Ron DeSantis (*1978), the Governor of the State of Florida, looks like the big winner of the 2022 midterm elections. One key to success was his ability to win over large parts of the Latino vote, notably winning the Democratic strongholds Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. If he should be able to replicate that on the national level, Democrats might lose the presidency in 2024.
Whether you like him and/or his policies, in November 2018, Ron DeSantis had managed to defeat the Democratic candidate for governor Andrew Gillum by only 0.4% of the vote or 49.6% vs. 49.2%. In the 2022 midterms, it was a whole different picture: Ron DeSantis was able to beat his gubernatorial challenger from the Democratic Party, Charlie Crist, with a comfortable 19.4% margin 59.4% vs. 40%. That’s called a mandate by the Florida voters. This victory makes Ron DeSantis one of the hot, early favorites for the 2024 presidential election. Therefore, Donald Trump was quick to publicly threaten the reelected Florida governor if ever he should dare to run as a Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election. In Pennsylvania, on November 5, 2022 Trump called the Florida governor “Ron DeSanctimonious”, a sure sign that he viewed him as a serious rival. In early November, Politico wrote that Ron DeSantis had raised $200 million for his reelection—a record for a gubernational race—and that he had $90 million left as a war chest (for 2024).
In the 2022 midterms, Ron DeSantis had made a series of endorsements in key races. In Colorado, he backed Joe O’Dea as the GOP’s Senate candidate, a man who had publicly said he wouldn’t support Trump in 2024. Of course, The Donald took this as a personal attack and wrote about the endorsement on his Truth Social social media platform: “A BIG MISTAKE!”
A short political biography of Ron DeSantis
Ron DeSantis was born in Jacksonville and largely raised in Dunedin, both Florida. He has been described as “Trump with a brain” because he graduated from Yale University, where he was the school’s baseball captain, and Harvard Law School.
In 2004, Ron DeSantis joined the United States Navy and later served as a legal advisor to SEAL Team One. He served in Iraq in 2007-08. Back in the USA, until 2010, he served as a Special Assistant U.S. attorney at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Florida.
In 2012, Ron DeSantis was elected to the House of Representatives. He was one of the founding members of the Freedom Caucus, the very conservative, hard-right group within the GOP. Most of them are fiscally conservative and in support of Donald Trump although, in February 2019, the then president managed to oversee America’s largest budget deficit in U.S. history, and all this before the covid-pandemic.
In defense of Ron DeSantis, one can add that, in July 2022, he announced Florida’s historic budget surplus of $21.8 billion for the fiscal year 2021-22, notably thanks to spending cuts. Nevertheless, for a long time, Ron DeSantis had been an ally of President Donald Trump. Already in 2017, President Trump had announced that he would support Ron DeSantis if he should decide to run for governor. In 2018, that moment arrived.
In 2018, Ron DeSantis was trailing in the polls in the Republican primary for the governorship of Florida by up to 15 points. When Donald Trump through his support behind Ron DeSantis, the polls flipped almost overnight in his favor.
In a 2018 campaign video ad with a risky sense of humor, Ron DeSantis stared into the camera, cutting a pile of regulatory documents in half with a chainsaw, taught his children—wearing “Make America Great Again” jumpers—how to say “Make America Great Again”, encouraged his toddler daughter to “build the wall” out of of toy bricks, and read Trump’s The Art of the Deal to his children.
After the 2018 election win, Ron DeSantis thanked Donald Trump for standing by him “when it wasn’t necessarily the smart thing.” But already in that year, Trump and DeSantis (as well as then Republican Governor Rick Scott) had clashed when President Trump claimed that there had not been almost 3000 Puerto Ricans killed by Hurricane Maria.
During his tenure as governor, Ron DeSantis did not enforce face mask mandates, stay-at-home orders, and vaccination requirements in Florida. In May 2021, he signed into law a bill that prohibited businesses, schools, cruise ships and government entities from requiring proof of vaccination. After his reelection, Ron DeSantis claimed that Florida “was a refuge of sanity when the world went mad.”
