The Florida governor has emerged empowered from midterms that delivered many GOP defeats and sowed new concern in the GOP about Trump, Republicans said.
One operative unaffiliated with DeSantis’s campaign resurrected a super PAC designed to boost a presidential bid, once tabled in the belief that Trump’s march to the GOP nomination would be unstoppable. An outside adviser to DeSantis recounted getting numerous calls from donors with the same message: “Ron needs to run.”
Should he decide to run for president, DeSantis could face numerous challenges. He is still relatively untested on the national stage. He hails from a onetime swing state that has moved right and in some ways does not mirror the rest of the country. And he has already attracted the ire of Trump, who has leveled devastating attacks against rivals who have yet to fully recover politically from his broadsides and demeaning nicknames years after he launched them.
John Thomas, a Republican strategist who is organizing the super PAC to boost DeSantis, said that since the election Tuesday he’s gotten a new surge of donors and volunteers, including from Republicans who several months ago appeared to be on the “Trump train” and now are “sick of it.” Many untested Republican candidates who Trump helped hoist to victory in GOP primaries lost in the general election.
In January, Florida Republicans will control every statewide office for the first time in more than 100 years — which some attribute in part to DeSantis’s coattails.“He is running toward the fights, and not away,” said Christian Ziegler, a GOP strategist who is also vice-chairman of the Florida Republican Party, adding, “across the country, there is that tone that people want to see someone who can get the job done, and fight for them.
Thomas said his plans for the pro-DeSantis super PAC project went on pause this summer after the GOP rallied around Trump amid an FBI investigation into his handling of classified documents. Trump seemed increasingly likely to run, Thomas said, and going head-to-head with him seemed more risky.
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