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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ issues with his presidential campaign lie in the governor “himself,” former Florida Republican Representative David Jolly said.
DeSantis’ 2024 bid has struggled to get off the ground, and support has been declining rapidly as the GOP primary debates approach at the end of the month. Earlier this week, polling figures produced by RealClearPolitics showed the governor polling at 15.7 percent, while former President Donald Trump led the Republican pack at 53.7 percent.
Seemingly in response, DeSantis has restructured his campaign team three times in the past 30 days, including on Tuesday when the governor announced that he was replacing his embattled campaign manager Generra Peck with James Uthmeier, his gubernatorial chief of staff.
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But according to Jolly, a frequent DeSantis critic who spoke with MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez on Tuesday, the Florida governor only has himself to blame for his lack of momentum thus far.
“Ron DeSantis’ problem is not his staff, it’s the candidate, it’s himself,” said Jolly, who served Florida’s 13th Congressional District between 2014 and 2017. “I know that because I know several of the people in Florida politics who are working for him, and they’re exceedingly talented staffers and campaign strategists, they’re just working with a terrible candidate and that is why you’re hitting the ceiling. This conversation about ‘woke’ has its ceiling and its limitations, even in the Republican Party.”
Despite trailing Trump by over 30 points, DeSantis is still considered by many as the only GOP candidate that can come close to upending the former president’s reelection campaign. DeSantis has argued that Trump’s legal issues, as well as his constant fixation on the 2020 election results, could doom Republicans’ chances in the next presidential race.
“[If] we are presenting a positive vision for the future, we will win the presidency and we will have a chance to turn the country around,” DeSantis said to Today on Monday. “If, on the other hand, the election is not about January 20, 2025, but January 6, 2021, or what document was left by the toilet at Mar-a-Lago, if it’s a referendum on that, we are going to lose.”
However, according to Jolly, DeSantis’ campaign also “exudes bad faith,” pointing to the governor’s more controversial measures introduced in the state of Florida in the past year.
“The war on migrants, by doing the Martha’s Vineyard stunt, reaching into Texas and shipping them, just shows bad faith,” Jolly said. “It’s not a constructive way to address immigration. The war on trans youth and trying to intervene with the medical counsel you’d get, is just, it’s bad faith. The war on voting rights is bad faith, because there is not a policy agenda pursuing equity.”
“I think that is why this ethos of Ron DeSantis is hitting such a challenge,” he added. “He is seen as somebody that continues to act in bad faith in these culture wars, and on critical issues of race and equity, Ron DeSantis appears determined to just run for the White House to represent White America.”
Newsweek reached out to DeSantis’ campaign via email Tuesday night for comment.
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