According to CNN, as Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis pushed through new restrictions on abortion, a notable expansion of school vouchers for private schools, laws to reshape how schools teach and talk about LGBTQ topics as well as racism, and he introduced a ban on coronavirus vaccination requirements. In addition, Ron DeSantis orchestrated flights that carried migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, refused to help the federal government distribute Covid-19 vaccines for children and pushed through an aggressively partisan redrawing of the state’s congressional boundaries that split up a sitting Black Democrat’s district.
For his second term, the Governor of Florida promised to eliminate permits to carry firearms and further “expand pro-life protections”, without offering details.
What else has happened in the 2022 midterm elections
In the Pennsylvania Senate race 2022, the Democrat John Fetterman created a surprise because he was able to defeat the Republican Dr. Oz, a former TV presenter, author, professor emeritus and retired cardiothoracic surgeon, who had been endorsed by Donald Trump. Dr. Oz said in 2022 that he was against abortion. He has repeatedly advocated controversial “alternative medicines”, including homeopathy. He was opposed to the Chief Medical Advisor to the President, Dr. Fauci, notably regarding his vaccine requirements.
Because of the Pennsylvania win as well as the win by the Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, the Democrate will retain their Senate majority. It will be at worst 50:50 as until now, with the VP Kamala Harris having the decisive vote in the Senate.
[Update added on December 7, 2022 at 11:16 Swiss time: Reverend Raphael Warnock won the runoff race against Herschel Walker 51.4% vs. 48.6%. This gives the Democrats a 51:49 majority in the Senate].
The Georgia Senate race will be decided in the December 6, 2022 runoff between the incumbent, Pastor Raphael Warnock, who could “only” win 49.4% of the vote against his Republican challenger Herschel Walker, a former American football player, who won 48.5%. In Georgia, without a candidate getting over the 50% threshold, a runoff is mandatory. A 51:49 majority in the Senate would be important for Democrats to neutralize the vote by a maverick Democrat such as the West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who single-handedly blocked some of President Biden’s political projects.
The 2022 midterms showed that the Trump endorsement is too often a kiss of death. According to CNN, the Donald Trump disapproval rating is 58% (only 39% favorable), closely followed by Joe Biden with a 56% disapproval rating (41% favorable). The bottom line is that the quality of candidates matters.
In addition, 62% of all voters think that Joe Biden has been legitimately elected. Running around telling Trump’s Big Lie of “voter fraud” only appeals to a (strong) minority, but spreading such conspiracy theories will not win elections. Anti-abortion campaigns are not a winning strategy either, with 74% of women and 57% of men clearly in support for legal abortion. Despite an extremely low unemployment rate of 3.7%, the high inflation of still 7.7% in October should have helped the GOP win many more seats. This has not materialized.
[Updated on December 7, 2022 at 11:16 Swiss time: According to CNN projections, in the 435-seat House of Representatives with a majority of 218 seats, Democrats are projected to win 213 seats and Republicans are projected to reach a majority with 222 seats. Although the GOP lost several key races, according to a Washington Post projection made on November 9, a staggering 164 Republican 2020 election deniers were elected to Congress].
Donald Trump backed four secretary of state candidates, the people who oversee election results. All four fell short. Election result manipulation by those Trumpers has been banned.
The greatest weakness of the Democrats seems to be their candidate: Joe Biden looks old and tired. His Afghanistan disaster may have been forgotten by many but, despite low unemployment, high inflation remains a key issue. Is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer the answer to Ron DeSantis and/or Donald Trump?
Suggested reading / books:
Maggie Haberman: Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Penguin Press, October 2022, 608 pages. Order the book from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk; German version/Deutsche Ausgabe: Täuschung: Der Aufstieg Donald Trumps und der Untergang Amerikas, Siedler Verlag, Oktober 2022, 832 Seiten. Bestellen Sie das Buch bei Amazon.de.
Jules Witcover: Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption, 2019, 576 pages. Order the paperback written by political columnist and veteran Washington correspondent Jules Witcover (*1927) from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk. Order the Kindle eBook from Amazon.com.
Beauty items at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Photograph of Ron DeSantis in 2020. Photo: Office of the Governor of Florida, public domain via Wikipedia.
Article added on November 13, 2022 at 23:03 German time. Last updated on December 7, 2022 at 11:16 German/Swiss time.
