DeSantis’ reboot still dodges the biggest issue

He’s cutting costs, shedding staff and swapping big speeches for intimate diner stops.

But the reboot of Ron DeSantis’ flailing presidential campaign is still avoiding the Florida governor's biggest hurdle of all: taking on Donald Trump.

Faced with lagging poll numbers in national and state surveys and a string of missteps Team Trump has capitalized on, DeSantis continues to struggle with how to topple the former president and frontrunner, who appears to gain support with each indictment. And interviews with 17 people who work in and around his campaign revealed little appetite to dramatically change that strategy.

“His biggest problem is Donald Trump,” said Republican operative Alex Conant, who worked on Sen. Marco Rubio’s losing 2016 presidential bid and is unaffiliated this cycle. “Yeah, he hasn't run the best campaign, and I think there's room for improvement on his message and his media strategy, but ultimately he’s lost traction because Donald Trump is ascendant — and that’s not DeSantis’ fault.”

“His message has gotten very muddled, and he has not made the sharp contrast with Trump that I think he needs,” Conant added.

And donors are taking notice — a trend that could spell doom for the prodigious fundraiser. Even DeSantis supporters acknowledged lackluster polling and negative headlines are affecting people’s perception of the race. Some have fielded calls and texts from nervous donors and are working to make the case for the governor.

“This has a lot of reminiscent feelings of 2016 where Trump is getting by-and-large left alone,” said a senior Republican strategist who has been in touch with the DeSantis campaign and was granted anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive matter. “I just struggle to see any path.”

Ronald Lauder, a billionaire cosmetics heir considering supporting DeSantis, has already taken a meeting with rival Tim Scott and hedge fund mogul Ken Griffin is reportedly considering closing his checkbook after donating $5 million to DeSantis’ 2022 gubernatorial re-election bid. In November, before DeSantis had officially jumped into the race, Griffin said he was prepared to fully support the governor if he ran for president.

“He has lost the confidence of people who thought it was a slam dunk,” said a former Tampa Bay area Republican official. The person, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by DeSantis, added that supporters were “disappointed and demoralized.”

The person also predicted that if DeSantis doesn’t change the trajectory, then supporters will bail on him.

“They don’t care who’s president,” the person said. “They just want to be behind the horse who’s won.”

Among more than a dozen people interviewed for this story, a debate in DeSantis world emerged: On one side are loyalists who believe the Florida governor should focus on his own accomplishments and steer clear of a mud fight with Trump. On the other are frustrated supporters who want him to hone his message and come up with a better strategy for dealing with the pugilistic former president.

Those in the first camp insist it’s too early to count him out, excuse disappointing polling with reminders of the six-month wait until voting begins and predict he will shine during the Aug. 23 debate in Milwaukee. Yet donors and backers are losing faith in his ability to clinch the nomination and are looking for a better alternative to Trump.

“I’ve always imagined Trump would slowly bleed off support as this goes on,” Jason Osborne, a New Hampshire state lawmaker and early DeSantis supporter, said. “It just seems to be slower than I would have predicted.”

Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for the DeSantis campaign, contended the twice-elected Republican governor has put forth a compelling argument as to why DeSantis is a better choice than Trump.

“The governor has never held back from drawing distinctions between his record and Trump's,” Griffin said. “Ron DeSantis stood against the lockdowns. Ron DeSantis is against massive government spending. Ron DeSantis would've fired Anthony Fauci. And Ron DeSantis will build the border wall and empower American border agents to enforce our immigration laws.”

Trump has been on the attack for months, hurling insults and his trademark derogatory nicknames at DeSantis before the Florida governor even entered the race. DeSantis has no plans to begin matching that fire but is considering expanding his criticisms of the former president, said one outside adviser granted anonymity to share internal discussions. (So far only three of the 14 Republican presidential candidates are directly taking on Trump, and they are usually polling in the single digits, combined — demonstrating the challenge the entire field faces.)

“Do I think we need to have a better message of why Ron DeSantis [over] Donald Trump? Yes, I do think that. And that’s coming,” the adviser said.

To that end, DeSantis — who is making his fourth campaign visit to Iowa this weekend for the state GOP’s annual Lincoln Dinner — will begin rolling out detailed economic plans in the coming weeks, the adviser added.

