DeSantis Decisive Midterm Winner; Heralds GOP Supermajority in Florida

Several significant races are still undecided in Arizona; Georgia Senate race heads for a December runoff

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with his wife Casey DeSantis and children Madison, Mason and Mamie, waves to the crowd during an election night watch party at the Convention Center in Tampa, Florida, on Nov. 8, 2022. GIORGIO VIERA/AFP via Getty Images

The decisive reelection success of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida, where he won by more than 19 percentage points, topped a red wave that didn’t extend much beyond the state’s borders.

DeSantis’s success was underscored by strong results for his GOP colleagues across the state, particularly Sen. Marco Rubio, who won by more than 16 points—double his 2016 margin. In the House of Representatives, the GOP flipped three Florida seats and also picked up the additional one that was apportioned to the state based on the 2020 census.

The success was particularly striking in the 27th Congressional District, which was almost perfectly split after the 2020 redistricting between those who voted for future President Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump in 2020. This time, Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar carried it by more than 14 points.

Salazar’s victory underscores the success of Florida Republicans to attract Latino voters. The district, covering a part of Miami-Dade County, including Little Havana, is more than two-thirds Hispanic.

In addition, the Florida GOP flipped four state Senate seats and eight state House seats, giving them supermajorities in both chambers.

Winning Recipe

DeSantis focused his campaign on issues of public safety, freedom, and opposition to the quasi-Marxist “woke” ideologies.

“States and cities governed by leftist politicians have seen crime skyrocket, they’ve seen their taxpayers abused, they’ve seen medical authoritarianism imposed, and they’ve seen American principles discarded,” DeSantis said during his victory speech.

“We have embraced freedom, we have maintained law and order, we have protected the rights of parents, we have respected our taxpayers, and we reject woke ideology. We fight the woke in the Legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”

The contrast between the woke movement and more traditional values has emerged as one of the most salient points with voters.

“DeSantis has proven that culture war is good policy and good politics,” anti-woke activist Christopher Rufo stated in a Nov. 8 tweet.

“It’s time for Republicans to lean in and abolish critical race and gender theory from American life.”

DeSantis Phenomenon

DeSantis is a rare character in American politics, combining impeccable establishment credentials with palpable disdain for the establishment.

He graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School before joining the U.S. Navy, where he reached the rank of lieutenant and spent one year deployed to Iraq. He then served as a federal prosecutor.

In 2012, he ran for Congress in Florida’s reliably Republican-leaning 6th District and won. In 2015, he co-founded the Republican Freedom Caucus.

In 2017, DeSantis was one of the few Republican lawmakers who opposed the special counsel investigation into alleged Trump–Russia collusion to sway the 2016 election. The investigation ultimately didn’t substantiate the allegations.

In 2018, DeSantis ran for governor of Florida with Trump’s endorsement. He ran a pro-Trump campaign that profoundly irritated the beltway establishment, including an ad in which he taught his son to “build the wall” and say “Make America Great Again”—Trump’s signature policy and slogan, respectively.

As governor, he’s stood out for quickly reversing government restrictions on people and businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing criticism from national and local media.

He’s also aggressively opposed influences of the woke ideology in education, particularly the theories that tend to divide people based on race or introduce children to sexual concepts at a young age.

Over the past year, there has been growing speculation that DeSantis may run for president in 2024, though some analysts argued he may sit out the race if Trump runs. The midterm results may mix up those calculations.

Nationwide, Republican candidates J.D. Vance and Ted Budd won Senate seats in Ohio and North Carolina, although only by single-digit margins. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) barely defended his seat while Dr. Mehmet Oz lost in Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, Blake Masters in Arizona trailed incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly as of press time by 5 points. Adam Laxalt in Nevada maintains a small lead over Democrat incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, although 20 percent of the vote is still to be counted. In Georgia, Herschel Walker will go to a runoff against Sen. Raphael Warnock.

Trump took a jab at DeSantis shortly before the midterms, nicknaming him “Ron DeSanctimonious” during a rally speech. DeSantis, on the other hand, has refrained from criticizing the former president.

The only time Trump and DeSantis clashed, at least indirectly, was last month, when DeSantis threw support behind Republican John O’Dea, a Senate contender in Colorado. O’Dea said he would “actively campaign against Trump” in the 2024 race and Trump, in response, disavowed him. DeSantis’s endorsement of O’Dea was a “big mistake,” Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social.

O’Dea lost to incumbent Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet by more than 12 points.