The DeSantis campaign is faltering early: Can it be revived?

It’s been less than a week since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) officially announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, but his campaign is already on life support. 

Despite once being considered the GOP heir apparent, DeSantis’s standing slipped in the weeks leading up to his announcement. His poll numbers plummeted while former President Donald Trump solidified his frontrunner status, causing potential DeSantis donors to grow skittish. Evidently, DeSantis’s efforts to out-Trump Trump by advancing a far-right agenda in Florida have been to no avail — and if anything, could be motivating Republicans seeking an alternative to Trumpism to look elsewhere. 

To that end, the idea in Republican circles that DeSantis is the most viable alternative to Trump is slowly being upended. Sen Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) entrance into the race last week is proof of this, as are recent reports that other Trump foes could soon join the field, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and potentially former Vice President Mike Pence.  

DeSantis desperately needed his official campaign announcement on Wednesday to reset the narrative around his candidacy, position himself as a competent alternative to Trump and re-engender enthusiasm among supporters and donors. Instead, the event had the opposite effect — it was an unmitigated disaster, which both Democrats and Republicans have seized on to mock him. 

DeSantis’s botched campaign launch further obfuscates his already-uncertain path to the nomination, and his challenges will only compound now that he is officially in the ring with Trump, who has publicly reveled in his top rival’s misfortune and will continue to do so at rallies and on social media. 

“Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. 

In an effort to distinguish himself in a crowded primary field, DeSantis announced his candidacy via Twitter Spaces with CEO and influential right-wing billionaire, Elon Musk. Technical difficulties ensued for the first 20 minutes of the event, causing roughly half of the listeners to sign off before the Florida governor finally came on audio, and read a rehearsed speech lasting over an hour. 

DeSantis’s monotonous delivery on Wednesday underscores a key issue with his candidacy that will become immediately apparent as he begins campaigning: He is devoid of charisma, which is one area where Trump — for all his faults — is particularly compelling. According to reporting by the New York Times, DeSantis and his team frequently have “internal conversations acknowledging the need for him to engage in the basics of political courtship: small talk, handshaking, eye contact.” 

Moreover, the Florida governor is still struggling with his core positioning. He is caught in the crossfire between the two competing factions of the GOP: the establishment figures who would welcome a more traditional non-Trump candidate versus the far-right populists, many of whom are Trump supporters and will likely be hardened in their views if, as reports suggest, Trump is indicted (again). 

DeSantis also still hasn’t figured out how to address Trump as a competitor. He knows he can’t attack Trump directly without dissuading the solid plurality of the party that is Trump loyalists but can’t project the strongman persona that the Trump wing seeks without retaliating against the former president’s persistent attacks.  

While Trump tends to level personal attacks — rather than those oriented toward policy — his campaign has hammered DeSantis in ads for previously supporting cuts to Social Security and Medicare, two broadly popular entitlement programs. 

As DeSantis begins his campaign in earnest, Trump and others will likely begin relentlessly attacking his record in Florida, as well. While DeSantis hails his home state as “the state where woke goes to die” and ridicules blue states for their tax-and-spend attitudes, the reality is that Florida has become much less affordable under his watch.

Property insurance rates in Florida are now the highest in the country at three times the national average, and rents in the state increased by more than double the national average over the last two years. Further, Florida last year was named the least affordable state in the U.S., per CBS News reporting, and lags behind most states in terms of health care access, according to U.S. News and World Report.

Evidently, DeSantis is a deeply flawed candidate. Still, with over six months until the first ballots are cast, it would be a mistake to write him off, as his current popularity among Republicans and his well-funded political apparatus provide a narrow window of opportunity. 

Realistically, DeSantis’s best shot is running an intensive ground game in the early primary states and selling his conservative record to voters — which is what an influential pro-DeSantis big-money group is gearing up to do. 

The Never Back Down super PAC is preparing to spend $200 million to elevate DeSantis in the first four primary states. The effort will allocate $100 million to voter outreach efforts, which will involve hiring more than 2,600 field organizers by the end of the summer to “knock on the door of every possible DeSantis voter at least four times in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — and five times in the kickoff Iowa caucuses,” according to New York Times reporting.  

That being said, DeSantis is already at a huge disadvantage in the two earliest states, which he would likely need to win outrightly to prove his bona fides and keep campaign cash flowing in. Trump leads by 42 points in Iowa according to a recent Emerson College poll, and is ahead by 20 points in New Hampshire, according to a University of New Hampshire survey. 

While it would be short-sighted to suggest that DeSantis’s campaign was over before it even began, his candidacy faces immense challenges going forward — and Twitter Space’s technical difficulties will prove to be the least of his problems. 

Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an advisor to President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. His new book is: “The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.”