Gov. Ron DeSantis made a rare presidential campaign appearance in Florida on Thursday, saying he’s making significant inroads in Iowa where the first Republican votes for president will take place in mid-January — though he remains far behind in the polls.
“You win it contest by contest. It’s not a national primary,” DeSantis said during a downtown Tampa event that included a few hundred people. “I spent the last six weeks spending a lot of time in rural counties in Iowa. That is not getting a lot of fanfare, and certainly not going to move a national poll, but we’re banking people that are going to go caucus for us when it matters. That’s all that matters. Who shows up in Iowa in mid-January.”
“I wouldn’t trade places with any candidate where we are in Iowa and I think we’re going to have a tremendous victory there and I think it’s going to be something that is going to totally, totally up end all of the conventional wisdom,” he added.
Left unsaid was that in the last three competitive Republican Iowa caucuses in 2008, 2012 and 2016, the winners (Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz, respectively) did not win the nomination for president (there was no competitive Iowa caucus in 2020 as Trump was not challenged).
DeSantis currently trails former President Donald Trump in the most recent national polls by an average of around 45 points, according to RealClearPolitics. In the all-important state of Iowa, where DeSantis is now employing a 99-county strategy, he trails Trump by 30 points, according to a CBS News survey taken in late September.
In New Hampshire, home of the first-in-the-nation GOP primary election DeSantis is now in third place, behind not only Trump but former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who also has been a U.S. Ambassador. The USA Today/Suffolk University poll released on Wednesday shows Trump at 49%, Haley at 19%, and DeSantis at 10%.
DeSantis fans in the crowd in Tampa said they weren’t deterred by the low poll numbers.
“I don’t believe the polls right now based on how they’ve failed us in the past two cycles,” said Tampa resident Laura Kissick. “From what I see he’s on the ground in Iowa, working hard out with the people going to all the counties. I don’t see how you could lose in that situation.”
Kissick added that she doesn’t believe Trump can win enough independent votes in 2024 to win the general election. “I just don’t see it,” she said. “He’s definitely not getting any more than he got in 2020 with all this stuff behind him.”
David Wright, 27, is also extremely skeptical of what the polls say.
“If you look back to 2016, Trump was supposed to lose by 15 points to Hillary (Clinton). Look back to 2020, people had Trump beating Biden.,” he said. “I believe in Gov. DeSantis’ message. I believe in the team that he’s building,” he says.
Wright believes Trump is dominating the presidential race because of the media attention he receives.
“I think that it’s all a daily news cycle” Wright says. “So Trump gets indicted, that’s the coverage. Trump gets indicted again, that’s the coverage. Let’s go back to November of last year. Gov, DeSantis was the most popular conservative figure in the world. He gave a great victory speech on Nov 8, so I just think that as it gets closer to Iowa and the media will actually cover the entire race, rather than Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, then I do think it opens up a lane for DeSantis. We live in a news cycle that is every 12 hours something’s different, and Trump drives ratings.”
At times it was somewhat difficult to hear DeSantis speak on Thursday, because conservative activist and Trump supporter Laura Loomer was verbally attacking him with a bullhorn just outside the building, where her voice could be heard loudly inside the hall.
Meanwhile Thursday, DeSantis was joined by several Florida sheriffs on stage, as his campaign announced that he had received endorsements of 60 sheriffs of the 67 in the state. (Florida U.S. Sen. Rick Scott announced earlier this year that he had received the backing of 59 sheriffs in his race for reelection next year.)
Overall, DeSantis’ speech in Tampa was full of references to how tough he’ll be on crime, saying he has denounced liberal prosecutors and policies in places like New York, California and Illinois.
As for California specifically, DeSantis said, “We’re doing different events while we’re out there and we ran into about six or seven people that have been mugged within the last year, and I’ve been thinking to myself: I’ve been going to events for how long and I’ve never met anyone in Florida who had been mugged. I’m not saying there’s no crime, but it’s almost like a common occurrence. You know why it keeps happening? Because the perpetrators aren’t put in jail where they belong, that’s why that’s happening.”
(DeSantis didn’t provide data on how many people in Florida may or may not have been mugged.)
That led to a central theme of his campaign: How the country is in decline, and how his election will reverse America’s decline.
“We’ll be able to say that after two terms, we were able to restore the American dream in this country,” DeSantis said.
And he also made the observation that people in Florida “don’t have to worry about politics here,” — a comment that Democrats and progressives around the state might take issue with.
“Something happens, I’ll get it done. Don’t worry. We see things, we get out in front of them, we take care of it,” he said, mentioning how he banned alleged “sanctuary cities” when he first took office in 2019.
He then recited a litany of controversial issues in Florida, such as banning the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 schools and taking on the Disney corporation for its opposition to the Parental Rights in Education law.
Meanwhile, DeSantis reported $15 million in the third quarter of 2023, but the Trump campaign reported raising $45 million in that time, according to the Associated Press.
This article originally appeared in florida phoenix