Ron DeSantis was hailed as the future of the GOP — and now he’s just another Trump toady

On Nov. 8, 2022, Florida was the first big state where midterm election results started rolling in, confirming what most pundits believed was the story of the night: Democrats were in for a bloodbath.

The Sunshine State, which had been a key battleground in presidential races for decades, was now a conservative bastion, with Republicans flipping four congressional seats, winning a supermajority in both the state House and Senate and easily holding onto a U.S. Senate seat.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, then 44, was quickly crowned king of the night, as he notched an almost 20-point win, the largest for a Republican in state history.

As the night progressed, it became clear that the overhyped red wave was largely a mirage, with Republicans barely taking the U.S. House, while Democrats held the Senate and won key governorships.

In Michigan, many pundits who had breathlessly hyped an ultra-competitive gubernatorial race had egg on their faces. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer coasted to an 11-point win over Republican commentator Tudor Dixon, who had promised to “Florida our Michigan” with a DeSantis-style agenda of a “Don’t Say Gay” law, book bans and transgender athlete bans.

When the dust settled, Democrats easily held onto all the executive positions and flipped both chambers of the Legislature for the first time in almost 40 years. Voters also approved abortion and voting rights amendments by big margins.

In the two years since then, Democratic-led Michigan has embraced its role as the “anti-Florida,” with Whitmer signing laws barring discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, removing restrictions to abortion, setting clean energy goals, reforming gun laws, overturning Right to Work and more.

But DeSantis-mania didn’t abate at the national level. Some analysts quickly declared he had leapfrogged Donald Trump and was now the “frontrunner” for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, as he had billionaires Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch in his cheering section.

As we’ve seen play out in this election, DeSantis’ top advantage was clearly age. (That was President Joe Biden’s Achilles heel, as the Trump campaign identified, but the former president’s advantage crumbled once Biden departed and Vice President Kamala Harris jumped in the race in July).

There were a couple helpful puff pieces, (“Ron DeSantis Is Young, Has Little Kids and Wants America to Know It”), and his wife, Casey, desperately tried to channel Jackie Kennedy down to the bouffant (which earned her unflattering nicknames like “Tacky Onassis.”)

But for the most part, the Florida governor decided that the way to dethrone Trump was to run as far to his right as possible, playing up his extremist anti-LGBTQ+ agenda, boasting about his COVID skepticism and promising to be the anti-vaxxer-in-chief (a la the bumbling Jonah Ryan character in “Veep.”)

That was DeSantis’ first mistake, believing that he could turn Trump voters on policy. Sure, most Trump diehards like a lot of his agenda, like deporting illegal immigrants en masse and cutting more taxes for the rich.

But it’s Trump’s swagger, his promises to seek vengeance on his enemies and his ability to dominate others that his fans really respond to. The folks who show up at rally after rally, like hippies who used to follow the Grateful Dead, are decked out in shirts, hats and even belt buckles bearing Trump’s face because it’s a cult of personality.

DeSantis’ second miscalculation was betting he could project the same bravado as Trump and voters would fall in line as easily as pundits. But he just couldn’t pull that off, even as he mimicked Trump’s stiffness and even his look, down to the trademark navy suit and red tie.

An aide even shared a video of DeSantis laden with Nazi imagery that took swipes at Trump, in an effort to showcase the Florida governor’s brute strength. But the whole thing was so off-putting and heavy-handed (even to conservatives) that the post was quickly taken down and the staffer was fired.

And DeSantis couldn’t even muster the courage to attack Trump for the dozens of felonies he faced, calling charges in the 2016 hush money case “un-American” and vowing that he wouldn’t extradite the former president. In May, Trump was convicted in a New York court on all 34 felony counts.

One truism that’s held up, even in these tumultuous times, is that voters respond to authenticity. When Trump jeers the media as being the “enemy of the people” and thunders that he’ll throw Democrats in jail, his loyalists buy it.

DeSantis has been effective at wielding power in Florida, thanks to sycophantic lawmakers and courts, and disposing of duly-elected Democratic prosecutors who displease him.

But his tough guy act wasn’t built to go national. His presidential campaign was just an endless loop of awkwardness, from his weird, forced laugh, speculation over lifts in his footwear and uncanny resemblance to a robot attempting to express human emotion any time he tried to smile on the stump.

Trump barely broke a sweat savaging the man he nicknamed “Ron DeSanctimonious” — casually accusing him of pedophilia and having “no personality.”

While analysts and rich donors saw DeSantis as the perfect vessel for Trump’s agenda without the baggage, voters were never smitten — and he dropped out after a disastrous second-place showing in the Iowa caucuses in January.

Then came the ritual humiliation of endorsing Trump, which most of his former opponents, like Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy and eventually Nikki Haley, all did with varying levels of obsequiousness. DeSantis, however, could only deliver his through a clenched smile: “It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance.”

Having his former rivals grovel before him has to be 50% of the reason Trump keeps running for president (the other half seems to be trying to stay out of prison).

Months later, DeSantis has proved himself to be a loyal party apparatchik, which seems to be the role he’s best suited for. He’s aided Trump’s campaign and tried to prop him up in Florida, which has shown some signs of softening support for the GOP, particularly with an abortion rights measure on the ballot.

So DeSantis’ administration has launched a website — with state resources — hammering the measure as “dangerous.” It’s the same messaging anti-abortion forces used against Michigan’s 2022 ballot proposal (which they blasted as “Too confusing. Too extreme.”) But they didn’t have the power of state government behind them.

DeSantis has gone even further, deploying his “elections goon squad,” as Rolling Stone put it, to harass Floridians who signed petitions in favor of the reproductive rights amendment. Talk about a huge abuse of power.

And after a second possible assassination attempt against Trump this month — this one at his Florida golf course — DeSantis was more than happy to start meddling with a state probe of the incident after expressing skepticism with the federal investigation.

DeSantis bragged he had run the plan by Trump and it pleased him. Now Trump is demanding that DeSantis should be completely in charge of the case — overriding the FBI and Department of Justice.

“OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM IS CORRUPT AND DISCREDITED,” Trump said. “LET FLORIDA HANDLE THE CASE!”

So DeSantis is back in the right’s good graces — but only because he learned his place, which is serving at the pleasure of the ex-president in whatever capacity he chooses. That’s the same road that Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, went down and just look at him now.

It’s been over nine years since Trump rode down that golden escalator and announced his first Republican presidential bid. Two impeachments, dozens of felony charges and a failed coup later and it’s still his party.

Would another election loss change that? It’s honestly hard to say.

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and X.