What was an open secret will be officially confirmed with a live broadcast on Twitter, with a media deployment at the height of the times. Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, will announce his candidacy for the White House for the Republican Party on Wednesday night with a live conversation with the owner of the social network, the always prickly Elon Musk, in a new and surprising element with the that the one from Jacksonville intends to make as much noise as possible from the beginning. And, hours before, DeSantis formalized his candidacy in a document delivered to the federal election commission.
It will be the starting signal for what seems, a priori, the only one among the shortlist of aspiring Republicans who could complicate the re-election options of former President Donald Trump. DeSantis is an old-fashioned conservative, perceived among the bases of the party as the ideal option to return to a path of some normality after the irruption of a figure as polarizing as it is dangerous and harmful for the future of the formation.
Trump, for his part, is as clear that DeSantis will be his main rival to beat in these primaries as DeSantis is the fact that he needs to surpass the former president in visibility and attention at all costs. That is why it is not surprising that the governor of Florida starts off with a bang, surrounding himself with what is possibly the most controversial and famous businessman in the world at the moment. Despite not having Musk’s official support for his candidacy, it is still an important point in his favor.
And for the South African it is a shrewd strategic move to ensure that a significant part of the election is settled and debated in his forum. The traffic will come in handy as he tries to justify the mammoth $44 billion investment he paid for the platform. It could even encourage Trump to reactivate his Twitter account now that the veto imposed by the previous leadership no longer weighs on him.
The supporters of the former US president did not take long to react. His candidacy had not even been officially confirmed and they were already criticizing the ways chosen by the governor to announce it. “This is one of the most misguided campaign pitches in modern history,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Make America Great Again, an advocacy group for the former president, said Tuesday. “The only thing less close than a campaign launch via Twitter is DeSantis’ after party at the Four Seasons resort for the elite Four Seasons in Miami.”
Not only was the celebration at the luxurious hotel planned for some of its most powerful contributors, but also an interview on Fox News with Tey Gowdy, the former congressman from South Carolina.
Now the million dollar question is whether or not DeSantis has a real chance of defeating Trump. The polls clearly say no, but the history of previous primaries tells a very different story. There are cases like that of Barack Obama, who, being below 20% in voting intentions, managed to break the indisputable favoritism of Hillary Clinton in the final stretch of the Democratic primaries. This is also the case of former Arizona senator John McCain, who ended up making a spectacular comeback to become the Republican candidate in 2008.
DeSantis has time to improve his numbers in the polls, which at the moment show a complicated picture. According to the Real Clear Politics portal, the New York tycoon leads the rest of his pursuers by 36 points on average. He has more than 50% of voting intentions compared to 19% for Jacksonville. The rest of those confirmed and those who could join the race – names like Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott or Nikki Haley – do not even have 5% options to attract voters.
Taking the cat to water, the polls show a tie between DeSantis and President Joe Biden, who announced his intention to seek re-election a month ago.
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