Key Facts
- The Florida governor is one of two challengers to Trump for the Republican nomination still standing.
- After a dominating win in the 2022 midterms when most other Republican candidates underperformed, DeSantis was crowned a rising star in the party.
- He has struggled to connect with voters and cut into Trump’s sizable lead in the polls.
As the Iowa caucus officially begins the nomination process for the Republican presidential candidate on January 15, the race is now down to two challengers to Donald Trump. Chris Christie, an outspoken Trump critic, dropped out of the race on January 11, leaving Nikki Haley and the presumed heir to the throne not too long ago—Ron DeSantis.
Here’s all you need to know before you go place your bets on who’ll be the next president at the top politics betting sites.
Who is Ron DeSantis?
The Florida governor was reelected to the office by a whopping 19-point margin, the largest in the state in 40 years, in the 2022 midterm elections. That came in a November when Republican candidates largely disappointed at the polls. The “red wave” of Republican victories, expected due to low support for President Biden’s performance in the office, never materialized. DeSantis’ success led many observers to crown him as a rising star in the party and the top candidate for the 2024 presidency.
In addition to his 2022 success, DeSantis seemed to check all the boxes. A graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School, he is the only candidate in this race with military experience, serving a tour in Iraq in 2007. He was elected to two terms in the House of Representatives and became governor of Florida in 2018.
As governor, he has solidified his conservative credentials, and presumably his presidential qualifications, by taking on Disney—a giant in the Florida economy, as part of his battle against “woke” culture. That anti-woke crusade also included changes to public school curriculums and restrictions on what teachers could say in the classroom regarding gender and sexual orientation issues. He also refused to implement COVID restrictions common in most other states, putting a priority on personal freedom over government mandate. Cases were high in the state, but the move seems to have boosted him in public opinion, and he regularly cites his performance against COVID as a victory on the campaign trail.
As the 2024 campaign neared, DeSantis seemed to take a more national approach to his policies, including paying to fly asylum seekers in Texas who had crossed the Mexican border to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, a wealthy and liberal town, to highlight the problem of illegal immigration.
Campaign 2024
DeSantis entered the race for president in May 2023 and was considered the biggest threat to Trump’s bid to get back on the ballot. He struggled to connect with voters on a national level the way he did in Florida, however. Many observers called him cold and unapproachable on the campaign trail, and his campaign seemed disorganized, leading to several retoolings and restarts.
He laid off more than three dozen workers in July, changed campaign managers in August and took another new path in messaging in October. In December, a Washington Post story said that his campaign and Super Pac funding vehicle were both in disarray.” Insiders quoted in the story called it an “absolute disaster” for the candidate and said the wheels have come off the campaign, or maybe “have never actually been on.”
Current Standing
Despite all the much-chronicled problems, DeSantis was a solid number two in the presidential race for most of the year, although he was unable to carve into Trump’s sizable lead in the polls. Late in the year, however, spurred on by strong performances in the debates, Nikki Haley closed the gap with DeSantis, moving into a near dead heat. She also earned the endorsement of the Koch organization, a major Republican donor.
The two enter the first clash of the primary season well over 30 points down to Trump in all national polls, and 40 or more down in most. In Iowa, things are closer, but not enough to give reason to expect an upset of the frontrunner. Haley also passed DeSantis in one recent poll, the first time he’s fallen to third place.
What’s Next
DeSantis has invested most of his campaign’s time, energy and money in Iowa, meaning that he needs to overperform expectations, since this is likely the best he’ll do in any of the early states to go to the voting booth. He needs to do well enough to show that the race isn’t over as it starts and give Republicans not sold on another Trump campaign a reason to believe they can change that outcome.
