As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continues his presidential campaign after coming in a distant second behind former President Donald Trump in Iowa, he shared a regret about the way in which he began it almost one year ago.
Mr. DeSantis has described himself over the last few months as the most accessible candidate to media and potential voters alike.
“I’m the only candidate that actually agreed to come to New Hampshire to debate, and what does that say?” he asked the audience of a CNN Town Hall on Jan. 16. “We have four candidates for president now: Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, and me. I’m the only one who’s not running a basement campaign at this point.”
He told the crowd that they deserved to have candidates come up and answer their questions in forums like it. But that is not how he admits to getting the ball rolling last spring.
During an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, he was asked, “What errors did you make that you’re willing to say, ‘I shouldn’t have done this, but I’m going to correct it going forward, and I’m going to do well in March’?”
His answer was his relationship with the media. While he does not regret the time he spent on the ground in Iowa and other states, saying, “When you meet people, you convert them,” he admitted media plays a significant part in the campaigns.
“I came in not really doing as much media,” he said. “I should have just been blanketing. I should have gone on all the corporate shows. I should have gone on everything. I started doing that as we got into the end of the summer, and we did it. But we had an opportunity, I think, to come out of the gate and do that.”
Since the strategy shift, Mr. DeSantis has booked several media spots across the political spectrum, appearing on both Glenn Beck and “Real Time with Bill Maher.” He has also appeared on several Town Halls and participated in more debates than any other candidate, including one with California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“I’m the only one that’s willing to debate,” he said. “I’ve done these televised town halls. I go out and take questions from voters. You know, I think that’s good. I’m the only one that’s not at this point running a basement campaign. Biden’s running a basement campaign. Trump won’t debate, won’t take questions from voters. And now, Haley won’t debate and won’t take questions from voters.”
Still, despite a slow start with the media and thirty percentage points separating him and President Trump in Iowa, Mr. DeSantis remains confident in his campaign.
Committed to New Hampshire
In another such media appearance on Jan. 18, the Florida governor reaffirmed his commitment to New Hampshire voters despite spending the final days before its first-in-the-nation primary visiting and moving staffers to South Carolina.While speaking with Fox News’s Alexis McAdams, Mr. DeSantis justified his detour south the morning after the Iowa caucuses, saying that he had the morning free and decided to stop Ms. Haley’s home state instead of sleeping in.
“So we went to South Carolina, knocked out a couple events, and then did what we were planning to do in New Hampshire,“ he said. ”That was somehow caricatured as ‘skipping’ New Hampshire when it wasn’t. It was adding South Carolina in addition to that.”
And his campaign confirmed with The Epoch Times that the staff move was a proactive move to increase the pressure on former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, with the hopes that she would drop out of the race if she lost her home state.
“When Nikki Haley fails to win her home state, she’ll be finished, and this will be a two-person race—and her donors are starting to come to the same conclusion,” DeSantis campaign director Andrew Romeo said in a statement.
“While they continue to have buyer’s remorse over backing a bubble-wrapped candidate who can’t beat Trump, we’re wasting no time in taking the fight directly to Haley on her home turf.”
The New Hampshire Primary is scheduled for Jan. 23. The South Carolina primary is scheduled for Feb. 24.
