Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is trying to break the doom loop. NBC News reports that his campaign has undertaken a major reboot in an attempt to pull out of a tailspin of bad headlines, fundraising troubles and declining poll numbers.
Count me skeptical that this will work.
Part of the issue is that the DeSantis campaign’s blueprint for turning things around is flawed. But another part is out of his control: The dynamics of the Republican race so far already show the base again congealing around Trump, setting up his challengers for failure.
The reboot plan doesn’t reckon with DeSantis’ major flaws and challenges.
That DeSantis even needs a reboot merely two months after launching is a warning sign. He entered the race as the presumed Trump slayer, with backing from establishment GOP types and big dollar donors, and the affection of News Corp Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch. But his poll numbers declined in the spring and have remained stuck around 20% among Republican voters. Meanwhile, Trump has seen his numbers climb and stick somewhere around the 50% mark in polling averages.
As NBC News reports, DeSantis’ campaign wants to change up a few things to give the Florida governor a badly needed boost: more engagement with mainstream media; more focus on national — as opposed to Florida-focused — politics; and more small events instead of major campaign speeches.
But those changes don't add up to a promising strategy. DeSantis’ pivot from engaging only with friendly right-wing media to addressing more mainstream national media outlets — such as his recent sit-down with CNN — is good for democracy and is, generally speaking, a smart practice for a politician interested in governing the entire country. It isn’t, however, the move that’s going to get him out of this specific rut. His problem right now isn’t that the general electorate doesn’t like him — though it doesn’t — it’s that most Republican voters aren’t interested in him. Perhaps more appearances in centrist and liberal-leaning news outlets can get him more headlines, but it’s a roundabout way to sway the core demographic he needs to sway most right now.
DeSantis’ planned pivot to leaner events and more intimate engagement with voters in places like coffee shops is also a dead end. According to NBC’s report, the campaign sees this as a potential cost-cutting measure as it looks for ways to save cash. But if DeSantis is running an underdog campaign, one of the most efficient ways to rise in the polls is through big events, using the power of rousing oratory to attract attention to one’s message. Big campaign rallies can generate grassroots networks of potential voters, garner positive press coverage and produce viral clips that help build candidate buzz.
But if DeSantis is trying to lean in to a quiet style of voter engagement, that’s more likely to push him in the direction of greater obscurity. I can’t help but speculate that media criticism of DeSantis’ lack of charisma could be a factor here; perhaps DeSantis’ team senses that he’s not likely to win over many voters through soaring speeches, and that the campaign might as well use that reality as a way to save costs. But implicitly that’s an admission that DeSantis doesn’t have the juice required to topple the dominant player in the race.
The one part of the planned reboot that could potentially help him is a greater focus on national rather than Florida politics. DeSantis is popular in Florida, and it’s common for governors to tout their state record to make their case to the public about their competence — so it made some sense that he focused on his state record in his messaging. But still it’s striking that even as of this week he’s been evasive in his discussion of critical national issues ranging from abortion to foreign policy in Ukraine, which are missed opportunities for him to distinguish himself from Trump.
Overall, though, the reboot plan doesn’t reckon with DeSantis’ major flaws and challenges. His value proposition coming into the race is that he could be a competent alternative to Trump while still hewing to fundamental MAGA principles, both appealing to the establishment GOP-types who prefer working with a stable, predictable leader and the grassroots of the party eager to see a MAGA champion fighting on its behalf. But it’s not clear that there’s a path to the nomination through that lane.
DeSantis’ attempts to impress the base with red meat by staking out extreme positions on issues like transgender rights may have unnerved some mainstream Republicans. At the same time his extreme positions haven’t won over the base, in part because voters don’t read lists of policy positions but pay attention to the person delivering them — and DeSantis seems to have a charisma problem. It’s also unclear if the Republican base’s idolatry of Trump has anything to do with the perception that he is particularly competent when it comes to prosecuting policy. Trump is first and foremost an entertaining culture warrior and avatar of the right-wing nationalist worldview. DeSantis remains just a pale imitation.
