I'll lay my cards on the table straight-away: I’m voting for Ron DeSantis in the GOP primary next year. Of the political candidates that I've had the chance to vote for, Governor DeSantis is one of the very few that I can endorse with full confidence. I’m increasingly convinced that Florida's governor is the most serious and qualified candidate in the race, and that a match-up between the governor and the somnambulant Joe Biden (or the Democrats' shadow candidate, Gavin Newsom) would look more like 1980 than 2020.
But the following screed isn’t really about making the case for a DeSantis Presidential Administration, at least not directly. Instead, I'll be addressing a narrative that is as dishonest as it is pervasive. That narrative concerns the relationship between Governor DeSantis and former president Trump. It has become a favorite talking point of Trump and his surrogates, and it's long past time to put it to bed.
In 2018, then-Representative DeSantis was running to become the next governor of Florida. The story goes that his poll numbers were atrocious throughout the entire process, and it was only a well-timed and selfless endorsement from The Donald himself that “DeSanctus” was saved from an electoral wipeout, and the state of Florida was saved from far-left crank and (*ahem*, alleged) drug-enjoyer, Andrew Gillum. Then in 2023, DeSantis repaid The Donald by making the unforgivable decision to run for president.
Even prior to his announcement, DeSantis and his supporters have been increasingly denounced by many in MAGA Land as “disloyal traitors". At present, every time First Lady Casey DeSantis posts about the DeSantis family on Twitter (no Elon, I am not going to call it “X”), the reply section is quickly populated by talentless grifters and other assorted detractors who curse the very ground that his family walks on. Photos of Jeb Bush attending the DeSantis inauguration are actually being used as “evidence" of backroom collaboration.
To be absolutely clear, I know that the majority of Trump supporters are normal people, and not unreasonable, rage-driven lunatics. I speak with normal Trump supporters frequently, and we have much more in common than not in terms of our visions for the country. They call balls and strikes as they see them and do their best to remain intellectually consistent, which is about as much as you can ask of a supporter of anyone. Social media (especially Twitter) has a tendency to elevate the worst, most unhinged individuals, and these individuals are not necessarily indicative of the entire group. I also know that the core concerns of the average Trump supporter are serious and legitimate, even if I find their confidence in Trump to be misdirected. We agree that America is in sharp decline economically and morally. We agree that both major parties are dismissive if not outright disdainful of “flyover country", and we agree that Michael Hayden is lower than pond scum. I get it.
But the outpouring of hatred and distrust towards Ron DeSantis - perhaps the most successful conservative governor in a generation - is entirely undue. One of the main pillars of this hatred is the aforementioned Endorsement Narrative. Further debate on the two candidates is rendered nearly impossible, because the conversation frequently starts on false pretenses. I don’t expect the following paragraphs to change the minds of fervent anti-DeSantis grifters (not even those who had previously praised Ron DeSantis for years), because I have no money to offer to amoral mercenaries like Alex Bruesewitz or Jack Posobiec. So I am instead primarily addressing the vast majority of “rank and file" Trump supporters - the unconvinced yet reasonable.
Poll Position
Let's rip the Band-Aid off now and leave no ambiguity: Trump and his influencers are lying to you, Trump did not save Ron DeSantis from an electoral wipeout, and Ron DeSantis does not "owe" his career to Donald Trump.
To understand why, let's set the stage. The 2018 midterm was billed early on as an incoming Blue Tsunami, a chance for Democrats to exact their electoral revenge against the GOP for the upset in 2016. The media cheered for its arrival, and many on the Right were wary of it. The 2016 upset also requires a deeper and more sober analysis, but that’s a discussion for another time.
The overall result of the 2018 midterm was not quite on par with the historic Tea Party Waves of 2010 and 2014 in terms of magnitude, but it was still a pretty rough year for Team Red. Although the Republicans held the Senate with a net gain of 2 seats, the results were pretty bleak elsewhere. Democrats saw a net gain of 41 seats in the House, and a net gain of 7 gubernatorial seats. Democrats also gained majorities in several state legislative chambers, including both houses of the New Hampshire legislature, which was previously a Red-ish island in the Blue ocean of the Northeast. Additionally, Republican supermajorities were broken in several state chambers, including the crucial states of Michigan and Pennsylvania. In 2022, Democrats secured majorities in both chambers of the Michigan legislature. Similarly, Democrats in the Pennsylvania House made serious gains in 2018, before securing the majority in 2022, while Democrats in the Pennsylvania Senate gained ground during both years.
