Portrait
Ron DeSantis, the Republican who wants to do Trump instead of Trump
Ron DeSantis during a trip to Iowa on March 10, 2023. © Ron Johnson / AP
Text by: Pierre Fesnien Follow
9 mins
The governor of Florida wants to make his state a laboratory for a candidacy in the presidential election of 2024. Unwavering supporter of Donald Trump, he is today the number one rival of the former American president for the nomination republican.
Advertisement
Read more
Ron DeSantis is not yet an official candidate for the White House, but the title of his memoir,
The Courage to Be Free: Florida as a Model for Turning America Around,
leaves little room for doubt.
For the past few weeks, the governor of the "
Sunshine State
" has chained meetings for what he called the "
Freedom Blueprint Tour
".
Officially, this tour aims to promote his book.
Unofficially, it looks a lot like the start of an election campaign that does not say its name.
Since February, Ron DeSantis has traveled to Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, also passing through California, Texas and Alabama.
On Friday he was in Iowa and this Saturday in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Obligatory passage points for any candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidential election, so it is difficult to see a simple coincidence.
DeSantis would see himself as President of the United States, but for that, he will have to go through the filter of the Republican Party primary.
Triumphantly re-elected governor with a 19-point lead over his Democratic rival in November 2022 (unheard of for a Republican), the new rising star of the "Grand Old Party" would no doubt start as the big favorite if his party did not yet have to deal with the cumbersome presence of Donald Trump, already officially a candidate for the succession of Joe Biden.
"
The young Republican Guard who seems to crush everything in her path
"
At 44, DeSantis has built his political career riding the Trump wave.
It is in particular thanks to the support of the former president that he was elected governor of Florida in 2018, before distancing himself from the billionaire after the defeat in the 2020 presidential election, while carefully refraining from criticizing him, for his re-election in 2022. A behavior that does not fail to annoy the ex-tenant of the White House.
“
I did it.
He's an ingrate
,” he allegedly complained to his advisers in comments reported by the
Washington Post
.
Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis in March 2019 during a visit by the US President to Florida.
AP - Manuel Balce Ceneta
"
He was already on the radar before his November 2022 election. But it's true that the way he was re-elected almost 20 points ahead, more than a million votes ahead of his Democratic challenger, in a state like Florida that we talk about every four years because it's a key state, the fact that he was the one who caught all the light by playing the young Republican guard who seems to crush everything on his passage
”, analyzed for RFI Françoise Coste, historian, professor at the University of Toulouse 2, specialist in the American right and the Republican party the day after her re-election.
Given a winner in the event of a head to head against Donald Trump in the race for the nomination by several polls, Ron DeSantis represents an increasingly credible alternative to the former president.
While he adopted Trump's program in Florida, DeSantis also has other qualities that make him a very attractive candidate: he is young, he is a veteran of the war in Iraq, he is a graduate of Yale and 'Harvard and, above all, he is much less provocative and outrageous than Donald Trump.
“
DeSantis is Donald Trump with a brain
”
On paper, everything, or almost, opposes him to the ex-president.
Trump is a billionaire and inherited his fortune, DeSantis comes from the middle class and comes from a family of Italian immigrants.
Trump is impulsive and follows his intuition, DeSantis is a thoughtful lawyer who only makes decisions by carefully weighing the pros and cons.
One is known to be a womanizer, the other presents himself as a father with a tidy life, his wife Casey is also his chief of staff and his closest adviser.
Two radically opposed styles which nevertheless meet on one point: their way of doing politics.
Like Trump, DeSantis bets on divisive subjects to seduce his electorate and once his target is in his sights, he does not let go.
Last October,
the
Financial Times
summed up the differences between the two men
in a terse sentence: “
Ron DeSantis is Donald Trump with a brain
”.
Born and raised in Florida near Tampa, Ron DeSantis' political career has been meteoric.
Elected to the House of Representatives in 2013 at the age of 35 and then governor at 40, it was his handling of the Covid-19 crisis in Florida that propelled him to the forefront of the American political scene.
