Is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis the next face of the GOP?

Photos: AP Images

It was the mid-August height of America’s latest Covid surge, and the White House was scapegoat-hunting.

Having campaigned on a promise to bring the pandemic under control, Joe Biden was forced to watch the rapidly spreading Delta variant wreck the “summer of freedom” that he’d promised. But the administration’s response — advocating masking for schoolchildren, as well as vaccine mandates — met a rising tide of conservative opposition.

In a Republican Party fiercely opposed to those policies, one voice in particular made itself heard: the trenchant tones of Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

“We can either have a free society, or we can have a biomedical security state,” declared the first-term governor.

The Biden administration knew a foil when it saw one, and so it decided to hit back at the man whose laissez-faire pandemic policies in the nation’s third-most-populous state had garnered him the moniker “DeathSantis” on the left.

As one commentator memorably said of DeSantis: “Having made himself the national face of the anti-Biden Covid-response resistance — the president decided to punch it.”

The chance to strike that blow came a few days later at a press gaggle on the White House lawn. “What do you think of Governor DeSantis saying he is going to block interference from the federal government?” asked one reporter.

Joe Biden’s response was a well-timed put-down. Narrowing his eyes and leaning forward with a smile, he replied: “Governor who?”

The appreciative laughter from the press pack told Biden that he’d scored, but all concerned recognized that it was a back-handed compliment. Because a year after Donald Trump left office, Ron DeSantis has emerged as one of the highest-profile Republicans after the former president himself.

Surging ahead of Trump administration veterans Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, he’s polling behind only Trump in the race to be the party’s 2024 candidate. “Donald Trump remains the king of the GOP,” editorialized Politico, but “Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is looking like the crown prince.”

At 43 years old, he’s a young pretender to the throne, but the growing grassroots support isn’t just political hype. With Republicans out of power at the national level, action has shifted to the states, and on that stage Ron DeSantis has proven the biggest performer.

Unlike big Democratic states like New York and California, Florida’s schools were open for the whole of last year, business and entertainment venues operate as usual, and the governor has banned mask mandates. While DeSantis promoted vaccines early on, he’s since refused strong-arm tactics, even for health care workers, instead touting monoclonal antibody treatments.

In the partisan battle over public health versus individual rights that the pandemic has now become, the governor has become one of the most coherent champions of personal freedoms.

Covid has supercharged DeSantis’s rise, but the congressman-turned-governor has also drawn the spotlight by his running battles with the mainstream media and solidly conservative credentials. On everything from gun laws to immigration and the Iran deal, he’s in lockstep with his party’s right.

And as the governor of a large and growing Jewish community, he’s gathering attention from Orthodox donors as well. They’re impressed by his unapologetic defense of Israel, the natural empathy that he showed to the hard-hit Jewish community amid the Surfside disaster, and his support for school choice, which has lightened the burden for hard-pressed parents.

Three years out from the next election, multiple conversations with Florida politicians and community leaders, both on and off the record, painted a more nuanced picture of the rising star than the “mini-Trump” label bestowed by the media. “Driven,” “ideological,” and “genuine” came up frequently, but so did “competent.”

“He’s got very similar policies to Trump but without the constant Twitter use,” says state representative Randy Fine, the only Jewish Republican legislator in Tallahassee.

But for all DeSantis’s promise, there are obvious shortcomings for a politician shooting for the top job. “He’s not a back-slapping, retail politician like Joe Biden, who projects a down-to-earth persona. Can he connect to voters beyond the conservative base?” asked one person who’s interacted with him.

And looming over all the chatter about a 2024 election run is the elephant-in-the-room: Will the former president himself run? And can anyone whose name isn’t Donald Trump succeed in today’s GOP?