DeSantis Files Paperwork to Run for President in 2024

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a fundraiser in a file photo. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 24 filed a formal notification with the Federal Election Commission that he is running for president.

DeSantis, whose entry into the race has been awaited for months, is expected to publically announce his candidacy tonight at 6 p.m. on the Twitter social media platform with Elon Musk.

Today, DeSantis signed Senate Bill 7050, an elections bill that exempts state officials from having to resign their office if they run for president or vice president. While the legislative session, during which the bill passed, ended May 5, the bill reached the governor’s desk only yesterday.

Polls show DeSantis significantly behind former President Donald Trump for the nomination, but suggest he’s by far the leading challenger at the moment.

In an average of polls maintained by RealClearPolitics, Trump held the lead on May 23 with 56.3 points. DeSantis trailed in a distant second with 19.4 points. Other major candidates include entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and conservative talk show host Larry Elder.

DeSantis, 44, was reelected in November to a second term as the governor of the third-largest state.

Unofficial Campaign

The governor filed as speculation has heated up in recent days that an announcement was imminent. His spokesman Bryan Griffin resigned from his position with the governor’s office to move to his political operation a little more than a week ago.

DeSantis has been campaigning unofficially for months. The book tour for his recently published “The Courage To Be Free: Florida’ Blueprint for America’s Revival” allowed him to tour around the country, including to the key early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, and tell crowds how his leadership has been successful in Florida.

An international trip in late April, to the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and Israel, allowed him to raise his profile internationally.

He deflected questions about his candidacy throughout the spring, noting he wouldn’t have any announcement until after the legislative session. It was a strong one for him and Florida Republicans, giving DeSantis even more of a record to run on. One legislative leader said they did two years’ worth of work in one.

DeSantis has signed, or soon is likely to sign, bills on a host of issues he’s led on, including medical freedom from mandatory COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine passports, school choice, banning transgender surgery and treatment for minors, fighting political indoctrination on college campuses, and use of woke ideology in pension investment and other financial vehicles.

The state bucked a decades-long trend to limit capital punishment to first-degree murder, by instituting it for child rape, and has made a death sentence easier to get after conviction for a capital crime. Other bills toughen penalties for human trafficking and fight illegal immigration, requiring E-Verify, the system confirming a person’s eligibility to work, for businesses with more than 25 employees.

Messaging

DeSantis has positioned himself as a strong conservative who has delivered on the state level and who doesn’t back down from a fight. His tangle with the Disney company, which began after its leaders publicly opposed the Parental Rights in Education bill he passed last year, has drawn some criticism, particularly as Disney recently shelved a $900 million project in Florida some employees had already moved in state for.

But each of Disney’s moves—an 11th-hour deal with its outgoing governing body, a lawsuit filed against the governor—have drawn a strong DeSantis response, including lawsuits and investigations.

The giant entertainment company—the state’s largest private employer—recently offered what might be seen as an olive branch, saying it still plans to invest billions in Florida and would be building affordable housing on its property for its workers, an issue DeSantis and state Republican leaders like Senate President Kathleen Passidomo have made a priority not just for Disney but elsewhere in the state.

DeSantis’s campaign just now being rolled out highlights his roots as a working-class kid in Florida with Rust Belt roots, descended from steelworkers, one who worked his way through Yale and Harvard Law, and served his country during the Global War on Terror, as a Navy officer.

DeSantis in his book says he absorbed the values of his blue-collar family and those in their community, and went through culture shock when he went to Yale and then to Harvard Law. There, he first came up against what he described as left-wing elitism—professors and students who seemed to hold average Americans in contempt.

“Around campus, there was nothing wrong with flying Soviet flags, wearing Che Guevara shirts, and paying homage to Mao Zedong,” he wrote. “This ‘revolutionary chic’ was even commonplace in some quarters.”

“What jarred me about leftism that I saw on campus was that it was not simply a matter of advocating certain positions on matters of tax policy, welfare programs and criminal justice. It was not just a matter of Republican versus Democrat or liberal versus conservative,” he wrote.

“Instead, the strident leftism represented a wholesale rejection of the basic principles that constituted the foundation of the American experiment: the Judeo-Christian tradition, the existence of Creator-endowed rights, the notion of American exceptionalism. This leftism also represented a morality play—those who dissented from leftist ideology were not just wrong but immoral.”