The importance of the Republicans’ net gain in the US Senate should not be overstated. State elections are arguably more impactful than federal elections, given the immediacy of state politics and the fact that state and local offices often constitute a minor-league style farm system for finding rising stars for federal offices.
In Florida, then-Governor Rick Scott was term limited, and left behind a vulnerable seat. In his prior gubernatorial elections of 2010 and 2014, Scott had pulled away with narrow victories (about +1%) in each contest, affirming the state's purple status. At the time of leaving the governor's mansion, Scott was modestly popular among Floridians, but hardly a rockstar. Some of the most irksome issues facing Florida conservatives can be traced back to Governor Scott, though some MAGA personalities have tried to rewrite history by claiming that the emergence of Florida as a red stronghold is thanks to Scott, not DeSantis.
With a political year that strongly favored Team Blue, the 2018 Republican candidate for Florida's governor seat would have an unenviable position. Of the candidates who declared, the two most relevant were Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, and Representative Ron DeSantis. The former declared his candidacy in May 2017, and the latter declared months later in January 2018.
Polls from late 2017 and early 2018 indicated that Putnam held a consistent yet unconvincing lead over his rivals. Of the early polls listed below, most results saw very large numbers of “Undecided” respondents. This complicates any readings into the state of the race, and aren't very useful for predicting election day results. Putnam's lead can largely be attributed to a 7 month head start on campaigning, and the greater name recognition that came with it, on top of his pre-existing name recognition as a statewide official.
Donald Trump's endorsement of DeSantis arrived in December 2017, months before the first primary vote was cast. From the polls listed, there is no visible post-endorsement surge in the polls, or at least no surge that was sustained for more than 5 minutes. What happened? Was there a surge all along, which was abruptly stopped due to a gaffe or some other major misstep by the DeSantis campaign? I’ve never seen anyone claim as such. A major gaffe would more logically lead to a boost for the other candidates (namely Putnam), but the post-endorsement polls continued to show high rates of Undecided voters and not much sustained movement.
In my estimation, the tide of polling turned in July 2018. Around this time, Ron DeSantis saw a sustained series of polling victories, with most of the victories coming by comfortable margins. Furthermore, it was around this time where “Undecided” responses no longer eclipsed the leading candidate. A single poll could be credibly written off as an anomaly or a bogus push-poll, but July 2018 saw the start of a trend.
Why the sudden surge? Were the effects of Trump's endorsement on a time-release? Did the endorsement simply slip below the radar for several months? Not among those who cared that much about Trump's seal of approval in the first place. In the time I spent in more pro-Trump circles, his social media posts frequently became breaking news and saw rapid circulation among various pro-Trump supporters and pundits. Endorsements were especially newsworthy. I still remember the online foodfight that ensued immediately after his baffling endorsement of Dr. Mehmet Oz.
I have a better theory for the polling surge. The sustained polling victories all occurred after the one and only Republican primary debate, a one-on-one between DeSantis and Putnam. The debate took place on June 28, which perfectly coincides with the subsequent surge. Of the post-debate polls listed here, Putnam was only able to defeat DeSantis twice, once in a Clearview Research poll by 1% (well within the 4% margin of error), and then again in a Saint Leo University poll that featured an extremely small sample size of 172. You can decide for yourself if DeSantis looked like the better candidate on the stage that night, but it would seem that Florida Republicans were watching, and they strongly preferred DeSantis over Putnam.
