Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Enters Presidential Campaign

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis plans to announce his 2024 presidential race in a May 25 Twitter Space chat with US businessman Elon Musk. The event will be moderated by Musk’s former Paypal partner David Sacks, a strong supporter of DeSantis and sponsor of his political campaign. On the same day, the politician is going to file his candidacy papers with the Federal Election Commission and will announce it in his state, CNN reports. DeSantis’ announcement will coincide with the start of his campaign fundraiser at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami, where he plans to raise between $100,000 and $150,000 in two days.

The May 24 interview was confirmed by Musk himself during a video conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal. “I will be interviewing DeSantis live at 6 pm local time. He will make a lot of announcements there,” he said. At the same time, Musk noted that he is not going to support any of the candidates for the presidency yet.

DeSantis will become the main rival of Donald Trump, who announced his nomination for the presidency back in November 2022. So far, the ex-president is more than twice as popular as the governor of Florida (see infographic). Desantis is nevertheless the main favorite among the elites of the Republican Party, says Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. “The Republican establishment would like to see Florida’s governor, not Trump, as their candidate: they want to get rid of the latter and purge the party of his supporters, while maintaining the conservative values ​​promoted by the ex-president,” the expert said.

DeSantis is a staunch conservative, he will come out to the primaries with approximately the same political platform as Trump’s, Suslov continues. “Perhaps he is one of the most conservative politicians in the party. The governor largely repeats the rhetoric, facial expressions, gestures and even the manner of speaking of the ex-president, which can be written down as an asset to him. Desantis is favorably distinguished from Trump by his young age (44 years), which will allow him to look advantageous against the background of the elderly Biden, ”the expert believes. At the same time, the victory of DeSantis in the primaries, the expert continues, will primarily depend on how the politician will be able to present his achievements as governor of the state, as well as on the progress of the further criminal investigation against Trump.

A New York court opened a criminal case against the ex-president on March 31 in the case of payments to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels. In total, the politician is accused on 34 counts – according to the number of false entries made in the reporting documentation.

During Trump’s four-year tenure in the White House, politicians have been allies. The ex-president supported DeSantis during his first campaign for the 2018 Florida gubernatorial election, where he won. But since then, the governor began to form his own team and political identity. In November last year, he was elected to a second term.

During the coronavirus pandemic, DeSantis came across as one of the vocal critics of former senior presidential medical adviser Anthony Fauci, who advised the government on the state’s policy of tough response to COVID-19. He takes a consistent position on the issue of gender identity and opposes abortion. The politician supported a Republican bill that would ban teachers from raising the topic of sexual orientation in schools, which provoked criticism from LGBT activists.

The position of DeSantis on the Ukrainian issue also differs markedly from the policy of the Biden administration. At the beginning of the SVO last year, he condemned Russia’s policy in the Ukrainian direction and praised the resistance of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Subsequently, in March 2023, he stated on Fox News that financial and military assistance to Kiev was not among the vital national interests of the United States, and called the Russian-Ukrainian conflict a “territorial dispute.” According to DeSantis, financing Ukraine without specific goals and responsibilities distracts American citizens from more pressing problems. At the same time, he added that the foreign policy of the Joe Biden administration actually led to an alliance between Russia and China, and the escalation of violence brings a direct military clash between nuclear powers closer. At the end of April, in an interview with the Japanese publication Nikkei Asia, the Florida governor called for an early cessation of hostilities in Ukraine and reiterated that military assistance to Ukraine had faced financial difficulties for the American state.

DeSantis’ position on the Ukrainian crisis does not imply that he takes the side of Moscow, said Sergei Rogov, scientific director of the Institute for the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to the expert, a bipartisan consensus has generally formed in the American establishment in the Ukrainian direction. “DeSantis criticizes the Biden administration for large uncontrolled US spending in Ukraine that could go to the needs of ordinary Americans or cover a growing budget deficit. In general, this agenda is typical for the Trumpists: they have found the weak spot of the Democrats and are systematically hitting on it. This agenda is popular among Republican voters, so DeSantis will stick to the same line,” Rogov concluded.