New Hampshire presidential primary voters pride themselves on separating the contenders from the pretenders, and fairly often they succeed. A number of potential candidates who looked strong on paper over the years have instead been exposed in the Granite State as paper tigers. Which brings us to Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who aspires to the Republican throne.
Just a few months ago, DeSantis was widely perceived by those who perceive such things as a genuine threat to Donald Trump and the MAGA-nauts in the 2024 presidential primary race and a potentially formidable general election opponent for President Joe Biden.
That was then. Since then, the governor has proven to be a lackluster campaigner with a mean streak whose poll numbers are tanking. DeSantis is already laying off campaign staff because he is burning through the ample bankroll provided by his fat-cat donors as if there’s no tomorrow. Which there may not be for him.
His glitch-ridden campaign kickoff on Twitter should have been a tip-off that he might not be a big-league candidate. In its wake, some suggested that DeSantis should adopt as his campaign slogan, “Can you hear me now?” He is instead promising to “restore sanity” with an agenda that could be more properly characterized as “restore inanity.”
His first visit to New Hampshire did not exactly conform to the cherished notion that presidential candidates must effectively engage in retail politics to impress Granite State voters. That is, DeSantis didn’t take questions. He did take some when he returned for a town hall meeting in Hollis, The New York Times reported, but only after an hour in which he mentioned Florida about 80 times before getting around to saying “New Hampshire.” This is not good form in a state where voters are happy to listen but also want to be heard.
And when a student asked him whether Donald Trump had “violated the peaceful transfer of power” with his flaming rhetoric preceding the Jan. 6 insurrection, DeSantis waffled embarrassingly. “I wasn’t anywhere near Washington that day. I had nothing to do with what happened that day.” As Washington Post columnist George Will pointed out, he also wasn’t near Gettysburg in July 1863, but that doesn’t preclude him from holding an opinion on what transpired there.
We also suspect that while mentioning Florida in every other word, he did not dwell on the fact that his culture war on LGBTQ people and public schools is costing that state’s economy a pretty penny. One object of DeSantis’ ire, Disney, has canceled a billion-dollar investment in a planned office park in Orlando, which was projected to be staffed by 2,000 workers with an average salary of $120,000. And according to The American Prospect magazine, the following organizations have canceled convention plans for Florida: the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning; the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses; the National Society of Black Engineers; and the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association. The latter alone cost an estimated $3.25 million in hotel revenue for Fort Lauderdale, and a total economic loss of about $8.1 million.
And it’s worth noting that DeSantis is vying with Trump to represent the Putin wing of the Republican Party, dismissing the war in Ukraine as “a territorial dispute” before being forced to backtrack. Having been educated at Yale and Harvard Law School, he should know better. But perhaps it is for the sake of admitting more such towering intellects to elite universities that the Supreme Court has abolished affirmative action.
Besides all that, DeSantis has a problem with New Hampshire voters that will be difficult if not impossible to overcome: He signed into law a six-week ban on abortion in Florida. Nearly 70% of New Hampshire voters support abortion rights. You do the math.
Finally, there is the meanness thing, which must run pretty deep, as illustrated by his weird anti-LGBTQ video that surfaced earlier this month. This description by The Associated Press will suffice to convey the flavor. “It also featured dark images of DeSantis with lightning coming out of his eyes, headlines that said he signed a ‘draconian anti-trans bathroom bill’ and images of muscular shirtless men and clips of Christian Bale in the 2000 movie ‘American Psycho,’ in which he plays a serial killer.” This vein of darkness should set the red light flashing for rational Republican and independent voters. It is Nixon-like and Trump-like. We’ve been there as a nation and should be done with it.