DeSantis would later cruise to a comfortable August 28 primary victory, securing 56.5% to Putnam's 36.5%. Team Trump will be quick to point out that Dylan Mulvaney's future best friend appeared on stage at a pre-primary rally for DeSantis on August 2nd. However, this appearance only occurred after the post-debate surge was already underway, and the post-rally poll numbers were not far off from the pre-rally poll numbers. There is simply no evidence that Junior’s appearance acted as a lifeline for a drowning campaign. Instead, it was a chance for Bud Light's #1 Fan to cynically and pre-emptively chalk up a personal win where one already appeared imminent. Junior and his father are more than happy to attach their names to probable victories elsewhere, even when it means throwing support behind dreadful candidates who actually deserve to be challenged for their positions, like Tony Gonzales, John Cornyn, Lindsey Graham, and of course, Ronna McDaniel.
A Lifeline, or Cement Shoes?
The general election polls in Florida were not as kind to DeSantis, though he remained competitive with Gillum, never slipping below 43% from the polls shown here. Donald Trump will point to his appearance with DeSantis on stage at a rally on November 4, and argue that it was his endorsement and this event that saved DeSantis in the polls and pulled him across the finish line.
Trump’s claim is empty speculation, at best. Polls lag behind public sentiment, so any polls released between Trump's oh-so-important appearance and the actual election on November 6 would not factor in the reactions to his appearance, if we assume that it made a difference at all. Trump's last minute appearance also would obviously have had no effect on the early votes that had already been cast. And according to the Florida Board of Elections, the rate of early voting in 2018 was very high.
If we want to determine the effects of Trump's endorsement on the general election polls, we would need to compare pre and post-endorsement polls. The pre-endorsement polls would show DeSantis floundering, and the post-endorsement polls would show DeSantis pulling ahead, right?
Well, Trump's endorsement had been publicly-known since December 2017. Of the very few people who won’t vote for a given candidate unless Trump gives a green light, they already saw their green light about 11 months prior.
All general election polls (and most primary polls for that matter) already had Trump's endorsement “baked in" to the data from the beginning. Most of the polls showing Putnam ahead of DeSantis were also taken with Trump's endorsement under consideration by respondents. As we've established, the tide of the primary polls did not turn until the debate. Furthermore, there is no line of Gillum vs DeSantis general election polling which exists without Trump's endorsement, which we would normally use as a “baseline" measurement. When Team Trump claims that Donald's endorsement “rescued DeSantis", they are hoping that you’re not looking at the details.
In fact, since there is no line of DeSantis vs Gillum polling which exists without Trump's endorsement, I could just as easily speculate that Trump's early endorsement was a net negative for DeSantis’ chances. A Trump endorsement may be a seal of approval among most Republicans, but it's also a bright, blaring siren in the eyes of Democrats. It's a warning for otherwise demoralized Blue voters to get off of the couch and pull the lever for a Democrat that they might otherwise not care for, “because the Republican candidate is just like Hitler”.
Compare the 2023 Kentucky gubernatorial race, where Republican Daniel Cameron ran against the incumbent Democrat Governor Andy Beshear. At times, Cameron had been denounced by elements of MAGA World as a protégé of Mitch McConnell. And while his connection to McConnell is real, Trump's endorsement of Cameron is also very real. Both Trump and Cameron enthusiastically touted this endorsement, to the point that Cameron emphasized it in one of his last campaign ads. Cameron would go on to lose, even as more Trump-ambivalent Republicans won their statewide races with comfortable margins.
Daniel Cameron's unshakeable admiration for The Donald was repaid with quick post-election denunciations by Trump and his online sycophants. Maybe Cameron should’ve spent less time throwing darts at Ron DeSantis and more time crafting an actual platform.
A reasonable question remains - why did he struggle so much against Gillum in the first place, since Gillum was such an awful candidate? Let me explain.
Critics of DeSantis will be quick to point out that he almost lost to an alleged drug-abuser, thereby proving DeSantis’ weakness as a candidate. This criticism is extremely dishonest. The Miami Beach hotel incident allegedly involving Gillum did not occur until March of 2020, long after the final vote had been cast for him. Perhaps it’s worth asking how many Democrat voters would have voted for Gillum in 2018 anyway, even if the incident had occurred and gone public during his campaign. In any case, that would be a moral indictment of Democrat voters, not an idictment of DeSantis.