First, in favor of strict confinement, DeSantis will reconsider his decision three weeks later, promising to "never
do any confinement again
".
He will then work to limit health restrictions as much as possible to keep the economy afloat, while refusing to make the wearing of masks and vaccination compulsory and by publicly denouncing "Faucism", in a more than dubious pun. mingling the name of
White House chief epidemiologist Anthony Fauci
, and the term "fascism".
By defying the federal state and the recommendations of its experts, DeSantis has thus attracted the sympathy of many Republican voters.
This policy will also have cost the lives of 75,000 people in Florida, almost twice as many as in California during the pandemic.
Making Florida a laboratory of conservative ideas
DeSantis' program for America is simple
: to transpose more or less the ultraconservative policy he leads in his state on a national scale.
If he shares with Trump his skepticism towards science, DeSantis also has other battle horses very popular among ultraconservatives.
A follower of the culture wars in which he engages, the governor has gone on a crusade against
"wokism"
and spares no effort to restrict the right to abortion or expand the right to bear arms.
One of its laws aimed at prohibiting talking about sexual orientation in primary schools has also made a lot of noise in the United States, the opposition denouncing a roundabout way of talking about homosexuality in class.
The affair has even forced the White House to speak out on the subject, thus putting DeSantis in the national spotlight, he who shares with Trump a certain attraction for this kind of political com' stunts.
► To read also: United States: Governor Ron DeSantis settles his account with Disney "wokists"
With his clear re-election in 2022 when he narrowly won in 2018, Ron DeSantis is convinced that he is holding the winning formula with his program.
He has pledged
to make his state a laboratory for conservative ideas
, hoping they will propel him to the White House.
"
You haven't seen anything yet
", he launched on Tuesday March 7, unveiling a new series of very controversial measures for his state, with the accents of a political program for America: a drastic reduction in access to abortion, a relaxation of the legislation on firearms, an offensive against young transgender people, or draconian measures against immigration…
Campaign themes not really different from those of Trump, but the idea that they are carried by a candidate like DeSantis, much less unpredictable and uncontrollable, could well appeal to the Republican Party.
"
There are a lot of establishment Republicans who would come home for DeSantis
,"
former Republican congressman David Jolly
told the
Washington Post .
DeSantis "
adopted Trump's agenda in Florida and did similar things to Trump, but he's actually a far cry from it
," he added.
Pale copy of the original?
Because doing Trump without being Trump is undoubtedly the main quality, but also the main flaw of Ron DeSantis.
This may allow him to obtain the support of a good part of the Republican Party, not certain on the other hand that this is enough to seduce the Trumpist voters of the first hour who could find it difficult to be convinced by a pale copy of the original.
A sign, however, that the billionaire is beginning to take his foal's competition seriously, he has given him a nickname: “Ron DeSantimonious” which can be translated as “Ron-la-Morale”.
Trump thus does on stage what he knows how to do best: ridicule his opponents, where DeSantis, much less charismatic, is a poor orator with a nasal voice who has a hard time electrifying his supporters during his meetings.
Trump's entourage even criticized him for trying to imitate
his champion's facial expressions and body language on stage.
So far, the governor of Florida is careful not to attack the former president frontally.
No question for DeSantis, who wishes to present himself as the natural heir of Trump, to be considered disloyal in the eyes of Trumpist voters, but sooner or later, he will have to get into the ring.
Many American media announce that he could formalize his candidacy by the end of May.
Donald Trump for his part did not wait for this date to get his fangs out.
"
If he does run, it could be very painful for him
," he said just before DeSantis' re-election as governor.
“
I think he would make a mistake.
I don't think it would be good for the party
,” the former president added.
If the announced duel does take place, it could in any case leave traces, which we did not fail to notice on the Democratic side.
Asked about the subject, Joe Biden simply dropped with a smile: “
It would be fun to see them compete
”.
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
Continue reading on the same topics
UNITED STATES
donald trump
USA Elections 2024
our selection