Ron DeSantis uses hurricane in Florida to confirm himself as Trump’s heir and rival

It took a hurricane for the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, to be seated at the table in a friendly way, as happened last Wednesday (5).

The scene seemed unlikely to anyone who follows the strident political trajectory of the Republican governor, the main heir of Donald Trump’s ideas and who has taken the former president’s booklet to the extreme, by crying out against the press, immigration policies, restrictive measures to contain the Covid-19 and against Biden himself.

But the tragedy of Hurricane Ian, the state’s deadliest in nearly a century, with at least 119 victims, at least momentarily strained the political climate in this portion of the country’s southeastern coast. There were those who said that the tragedy caused the governor to act like a “normal politician”, giving interviews to journalists and holding meetings with the president and his staff.

Democrats even scolded him for having to deal with an extreme and direct impact of the climate crisis after he demonstrated opposition to state investments in the environmental area.

Representative for Florida between 2013 and 2018, DeSantis, 44, is in the final stretch of the campaign for his reappointment to the state governor. The election takes place a month from now, on November 8, in the so-called midterms, the midterm elections in the US, which also renew the House and part of the Senate.

It is in this context that he faces the first hurricane in the state since he took office, in early 2019. The Republican put on his boots and visited the rubble of affected places, knowing that tragic moments like this usually leverage leaders who respond in a steadfast manner — a recent example. , with due proportion, is that of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Republican DeSantis currently has 53.6% of the vote, according to poll aggregator site FiveThirtyEight, while Charlie Crist reaches 44.2%. The Democratic candidate was also governor of the state for the Republican Party between 2007 and 2011 – he says he switched sides because he saw the party being hijacked by the far right.

The margin may not seem big, but DeSantis’ resilience at this level since the first polls gives him a 93% chance of winning the race, according to FiveThirtyEight’s accounts.

The governor gained popularity at the expense of much controversy. The most recent of these was to lead to a paroxysm a movement of republicans against irregular migration. Last month, he chartered planes to send 48 immigrants to the luxurious and bucolic island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts — without them even knowing where they were going.

The tactic of Republican governors of states on the border with Mexico is to send buses with immigrants to distant regions and headed by Democrats, like Washington and New York, as a form of political pressure. DeSantis doubled down with the case of the 48 Venezuelans, who were in San Antonio, Texas, more than 1,000 kilometers from Florida and 3,400 from Massachusetts; his justification was to get ahead, since, according to this version, many would have Florida as their final destination.

The governor also stated that he would send more planes

DeSantis has also been criticized for his management of the pandemic, for going against the mandatory use of masks and vaccination. In one of the biggest moments of repercussion, in March, he angrily addressed a group of students who were wearing the protective item on their face. “Please take it down. Honestly, it’s no use, we have to stop this Covid theater. If you want to use it, fine, but it’s ridiculous,” he said.

The irritation stems from the fact that DeSantis managed to turn Florida into something of a haven during the health crisis for people across the country who started working online and moved to the state in search of a “normal” life.

Another recent controversy was the suspension of state attorney Andrew Warren, who is a member of the Democratic Party and considered “too progressive”—Florida has direct elections to the post. The governor’s official justification was that there would be negligence.

“The prosecutor has a duty to prosecute crimes as defined by Florida law, not choose the laws he wants based on his personal agenda,” he said. The gesture was celebrated by representatives of the right and by Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson. Warren filed a lawsuit against the politician to regain his position.

With this way of governing, DeSantis came to be seen as a kind of natural successor to Trump and a strong candidate for the 2024 presidential election – and thus ended up becoming a rival of the former president. Analysts believe that he knew how to incorporate Maga’s ideas (“Make America Great Again”, make the USA great again), Trump’s motto that ended up becoming a political movement; he is young, while the former president will be 78 years old in the next election; and he doesn’t have the same wear and tear in so many segments of the electorate.

Internal polls show that the governor is now the main threat to Trump in a possible race for the Republican nomination in the next primaries, although the former president still retains a large advantage. In July, Trump had 49% of domestic support, against 25% for DeSantis.

As a result, tension between the two grew, and Trump began to make more open comments about his rival. In audio released last Wednesday (5), for example, the former president told journalist Maggie Habberman that he is responsible for DeSantis’s victory in 2018. “He came to me and said, ‘I would love your support,'” he said. “I said, ‘Ron, you have 3% [de intenção de votos], you cannot win’. He said, ‘If you support me, I can’.”

In fact, the Republican almost didn’t win that election: he was only 0.4 percentage point ahead of the Democrat Andrew Gillum. Now, the race for reelection is easier. If it maintains its high popularity ratings (55%, according to a survey released on Wednesday), it has everything to reach a comfortable scenario in 2024.