Continuing on, let’s survey the environment at the time. Midterms are usually rough for the incumbent party, and as mentioned previously, 2018 was a pretty bad year for Republicans, who had the trifecta of the House, Senate, and Oval Office. Democrats had the wind at their backs, with several “rising stars” emerging, like Kyrsten Sinema, Stacey Abrams, and Robert Francis O'Rourke (I refuse to call him “Beto"). Meanwhile, the other side was characterized by a highly-polarizing president. The distaste for Trump is one of the few things that unite the disparate factions of the Democratic Party. The Republican gubernatorial candidate in then-purple Florida - whether it had been Ron DeSantis, Adam Putnam, Dan Marino, or Jeb! Bush with a fake mustache - were always going to face an uphill battle in a difficult midterm, against an especially-angry and highly-energized Democrat voter base.
Fortunately for our analysis, we have another statewide race in Florida for comparison. If Ron DeSantis was a weak candidate, then the other statewide race of comparable national attention and funding would show a significant gulf of popularity between the two Republicans, right?
After departing the governor's mansion, Rick Scott challenged the incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson for a Senate seat. The GOP senate primary was even less competitive than the eventual gubernatorial primary blowout, owing to Rick Scott's name recognition and the hesitation by other prospective candidates to run against him.
After cruising to an easy primary victory, Scott secured a razor-thin general election victory (one of only four Republicans to defeat an incumbent Democrat senator in 2018). However, only 10,033 votes separated Scott from his opponent. This margin was even smaller than DeSantis' victory margin (about 32,000 votes). Both races are indicative of how unfriendly the year was for Republicans, but Rick Scott's nail-biter victory is seldom mentioned by Trump's toadies. DeSantis' victory during a hazardous year should not be overlooked, especially after his decisive re-election victory 4 years later, during another midterm that was otherwise disappointing for Team Red.
Even though we can conclude that Trump and his endorsement did not win the election for DeSantis, and may have instead been a net negative (see: Daniel Cameron), it will still be argued by Trump's camp that DeSantis is wrong and “disloyal" for running against the man who endorsed him. This is nonsense.
In a country that was founded in part as a rejection of earthly crowns, it’s honestly pretty disgusting to see that so many self-professed Constitutional conservatives treat a politician as though he were a king, instead of a public servant. Politicians are sworn into office by pledging to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Granted, you only need one hand to count the number of politicians who actually care about defending the Constitution at the moment, but the fact remains that such oaths are not directed to men.
The calls for uncritical loyalty to politicians are embarrassing. Your loyalty belongs to the King of kings, followed very distantly by loyalty to your family, then loyalty to your friends and your community. A politician should never be at the center of a discussion on loyalty, unless it concerns their loyalty to the Constitution and his or her constituents (or lack thereof). While Trump is not the Mega-Hitler that Democrats hallucinate him to be, his own relationship with the Constitution is to put it charitably: troubling.
Yet the embarrassing and insincere calls for loyalty persist. When Trump's senior advisor Jason Miller isn’t obsessing over DeSantis' footwear like a snotty TMZ blogger, you’ll find him decrying the governor for refusing to kneel to the king. This is despite the fact that DeSantis has been commonly discussed as a potential 2024 candidate, going at least as far back as 2020. Supporters famously chanted “two more years!” during at least one of the governor's gubernatorial re-election rallies. And as stated previously, even Republicans who select Trump as their number one candidate tend to have positive views of the Florida Governor as a secondary option for the current contest or a contender for a future cycle. As I hope I’ve made clear, it is perfectly fine to discuss and disagree on who is best prepared to dethrone Hunter Biden's father and sit in the Oval Office, but it is nonsense to argue that DeSantis’ presidential campaign came from nowhere or that nobody asked for it.
By the way Jason, on the off chance that you read this: don't forget to pay your child support.
So if Trump and his paid surrogates will insist that endorsements are extremely important, and insist that Ron DeSantis owes everything he has to Trump, then what does Trump owe to DeSantis? After all, DeSantis endorsed Trump for president. Twice.
The response from Trump's carnival barkers will be quick, predictable, and smug: “Trump owes him nothing.”
