Florida Governor Ron DeSantis filed papers on Wednesday to launch his 2024 presidential campaign.
Washington:
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis filed papers on Wednesday to launch his 2024 presidential campaign, signaling an 18-month advance as he and Donald Trump look to be a potential contest for the Republican nomination.
DeSantis was considered a rising Republican star but fell flat under months of relentless attacks from the former president, who has risen to a commanding lead despite being embroiled in a criminal investigation.
The 44-year-old governor filed her candidacy document with the Federal Election Commission hours before her scheduled announcement in a livestreamed chat with billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk on the social network’s audio platform.
The pro-DeSantis political organization Never Back Down released a video featuring the governor’s November 2022 election victory speech to coincide with the launch, in which he pledged that “Florida is where the woke go to die.”
“We chose facts over fear,” he says. We chose education instead of indoctrination.
“We fight awakening in the schools. We fight awakening in the corporations. We will never surrender to the awakened mob. We will be courageous and we will never back down.”
Musk teased the Twitter Space event at 6:00 a.m. (2200 GMT) in remarks to a conference call hosted by The Wall Street Journal, promising that it would be live and unscripted, with “real-time questions and answers.”
The announcement comes at the start of a three-day retreat in Miami for some of DeSantis’ wealthiest donors, who will be briefed on the campaign before the governor visits several early voting states next week.
– National Profile –
Long seen as the most viable challenger to the twice-impeached Trump, DeSantis is better known than most of the hopefuls in the pack chasing the Republican nomination – but still has the national profile of the frontrunner. There is a lack.
The launch format offers him a double benefit – giving him precious access to Musk’s 140 million followers, many of whom are in Trump’s base; And if he wins the nomination, the attention of a group of younger, less conservative voters will give him the attention he needs for a shot at the White House.
DeSantis has used his platform to burnish his conservative credentials as Florida chief executive, signing some 80 new state laws this spring, many targeting “awareness” in schools and other public institutions. Is.
These include a ban on discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools, a freeze on funding for diversity-promoting efforts at public universities, and one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.
Never Back Down, which is serving as the governor’s de facto campaign arm, has a ground operation in most of the initial enrolling states and plans to expand.
But DeSantis’ ratings plummeted with the launch as several policy missteps fueled unease about his readiness to take on Trump.
He faces the daunting task of closing a massive polling gap that Trump posting leads by close to 40 percentage points, despite being indicted on felony financial charges and found liable for sexual assault in a New York civil trial.
– Jockeying for ads –
Behind the scenes, the Trump and DeSantis camps have been pushing to garner political support from state lawmakers, while nationally, Florida’s congressional delegation has split heavily for Trump.
Musk is a noted fan of DeSantis, though he said Twitter would remain neutral on the nomination and that his hosting of the campaign launch should not be taken as an endorsement.
“I have said publicly that my priority, and I think the priority of most Americans is … to keep someone normal in office,” he said without explicitly criticizing Trump.
The former reality TV star was banned from Twitter by her supporters following the 2021 attack on the US Capitol, and has not posted since being reinstated in November.
He’s been attacking DeSantis almost daily over his record, character and fitness for office, but responded to Wednesday’s announcement with relative restraint — posting favorable polling just on his own online platform, Truth Social.
A Trump aide said, “Making the announcement on Twitter is perfect for Ron DeSantis. That way he doesn’t have to talk to people and the media can’t ask him questions.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)