After months of anticipation, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis formally entered the fray of the Republican presidential primaries on Wednesday.
So far, he is considered the strongest rival to former President Donald Trump in the hotly contested race for the Republican Party’s nomination for president. However, many voters are just getting to know the 44-year-old governor.
Here are five things to know about DeSantis, the new Republican Party presidential hopeful:
THE FIRST YEARS OF DESANTIS’ LIFE
Born in Florida with family roots in the Midwest, DeSantis was a standout baseball player growing up. He represented the Dunedin, Florida team in the 1991 Little League World Series. He later became team captain for Yale University.
After a brief stint as a high school teacher, he attended Harvard Law School. He then became the Navy’s general counsel, a position that took him to Iraq and the Guantanamo detention center.
DeSantis ran for Congress in 2012, won his metropolitan Orlando district and became a founding member of the right-wing Freedom Caucus on Capitol Hill. Like many conservatives in Congress at the time, he pushed for changes to the Medicare program and Social Security, including a measure that would have raised the retirement age to 70.
He served three terms in Congress before launching what was considered a risky run for Florida governor in 2018. He won that race by less than a percentage point and was reelected in a landslide last year.
OPPONENT TO THE WOKE
Perhaps more than any other Republican in the nation, DeSantis has fought for and enacted policies that fuel America’s cultural divisions. He has said that it is about his war against the “woke”, a term used derogatorily to refer to concepts of liberal ideology.
He has just wrapped up a legislative session that makes him the most aggressive and accomplished conservative governor in the country’s raging culture wars.
Signed into law and later expanded the Parental Rights in Education Act, known by critics as “Don’t Say Gay,” which prohibits lessons or discussion of LGBTQ issues in classrooms. Florida public schools in all grades. He also enacted a law that prohibits state and federal funding for diversity, equality and inclusion programs at state universities.
A few weeks ago, he enacted a law that prohibits abortions from the sixth week of pregnancy, before most women know they are pregnant. She removed an elected prosecutor who had vowed not to prosecute people who violate Florida’s new abortion restrictions or doctors who provide gender-confirmation care.
DeSantis signed into law a law this spring that allows Floridians to carry a concealed firearm without a permit. He pushed through new measures that experts warn will weaken press freedom. He also seized control of a liberal arts college that he believed was indoctrinating students with leftist ideology.
THE DISPUTE WITH DISNEY
DeSantis is willing to fight anyone who gets in his way.
The best example of this is his dispute with Disney, one of the largest employers in the state.
The dispute began last year after Disney, heavily pressured both internally and externally, publicly opposed the “Don’t Say Gay” law. In retaliation, DeSantis took control of the Disney World Autonomous District in a measure approved by Florida lawmakers and named a new board of supervisors that would oversee municipal utilities for the company’s massive theme parks and hotels.
DeSantis has threatened to build a state prison near the Disney property.
The dispute has been condemned by business leaders and his Republican rivals, who said the actions run counter to the conservatism he espouses for small government.
Disney has filed a lawsuit against the DeSantis administration, a legal dispute that will likely follow DeSantis through the 2024 presidential race. Amid the standoff, Disney announced last week that it scrapped plans to build a new campus in central Florida. which would have employed 2,000 people.
IS DESANTIS A MORE ELIGIBLE TRUMP?
Allies of the Florida governor have claimed that he is more eligible than Trump in a general election.
Just six months ago, DeSantis won his reelection in Florida by a 19 percentage point margin, even as some Republicans in other parts of the state struggled. His victory represented the largest margin of victory in Florida gubernatorial elections in decades. He even carried Miami-Dade County, a former Democratic stronghold teeming with voters from the country’s ethnic minorities.
Of course, it’s unclear if that success will carry over to the national scene. Voters often view gubernatorial elections differently from federal office elections. However, DeSantis’s team has signaled that he will highlight electability in stark contrast to Trump, who faces multiple legal threats and presided over Republican defeats in three straight national elections.
DeSantis’ political action committee recently distributed pamphlets to primary voters describing him this way: “A conservative leader who fights and wins.”
Still, there are questions about his ability to connect with both voters and party leaders on a personal level.
Largely for that reason, the majority of Florida’s Republican congressional delegation has already supported Trump and not DeSantis. In recent weeks, numerous anecdotes have also emerged revealing the extent to which DeSantis has ignored other Republican officials in Florida and elsewhere throughout his political career.
It has also had trouble maintaining a tight network of senior officials. To this day, his wife, former television news journalist Casey DeSantis, is considered his top political adviser.
While courting voters, DeSantis also sometimes struggles to display the campaign charisma and quick thinking that often defines successful candidates nationally. He has gone to great lengths to avoid unscripted public appearances without media scrutiny, which is difficult, if not impossible, as a presidential hopeful.
HOW DID TRUMP AND DESANTIS GO FROM ALLIES TO RIVALS?
There may be bad blood between DeSantis and Trump, but that wasn’t always the case.
DeSantis has acknowledged that he probably would not have become governor of Florida without Trump’s support in 2018. DeSantis has also embraced Trump’s fiery persona, his populist policies, and even some of his rhetoric and mannerisms.
But in recent months, Trump has been focused on undermining the Florida governor’s political appeal. That’s largely because Trump and his team believe DeSantis could be their only legitimate threat to the Republican ticket.
And from Trump’s perspective, nothing is off limits.
Trump has referred to DeSantis as “Ron DeSanctimonious” (Ron DeSanturrón) and “Meatball Ron” (Meatball Ron), among other derogatory nicknames. During his rallies, Trump questions DeSantis’ loyalty. In announcements and social media posts, the former president has also criticized DeSantis’ record on Social Security and Medicare.
He has even questioned DeSantis’ sexuality while posting on social media implying that the Florida governor behaved inappropriately with underage students when he briefly taught at a high school in his late 20s. .
DeSantis was slow to defend Trump after he was indicted by New York prosecutors a few weeks ago. At the time, DeSantis said only that he didn’t know what led someone to pay “hush money to a porn star about some kind of alleged affair.” Recently, he has gone after Trump’s record on abortion.
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