The person most worried by Ron DeSantis’s display of Maga-filled meanness will be Donald Trump

Florida governor shows he has bigger political ambitions, writes Andrew Buncombe

There is no longer any affection between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis (Getty Images)

You really have to feel rather bad for Donald Trump.

Especially if he tuned in his television set to Fox News.

It was not so long ago that the likes of Ron DeSantis were narrowly squeaking to victory, and seeking his endorsement as they sought to find their way in a political landscape he had created, and a Republican Party he gripped with the hands of an obsessive body builder.

In the summer of 2018, DeSantis released an obsequious campaign advert showing him and his children pretending to build a wall along the southern border, a paean to the silly racist nonsense demanded by Trump in exchange for his support against Democrat Andrew Gillum. He beat the Democrat by just 30,000 votes.

How quickly that has changed.

The Yale-educated DeSantis, now the incumbent, has a lead of more than 10 points over Democrat Charlie Crist.

And as the 44-year-old DeSantis looks set to secure re-election and use it to very possibly as a platform to make a presidential run in 2024; he has an approval rating of 53 per cent, more than Trump ever had when he was president.

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There are other advantages that the one-time congressman has over the now 76-year-old Trump, hunkered down in Mar-a-Lago amid a sea of worries.

One obviously, is that he has youth on his side.

He has also not been twice impeached, has not been subpoenaed by the committee investigating the Jan 6 attacks, is not the focus of a probe by financial investigators in New York, and has not had his home raided by the FBI which transported boxes of apparently classified documents.

Finally, neither is he the most divisive and controversial ex-president of history.

Such a shift in relative positions from wannabe novice to a man with momentum on his side, someone with the single-mindedness to fly undocumented migrants to Democratic neighbourhoods in a cruel but effective stunt, was utterly underscored by Monday’s governor’s debate.

The event, the sole showdown between DeSantis and Crist, had been delayed because of Hurricane Ian.

The two sides went into the debate with the Republican holding a 10-point advantage over the perma-tanned Crist, 66, a Florida political journeyman who previously served as governor of the sunshine state, albeit as a Republican.

It was not that Crist did not have some good lines in the frequently ill-tempered debate held in Fort Pierce.

“Florida is the most expensive state in the country to live – more than California, more than New York. And why is that the case? Because you’ve taken your eye off the ball,” he said.

“Utility rates in the state of Florida, since you’ve been governor… have gone up and up and. When I was governor, they went down.”

Yet each time, the Republican punched back – defending his record on responding to Hurricane Ian, on reopening the Florida economy sooner that many other states during the pandemic, and blaming Joe Biden and the Democrats for the state of the economy nationally.

“During the storm, he was hanging out in Puerto Rico. He wasn’t helping. And then when he got back, what did he do? His campaign was soliciting campaign contributions from storm victims. That is unacceptable and that’s what a leader would do in a time of despair,” he said of Crist.

Crist asked DeSantis whether he would commit to serving a full second term as governor if he were elected, an attempt to underscore his likely ambitions for the Oval Office.

“That’s not a tough question,” he said.

DeSantis snapped back with a line he had clearly been working on.

“I know that Charlie’s interested in talking about 2024 and Joe Biden, but I just want to make things very, very clear –  the only worn-out old donkey I’m looking to put out to pasture is Charlie Crist.”

Event was sole debate in race for Florida governor (WFLA)

Do debates ever change the polls?

Sometimes undecided voters can be helped to make a decision if they know little about the candidates, or the issues.

Crist punched back, for instance, when DeSantis claimed he wanted to have no limits on abortion.

“I want to make sure we keep a woman’s right to choose available to the women of the State of Florida,” he said.

“And I want to make sure that we don’t have a governor in the future who wouldn’t even allow exceptions for rape or incest.”

But Florida is one of the most politically polarized states in the country, one that has shifted in the past two decades for a purple battlefield where Democrats used to think they had a chance.

It has become increasingly conservative.

In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton 49-48. Yet in 2020, a year that same a record turn out nationally and Democrats secure the White House, Trump expanded his lead in Florida, beating Joe Biden 51-48.

All of which means that many or most of those tuning in to watch Monday’s debate will already have made up their mind as to how they’re voting.

Because of that, it may not do much much to move the polls ahead of election day on November 8.

What it did do, however, is show that Ron DeSantis is slick enough, smart enough and mean enough to inherit the mantle of Maga champion. That ought to worry Democrats thinking about 2024.

It will most certainly concern Donald Trump.