DeSantis builds fundraising momentum as he takes campaign on the road
Mabinty Quarshie
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) may have had a glitch-filled presidential launch this week, but his prodigious fundraising numbers illustrate that the governor’s campaign has plenty of Republican support as he remains former President Donald Trump‘s chief rival for the 2024 GOP nomination.
DeSantis’s Twitter Spaces campaign launch with eccentric billionaire Elon Musk and venture capitalist David Sacks on Wednesday evening was riddled with technical glitches that led to embarrassing headlines and merciless taunting from Trump allies. “I know Ron. The way he handled his announcement, he will handle the Country!” Trump ominously posted on his social media platform Truth Social.
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Yet the governor’s team bounced back quickly, claiming that the event “broke the internet.”
Before the night was over, a DeSantis spokesman bragged the campaign had raised $1 million in under an hour. Then came the clincher: The campaign raised $8.2 million within the first 24 hours of launching, nearly $2 million more than President Joe Biden‘s $6.3 million haul within 24 hours when he announced his candidacy in 2019.
Joseph Vargas, a veteran Texas GOP consultant, told the Washington Examiner that DeSantis’s mishap on Twitter would be forgotten in the years to come and was instead an “epic” moment for the governor. “It’s going to be remembered that he took a bold step and said, ‘I’m going to do something different.’ And I think that’s why he’s getting a lot of financial support for now,” Vargas said.
As a candidate, DeSantis is now more willing to directly confront the Trump-sized elephant that’s been hovering over his nascent campaign. “I don’t know what happened to Donald Trump. This is a different guy today than when he was running in 2015 and 2016. And I think the direction that he’s going with his campaign is the wrong direction,” DeSantis told conservative radio host Matt Murphy.
The governor is also expected to barnstorm 12 cities in several early-nominating states, including Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, crucial states the primaries of which he will need to win in order to deny Trump the GOP nomination in 2024. The campaign’s start will take place in Des Moines, Iowa, home to the first-in-the-nation GOP caucus, next Tuesday. A win in Iowa would propel DeSantis’s campaign and arguably convince several GOP factions looking for a Trump-alternative candidate to back him over other Republicans, including Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
Jason Roe, a veteran GOP consultant who worked on Mitt Romney‘s and Marco Rubio‘s presidential campaigns, told the Washington Examiner the real GOP presidential race didn’t start until DeSantis announced his presidential campaign. Although there are other announced candidates and Republicans contemplating a run, Trump and DeSantis are the two leading candidates among likely GOP primary voters, polling has consistently shown.
“One thing you want to make sure is that this thing better be really tight. You want to make sure that there are no more mistakes because the media and Trump will love to try to seize on what happened [on Wednesday evening] and try to create a pattern to undermine the DeSantis message,” Roe cautioned. “But what are the knocks on him? He’s not personable; he’s not good at retail. Well, I think we saw a preview of his retail abilities in Iowa a couple of weeks ago, and he seems to me to be pretty darn natural at it.”
Along with the Twitter problems, DeSantis’s team is facing allegations that officials with his administration, not the campaign, solicited Florida lobbyists for donations to his presidential bid, according to NBC News. It’s a highly unusual approach that may or not have flouted legal precedent, and it’s precisely these distractions that could hamper DeSantis’s already uphill climb to knocking down Trump’s perch as the front-runner candidate.
If DeSantis is going to defeat Trump, he will need to focus more on appealing to voters’ emotions as opposed to the policy wonk person he’s championed, said Vargas. “People think emotionally. They don’t think facts and figures, and that’s just human nature,” Vargas said.
He pointed to Trump’s hold over the GOP electorate, which has increased despite Trump’s pending legal problems, his failure to build a wall on the southern border, and his not firing Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“That’s where I think Ron DeSantis has a lot of work to do. He needs to gain the trust of the people,” Vargas said. “If he starts talking about these bills and these policies, that’ll work for a little bit. But that’s just 10% to the average mindset, and that’s the advantage I think Trump has over him right now.”
As a three-time presidential candidate, Trump has more experience running a national campaign, a factor DeSantis doesn’t have. The former president’s past career as a reality TV host has also benefited his ability to connect with voters and Republican lawmakers. In contrast, DeSantis faced consternation over awkward moments meeting with voters and some donor pushback for his failure to communicate directly with them.
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Yet, Roe argued that DeSantis is similar to Trump but is better positioned to best President Joe Biden in 2024. “If you like Donald Trump’s policy portfolio, then there’s no reason not to like Ron DeSantis,” he said. “I think you got to set aside the cult of personality that Trump has developed and focus on saving our country.”
DeSantis’s nearly 19 percentage point reelection win last fall suggests to Roe that the governor has the ability to expand the Republican base. “He’s just got a lot of good crossover opportunities to get Republicans so that we can grow our coalition again,” Roe said.