 19 percentage points, as the rest of the GOP stumbles.
The political incentives of the man were pointing in a different direction before the epidemic. He was following where they took the lead.
In November of last year, Ron DeSantis was elected governor by less than 30,000 votes. The race was very close.
National Democrats accused DeSantis of trying to play whites against blacks after he wrongly claimed that he had defeated Andrew Gillum.
During their debate, Gillum said he wasn't calling Mr. DeSantis a racist. The racists think he's a racist.
In January of this year, DeSantis took office without much of a mandate.
The narrowness of his victory made it clear to Republicans that they need to broaden their base.
DeSantis seemed to grasp this delicate dynamic, unlike Trump, who immediately issued his divisive "Muslim ban".
He said in his address before his inauguration that he would keep the charge of serving all of Florida. It is time for our state to come together even though there are political differences.
Politician pay lip service to bipartisanship when they are in office. But DeSantis kept going. In stark contrast to his Republican predecessor Rick Scott, the new governor made it his mission from the beginning to get legislators to vote for him.
"He said that the Legislature should not be a rubber stamp for the governor and that he wanted us to work together and to have independent branches of government," the Democrat was told. I take that to mean something to me. She said she was optimistic.
State Representative Bill Montford said that he was reaching out. I think he will try to expand bipartisanship on a lot of these issues.
Everyone was surprised that he did that to a degree.
He was trying to get votes from people who didn't vote for him in the general election. It was appreciated because it was the correct thing to do.
One of the governor's first moves was to get a full pardon for the Groveland Four, a group of three black men and one black teenager who were wrongly accused of raping a seventeen year old white girl.
One of the accused was lynched and all of the others were long dead, but Scott dodged the case.
A family member said that it was a cloud lifted. Shame is taken away.
The idea that he was racist was part of the campaign. The Black community had been arguing for a long time. He did it fast.
The Miami Herald reported at the time that the two Democrats in the administration were surprising because they were expected to beloyal supporters of the Republicans.
The GOP political strategist told the Herald that he was not a supporter of the candidate. I was expecting the appointments to be more heavy on campaign operatives and that has not been the case.
Scott had banned smokable medical marijuana, but it was reversed by DeSantis, who threatened to take executive action if lawmakers did not repeal it themselves. He wrote on the wall that Florida would always remember the 49 people who died in the massacre at the gay nightclub. His first budget proposal broke the record for spending and contained no major cuts, putting him at odds with fiscal conservatives in the Florida House.
The headline asked, "Where did this man come from?" It was assumed that he would govern exclusively from the right.
The environmental agenda was the most striking of all. Scott had banned officials from using the words "climate change" or "global warming" in order to cut funding for water management. The nickname "Red Tide Rick" was given to him after a nasty algal bloom killed fish and other marine animals.
In contrast, DeSantis was in a position to take advantage.
According to Frank Jackalone, director of the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, red tide was a bipartisan issue. It doesn't matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat.
Along with a red tide task force to reduce the adverse impacts of blue-green algae blooms, the highest level of funding in the state's history, was proposed by the new governor.
"Obviously, we don't want to go on a spending binge, but I think some of the stuff we're looking to do, like with the water quality..." I would like to bite that bullet.
Climate change is real and humans are responsible for it, as evidenced by the appointment of the University of Florida's first chief science officer, Thomas Frazer.
It has been remarkable to see people acknowledge that DeSantis wasn't lying. He is doing it In the 12 years before him, he did less than he has done so far.
The new approach was liked by many people in Florida. A majority of Democrats approve of how DeSantis is handling his job, according to a survey. There was a survey from around the same time that showed his disapproval at 24%. It was the most favorable rating any Florida governor had ever received.
"I'm sure there will be plenty of things he'll do that Democrats won't like, but you build for those moments like he is now" If you want to figure out where the country is going to be, you can spend a lot of time playing chess. He is doing a good job as governor and letting cards fall where they please.
A burst of bipartisan good feeling did not last for long.
By the time his first budget passed in May, Republican efforts to ban sanctuary cities, restrict future ballot measures and make it harder for ex-felons to regain the right to vote were already having an effect on Democrats.
People may start to miss Gov. Scott because of the amount of damage he is going to be doing. DeSantis is a little bit like Trump.
He was always a moderate. He was playing one on TV, picking popular, high-profile pressure points where he could deviate from conservative orthodoxy, then emphasizing those quirks more than, say, his efforts to boost school vouchers, or appoint conservative.
The politics of the moment was what he was focusing on. It worked.
There are great wins for conservatives but there are also things that appeal to a lot of Democrats. I think there's something for everybody in this place.
If he runs in a primary that requires him to pry conservatives away from Trump and then in a general election that requires him to court moderates, it's almost certain that he'll operate that way.
Morgan, who describes himself as a Biden Democrat, believes that the risk to Biden is greater than the risk to Trump.
Morgan said that DeSantis knew how to walk that line.
It is also true that he has continued to increase his spending despite the fact that his focus has shifted to riling the nationalMAGA base.
There is a plan to appeal to both Republicans who fear that Trump can't win and swing voters who don't want to see either of the last two presidents serve a second term. He knows he can navigate this type of switchback before. Trump has never attempted. That could make a big difference in the future.
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