I certainly don’t pretend that silly political endorsements are tantamount to inviolable, hand-on-the-Bible oaths, so I'm not surprised that DeSantis' endorsements, whatever they’re worth, have gone unmentioned by Trump and his surrogates. In fact, as we saw with Trump immediately turning his back on Daniel Cameron after the latter’s defeat, Trump's indifference to others and his one-way understanding of “loyalty” are perfectly in-character for him.
A Forgotten Ally
In July of 2016, website Wikileaks famously published thousands of emails revealing demonstrable DNC bias against Hillary Clinton's main competitor for the presidency, Bernie Sanders. For whatever else you want to say about the two of them, Clinton and Sanders represented two distinct sides of the Blue Party, with Bernie playing the role of the “outsider”, and Hillary standing as the quintessential example of the Democrat establishment. The leaks sent shockwaves through the party, following a hotly-contested primary that had already created plenty of ill feelings. Hillary Clinton had been reviled by many grassroots elements of her own party for years, for being a corrupt, conceited, duplicitous opportunist, and the leaks did her no favors.
With the emails confirming high-level collusion against Vermont's “democratic socialist”, Sanders’ supporters were incensed. Trump took notes and seized the opportunity by denouncing the Democrat establishment's unfairness against Sanders, driving a wedge deeper into the Blue fissure. The mass-leak almost certainly dampened Democrat turnout (especially among younger, more pro-Bernie Democrats). Hillary's election night numbers would collapse in several key Rust Belt states compared to Barack Obama's decisive 2008 and 2012 victories.
There is a strong case to be made that Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, prisoner, and very public foe of DC corruption, did more to aid Trump's victory than any other single person in 2016. Without Wikileaks and without the airing of the DNC's dirty laundry, Democrat support for Hillary likely would have held together, and the all-important Rust Belt states would have been significantly more favorable to her.
Any scenario with a Blue Rust Belt in 2016 would have been an immediate game over for The Donald. It should be emphasized that Bernie Sanders commanded considerable popularity in the Rust Belt, where he defeated Clinton in Michigan and Wisconsin, and came close to taking Illinois in the primaries. Note that in the general election, the hard-left Green Party had an unusually strong performance, going from about 470,000 votes nationally in 2012 to 1.45 million votes in 2016. We will never know the exact number of disillusioned Democrats who chose to either stay home or cast a Green vote as a protest against Hillary Clinton and the DNC, but given the Green Party's relative success in 2016, the number of protest votes is likely significant.
Importantly, the statewide vote totals for the Green Party actually eclipsed Trump's margin of victory in the crucial states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Without the Green Party's over-performance there, it is fair to wonder if Trump would have won these states, and the Electoral College thereby.
Democrat voters in 2020 seemed to have realized that their failure of 2016 was at least partially because of the party's division. The hashtag “#VoteBlueNoMatterWho" became common among Democrats in the 2020 cycle, as a plea for factional unity.
So does Trump owe anything to Julian Assange and his organization for this game-changer, for sparking a mini civil war within the Democratic Party mere months before election day? I tend to think so, but Trump apparently disagrees. During his tenure, Trump did not find time to offer a pardon to Assange. On the other hand, Trump did find time during his last day in office to commute the sentence of a corrupt former mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick. Your mileage may vary on whether Kilpatrick’s sentence was too harsh, or whether he deserved a commutation due to his purportedly good conduct in prison. But if Trump is going to stand on a strict anti-corruption platform, then his decision to rescue a corrupt politician while ignoring the plight of a prominent anti-corruption activist is completely incoherent.
At present, Ron DeSantis is assailed every minute with demands to suspend his campaign and pledge support to Trump. Time will tell if the 2024 primary votes match the polls, or if we will see the same kind of trajectory change that we saw in 2008, when Hillary Clinton was far ahead of a rather obscure senator from Illinois. Irrespective of the polls or state results, in my estimation the most shameful thing the governor could do at this point would be to kneel to Donald Trump. Bitter primaries are hardly unusual, but when the former president constantly lies about DeSantis, and surrounds himself with contemptible individuals who do the same, it would be a sign of weakness - not selflessness - for him to bend the knee.
Maybe hucksters like Jack Posobiec don’t have any self-respect, but I wouldn’t pledge loyalty to people who unapologetically lie about me and my family. Would you?