Des Moines, Iowa (Trends Wide) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he plans to “hit back” at attacks by former President Donald Trump, after kicking off his 2024 campaign in Iowa on Tuesday.
The Florida governor implicitly mocked his main rival at his first official campaign event. But speaking to reporters after the event, he had a lot to say about Trump, unloading a series of jabs designed to portray him as a selfish, unprincipled and mean-spirited man.
“I think our voters are looking at this and saying, yes, we appreciate what he did, but we also recognize that there are a lot of voters who will never vote for him,” DeSantis told reporters Tuesday. “I know people in Florida who voted against me in 2018 and voted for me in 2022. They said in 2018, ‘I thought you looked too much like him and in ’22 we realized you were your own type, we’ll do it.’” .
DeSantis said he believes Trump’s constant attacks on him will ultimately backfire.
“I can count on my hand the number of Republicans in this country who would rather have lived in New York under (Democrat Andrew) Cuomo than live in Florida in our freedom zone,” DeSantis said, alluding to recent suggestions from Trump that Florida fared worse than New York under Cuomo during the covid-19 pandemic. “If we just decided that at the caucuses, I would be happy with the verdict of the Iowa voters.”
As the opening race in the GOP nomination race, Iowa has a unique role in evaluating the presidential field, even if it hasn’t proven predictive of the eventual nominee. But with a former president seeking to return to the White House for the first time in a century, the state will be closely watched for any signs that Trump’s grip on Republican voters is slipping.
During his remarks, DeSantis offered familiar culprits for the social ills he has railed against as governor — woke initiatives, leftism and diversity — while painting a dark picture of the country he said is “heading in the wrong direction” and “infected.” for “leftism”.
“We cannot allow all major institutions to have ideological fun,” he said. “We have to be guided by reality. Merit must trump identity politics. No American should have to compete in the Summer Olympics. [la ideología] woke just to get a job or get into school.”
He vowed to exorcise the country of these supposed ideological agendas, while also pledging unspecified accountability for the country’s response to the covid-19 pandemic, reining in federal bureaucracies and finishing the border wall that Trump started.
“If I am president, this will finally be the time that we bring this matter to a conclusion. We will restore the sovereignty of this nation,” DeSantis said.
The DeSantis campaign: from Twitter to the public square
After technical difficulties overshadowed the pronouncement of his presidential aspirations on Twitter last week, DeSantis’ first official outing as a candidate had the more familiar characteristics of a campaign launch. He spoke at an evangelical church outside Des Moines, a place that illustrates how faith remains an influential force for Republicans, particularly in Iowa, as they choose their candidate, and is embarking on a traditional three-day tour of the main early candidacy states.
DeSantis has spent much of the day since his announcement explaining his unconventional pitch and sharpening his criticism of Trump after largely avoiding speaking about the former president this spring. He has focused on Trump administration issues like the economy and the pandemic, accusing him of being soft on crime and ineffective.
Although he did not mention Trump by name during his official remarks, he said it will take two terms to achieve his list of priorities, a nod to the fact that Trump, as a former president, is restricted to one term, and suggested, as he has for weeks, that the GOP needs to turn the page on “the culture of losing” in the recent election.
“It is time to impose our will on Washington,” DeSantis said. “You can’t do any of this if you don’t win.”
The Trump campaign, meanwhile, accused DeSantis of plagiarizing it with the Florida governor’s campaign slogan, “the great American comeback.”
“Perhaps DeSantis’ communications staff were preoccupied with trying to put out the flames on their candidate’s ad to present their own message,” the Trump campaign said.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis makes his first trip to the early voting state of Iowa for a book tour stop at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa in March 2023. (Credit: Jonathan Ernst /Reuters/File)
Although he told Fox News over Memorial Day weekend that he intends to “compete everywhere,” DeSantis said he hopes Iowa presents a unique opportunity to contrast the “values” between himself and Trump. He said his politics win on conservative priorities, including a six-week abortion ban and new restrictions on teaching about race or LGBTQ issues, compare favorably with recent Republican victories in Iowa.
“Iowa is very important,” DeSantis said on Fox News. “Obviously we have a lot in common with Iowa in terms of what Florida has done and what they’ve done under Governor Kim Reynolds. And I think the surge of support has been very, very strong. We are going to press the case”.
Never Back Down, a super PAC that supports DeSantis, has spent weeks building an operation in the state, hiring staff and rallying the support of dozens of lawmakers. Leading that effort is veteran Republican agent Jeff Roe, the architect of Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign. Cruz won the Iowa caucuses that year, defeating several candidates, including Trump.
Although polls continue to show DeSantis as Trump’s main challenger for the Republican nomination, he is jumping into an increasingly crowded field and his first moves suggest his political team is preparing for a protracted fight. After touring Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, DeSantis will return to Iowa this Saturday for Senator Joni Ernst’s Roast and Ride event.
The event has become a key stop for presidential candidates—nearly every announced and expected contender except Trump has RSVPed—and DeSantis’s willingness to participate in a traditional gathering of the GOP electorate is the prime example. Clear so far that he will have to kick the street like the rest of the applicants.
Trump is also preparing for a rocky road to the nomination. Although Iowa was not a competitive battleground in the midterms, he held a pre-election rally in the state last November. He is scheduled to participate in a forum with Fox News this Thursday in Clive, Iowa.
The influence of evangelical circles in the Republican campaign
DeSantis’ event this Tuesday was in that same Des Moines suburb. Before the event at the evangelical church, he and his wife, Casey, were expected to meet with 15 local Iowa pastors, according to a DeSantis campaign source familiar with the plans.
The pastors would be “praying for the family and the governor’s candidacy,” the source said.
DeSantis has sought to make inroads into evangelical circles in the weeks leading up to the launch of his campaign. He and his wife dined with Bob Vander Plaats, president of Iowa-based The Family Leader, at the Florida governor’s mansion earlier this month. In April he addressed students at Liberty University, the Virginia university founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell, and recently joined evangelical commentator Franklin Graham for a chat onstage at the National Religious Broadcasters Association annual meeting.
Trump, meanwhile, has clashed with the evangelical community of late, accusing church leaders of “disloyalty” for not enthusiastically endorsing his campaign. Trump also angered the religious right by refusing to say whether he would support a federal abortion ban.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump. (Credit: Getty Images)
“No one has ever done more for the Right to Life than Donald Trump. I put in three Supreme Court justices, they all voted, and (evangelicals) got something they’ve been fighting for for 64 years, for many, many years,'” Trump said in January, referring to the repeal of federal abortion rights. by the Supreme Court in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last summer.
As DeSantis entered the race for the Republican nomination, Vander Plaats, an influential voice in Iowa politics who has become increasingly critical of the former president, wrote on Twitter that Trump leads in the Hawkeye state but has a ceiling.” self-inflicted”.
“DeSantis is the current favorite as an alternative to Trump but needs to clear or shrink the field,” Vander Plaats tweeted last week. “Everyone else must show why they are the best alternative.”
DeSantis was introduced Tuesday by Reynolds, who said the Florida governor’s record compares well with the leadership of Republicans in his state. Reynolds doesn’t endorse the race, but he has appeared in most of DeSantis’ events at Iowa this year.
“Politicians, we tend to talk a lot. But only a few really get things done,” he said. “Only a few have the determination and the will to stand up for us. And that’s who Ron is at the core.”
— Trends Wide’s Kit Maher, Jessica Dean and Jeff Simon contributed to this story.
