With his campaign struggling, DeSantis seeks a big debate win

FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday warned hundreds gathered at a beachside restaurant of the existential crisis facing America if he is not elected president in 2024. For the once-rising Republican superstar, however, his moment of truth may be coming just two nights from now.

“We are in danger of being the first generation to turn over to the next generation a country that is less free and less prosperous than the one we inherited,” DeSantis told the crowd of supporters who came to cheer him on before this week’s GOP debate in Milwaukee.

The Republican governor’s visit was billed as a “pre-debate party,” and in many ways it resembled that as people drank beer and ate food as the late summer — and still relatively hot sun — bore down on them.

But the event, put together by Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting DeSantis, in Florida’s ruby-red Northwest region comes as his struggling campaign has been through several reboots. And now, attention is turning to whether he will shine or shrink when the bright lights of the first Republican debate are turned on.

As the second-place candidate in the Republican primary, the Florida governor will likely withstand the bulk of attacks aimed at people not named Donald Trump. And with Trump vowing to skip FOX’s televised event — reportedly for his own prime time interview with Tucker Carlson — the debate stage in Milwaukee could serve as the backdrop for DeSantis’ much-needed campaign reset.

The two-hour, Trump-free setup offers DeSantis an opportunity to improve his diminishing performance in the polls, but presents him with a challenge: How to convince Republican primary voters to embrace him without attacking Trump, who is far ahead in every major public-opinion survey. A leaked memo outlining a preferred debate strategy — drafted by the firm running the PAC that is all-but running the DeSantis campaign — advised the governor to defend Trump. DeSantis later said he was unaware of the contents of the strategy document.

The memo also suggested DeSantis should attack political neophyte Vivek Ramaswamy, who has crept up in some early-state polls. But going after candidates trying to catch up to him runs the risk of elevating their stature with an electorate that is just beginning to tune into the race.

“It’s still clearly a two-man race, and that’s why Trump keeps attacking DeSantis, but on Wednesday night he has to demonstrate to everybody that he’s clearly the guy to take on Trump,” Nick Iarossi, a Florida-based lobbyist who supports DeSantis, said in an interview. “The goal is to consolidate the anti-Trump Republican support.”

Iarossi — who is close to the DeSantis campaign but said he is not advising him on debate preparations — predicted the governor would avoid going after Trump or other Republicans and will instead save his firepower for President Joe Biden.

“He’s going to have to endure a lot of fire, that — I don’t care how good you are — is difficult to do. The pro, though, is he’s going to have a ton of speaking time,” Iarossi added.

DeSantis has said in recent interviews that he expects to be attacked by lower-ranked candidates looking to supplant him as the Republican alternative to Trump. On Monday, he criticized the former president’s decision to skip the face-off during an interview with FOX’s Martha MacCallum.

“Nobody is entitled to anything in this world, [least] of all the Republican nomination,” DeSantis said. Nevertheless, he signaled he would stick with his strategy of generally avoiding discussion of Trump, adding, “I’m going to make the case that under Joe Biden, this country is in decline.”

At the same time, his campaign blasted a fundraising email preemptively slamming “baseless and phony attacks” from his opponents and blaming “the media, the DC political elite and the Left” for failing to claim him as the winner.

During his final public appearance before the debate, DeSantis stuck to that strategy in a speech that combined a review of his Florida record, with parts of his presidential campaign platform on border security and clamping down on the federal bureaucracy. He never mentioned Trump by name in contrast to several jabs he took at both Biden and Hunter Biden.

As he has done in the past, he said it was time for Republicans to shake off their recent losing streaks — outside of Florida — and questioned those in the “executive” branch who had gone along with the advice of former top medical adviser Anthony Fauci.

But it’s DeSantis who will likely be the main target. Ramaswamy made it clear that he was ready to take on DeSantis during a press conference in Atlanta over the weekend.

"I'm really preparing a lot less than any of the other candidates,” he said, then dug at DeSantis without naming him, adding,” I promise you, I did not get a 100-page super PAC memo laying out pre-prepped canned attack lines against other candidates.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who famously mocked 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R.-Fla.) over a phrase he kept repeating on the debate stage, also took a swing at DeSantis when asked about the Never Back Down memo over the weekend in Atlanta.

“A canned line used against me by a Florida politician on a debate stage,” said Christie, who will take part in Wednesday’s debate. “What the hell could go wrong?”

Meanwhile, Republican consultants who have worked on previous presidential races and are unaffiliated with any current candidate said DeSantis must outshine his own campaign operation, which has taken flak for a series of missteps.

“He needs to prove that he’s better than his campaign. He needs to convince the voters open to moving on from Trump that he’s their guy,” said Alex Conant, who worked on Rubio’s 2016 White House bid.

Matthew Bartlett, a New Hampshire native who has worked on several GOP presidential campaigns, was more blunt in his criticism of the campaign.

“DeSantis needs a breakout moment in this presidential race, and his super PAC just put him a mile behind the starting line,” Bartlett said, referring to Never Back Down’s strategy memo. In addition to questioning the Trump strategy, Bartlett questioned the wisdom of posting the memo online “for the world to see [and] driving a week’s worth of process stories.”

Bartlett advised DeSantis to offer areas of distinction between himself and Trump, calling it a “fairytale” to believe Trump will wither under the weight of his legal troubles. “To be the man, you got to beat the man,” he said.

And he suggested the Florida governor avoid only ticking off his lengthy record of conservative achievements, adding: “He cannot be a litigator. This is all about a feeling. It is all about attitude and swagger on a debate stage.”

In Florida on Monday, as the sun was about to set at the beach, those who came to hear the governor remained confident about his prospects.

“He’s proven himself in Florida,” said Doug Stauffer, a pastor from nearby Niceville who showed up at the rally wearing a DeSantis hat and shirt.

Stauffer said he knows plenty of people who are sticking with Trump because they think he did a “great job” while he was under “attack” by the media and the federal bureaucracy. But he said he would vote for DeSantis in Florida’s primary next March if DeSantis is on the ballot.

“I would vote for him. I think he’s presidential,” Stauffer said.

Kimberly Leonard contributed to this story.