“How is he going to help the working-class citizen in the U.S. who feels the global economic strategy that has been pushed over the last several decades has winnowed their jobs away to hostile foreign countries?” the adviser said, in describing the tenor of DeSantis’ upcoming remarks. “We need to have a finer message, so people understand why Ron DeSantis over Trump.”

During his first two months in the race, DeSantis has not completely ignored Trump — whose endorsement in 2018 proved helpful as DeSantis clinched the Florida governorship in a tight GOP primary.

DeSantis has tried out a few lines of attack, seeming to settle on a direct contrast between his own record and Trump’s over Covid policies. “Faucian dystopia” is a go-to line as he reminds voters of his early push to keep Florida open during the pandemic over the advice of Trump’s top Covid adviser at the time. And just this week, DeSantis floated the possibility of tapping vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a long-shot Democratic presidential candidate — to run the national Centers for Disease Control, though the suggestion was panned by the conservative National Review and others.

He has also taken to pointing out Trump did not complete the construction of his promised Southern border wall, and noted to receptive audiences that his support for a six-week abortion ban in Florida is more conservative than some of Trump’s rhetoric on the topic.

But DeSantis — who consistently polls in second place in national and state-by-state surveys — has been loath to directly attack Trump with anywhere near the ferocity the former president unleashes on him. He obliquely references Trump’s haphazard leadership style and penchant for flash over substance in an effort to underscore his own studious, serious nature. But those attacks are far from the stuff of long-shot candidate Chris Christie’s criticisms of Trump.

And, perhaps most centrally to his campaign, DeSantis continuously says he is the only contender who can defeat Biden and promises to end the GOP’s “culture of losing” without ever acknowledging Trump lost his re-election bid.

“I don’t think there’s any right answer to this because Trump, and reactions to Trump, are so unpredictable. More than anything, he needs to focus on defining himself,” said Jason Cabel Roe, a Republican consultant who has worked on five presidential campaigns. “The number one flaw in his campaign strategy is not engaging the mainstream media.”

DeSantis’ staunchest defenders warn that it’s far too early for Trump’s team to declare the race over and remain confident that the governor will prevail by the time the Iowa caucuses roll around. Trump is also facing multiple criminal trials that could take him off the campaign trail during the 2024 cycle.

Florida Republican House Speaker Paul Renner, a staunch supporter of DeSantis who helped shepherd an aggressive legislative agenda earlier in the year, called the recent moves to reduce staff and recalibrate the campaign an “appropriate step.”

Like other DeSantis supporters, Renner stressed that DeSantis remains the clear No. 2 candidate and pointed to other presidential hopefuls, from John McCain to Joe Biden, whose candidacies were seen as lagging in the months ahead of their comebacks. GOP voters will need to understand that they need a candidate who can defeat Biden, he said, and he predicted that Trump’s attacks on members of the party “is going to start exhausting a lot of people.”

Through interviews with POLITICO, supporters urged the governor and his team to ignore the news headlines and Trump’s taunts, and to remember that polls signal many Republican voters are open to supporting candidates not named “Trump.”

“He’s struggling to find his message,” acknowledged Dan Eberhart, who has fundraised for DeSantis and is chief executive officer of Canary Drilling Services. “But I think those counting him out are premature.”

The governor’s backers also argue that DeSantis is getting a disproportionate amount of negative coverage at a time when most other Republican presidential candidates are polling merely in the single digits.

The key, said Justin Sayfie, a DeSantis fundraiser and partner at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners, was to “peak at the right moment.” He predicted that in six months headlines would be filled with “the inevitable comeback stories.”

“Anyone who thinks he needs to be beating Trump in the polls in July to win the nomination hasn’t done this before or is inexperienced or an amateur,” he said.

In New York, where DeSantis recently hosted a fundraiser and addressed congregants at a prominent synagogue, one of his leading supporters waved off concerns and defended his strategy.

“All of us who are really involved and fascinated and interested by politics follow every twist and turn,” said the surrogate, Chele Farley, a former Republican U.S. House candidate. “But most people are enjoying their summer.”