Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Tuesday said he would turn down the opportunity to run for vice president under former President Trump if given the chance.
“I don’t think so. I’m not a No. 2 guy,” DeSantis said on the “Wisconsin Right Now” radio show, NBC News reported. The Florida governor is trailing Trump in the 2024 GOP primary race by nearly 30 points nationally, according to a FiveThirtyEight poll.
DeSantis said he would opt to stay in his governorship over joining Trump’s ticket, adding that the vice presidency “doesn’t really have any authority.”
When asked whom he would consider signing on as a running mate, the Sunshine State governor said “it’s a little bit presumptuous to be doing that at this stage,” adding that he’s focused on winning the early primaries before delving deep into his search for vice president.
The DeSantis campaign’s struggle to gain traction has set off alarms among Republicans who expected a better performance from the candidate, with a spokesperson of the pro-DeSantis PAC Never Back Down referring to Trump as the “runaway front-runner” earlier this month.
DeSantis’s lagging campaign has also spurred other GOP leaders to reconsider running for the nomination.
In addition to leading DeSantis at a national level, the former president is also outperforming the Florida governor in polls of Sunshine State voters.
The feud between DeSantis and Trump has reached a boiling point in recent weeks, with Trump bashing the DeSantis campaign as being in “total disarray” following the governor’s rally in New Hampshire earlier this month.
Former Vice President Mike Pence went through his own falling out with his former boss following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and has decried the former president as unfit for the presidency, launching a rivaling campaign against his old executive partner.