Global Courant 2023-04-19 06:12:44
ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was in Washington Tuesday to greet a parade of congressional Republicans interested in his emerging presidential campaign. Former President Donald Trump promptly showered that parade with messages of support, several of them from their shared home state.
Trump has so far been endorsed by at least six Republican members of Florida’s congressional delegation, two of whom filed within hours of each other on Tuesday, with Trump boasting the support of Representatives Greg Steube and John Rutherford.
MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, later said Representative Brian Mast of Florida had also endorsed Trump. Mast’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As pressure mounted over Trump’s Florida endorsement victories, DeSantis announced support for Republican Rep. Laurel Lee on Tuesday. It is the only endorsement he has from his home state delegation. Lee was DeSantis’ first Secretary of State.
“The only people who like Ron DeSantis are the people who have never met him,” Taylor Budowich, the CEO of MAGA Inc., said after the wave of Florida Republicans backed Trump.
Trump has received significantly more congressional support than DeSantis, who is not expected to announce his formal bid for the presidency until May or June.
DeSantis spent most of his first term in office building a reputation among national conservatives as the aspirational ideal of what a governor should be, largely because of a hands-off approach to the Covid pandemic. But after Trump formally announced his candidacy for president again in November, DeSantis was bludgeoned with near-daily assaults from the notorious boxer former president. Since then, DeSantis’ popularity has declined in public polls, leading some backers who originally associated with DeSantis to question whether he’s ready for the big leagues.
Trump now has at least half a dozen congressional notes in Florida from a 20-member GOP delegation. He previously had the support of Representatives Matt Gaetz, Anna Paulina Luna and Cory Mills, who had long been predicted to side with Trump. But he was also supported by Rep. Byron Donalds, a DeSantis ally who introduced him to his victory party on election night in 2022.
DeSantis’ political operation remains undaunted.
“The men and women of Never Back Down are the grassroots voices calling on Governor DeSantis to run because they see a warrior unafraid to stand up to the waking left and the media for real get results,” said Erin Perrine, a spokeswoman for the pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down.
However, Donalds’ endorsement surprised DeSantis’s political team and prompted adviser Ryan Tyson to contact members of Florida’s congressional delegation to ask them to hold off on supporting Trump for the foreseeable future. Steube is one of the members who called Tyson, but who still decided to support Trump in an interview Tuesday afternoon.
“I am pleased and honored to support Donald J. Trump for president in 2024,” said Steube told Newsmax. “He is the only person who can reverse all these disastrous policies of the Biden administration on day one. And the kind of things that happened under the Biden administration would never have happened under President Trump.
Brian Jack, who was political director in the Trump White House, is leading what campaign aides say is a coordinated effort to roll out approvals — often timed with Trump’s travels to different states.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said: “We are strategically rolling out approvals to coincide with events we are hosting. There is a strategic way to get the most out of your money. We are very aware of that; we are very deliberate. There is a plan for all of this.”
While Trump was not on the road this week, several Florida lawmakers backed him in quick succession as DeSantis traveled to Washington to meet with lawmakers from across the country.
The meetings didn’t all go as DeSantis had planned. In a particularly humiliating moment, Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, Trump after he left the DeSantis group at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“I have met with Governor DeSantis and while he has done commendable work in Florida, I have no doubt that President Trump is the only leader who can save America from the leftist onslaught we are currently facing,” Gooden said in a statement. .
Overall, Trump has the support of more than 50 members of Congress: 42 members of the House of Representatives and nine senators. DeSantis only has three, all from members of the House.
Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, who a early approval of Trump’s 2024 bid, said in an interview that he has encouraged colleagues to support Trump’s campaign. Vance praised Trump’s political advisers for blocking congressional support and predicted that other “major senators” could soon be on the list.
Vance also praised the strategic timing of the recent Florida tally.
“They’re rolling out this stuff to maximum effect,” he said.
Republican former Florida Representative Francis Rooney, who has not formally endorsed DeSantis but has praised him and opposed Trump’s re-election bid, said there is one reason for the early wave of Trump congressional recommendations: job security.
“An elected official’s penultimate instinct is to keep his job. And the grassroots down here, many like Trump,” said Rooney, a longtime GOP donor who represented a deeply conservative Southwest Florida seat from 2017 to 2021. Democrats were super smart to sue him. They’d rather run against Trump.”
Rooney, who was the US ambassador to the Vatican during the administration of President George W. Bush, said he still thinks it’s early and momentum will ebb and flow.
“At this stage in 1976, nobody took Jimmy Carter seriously. At this point, no one knew who Barack Obama was,” he said. “Things can change. People can peak early, and Trump certainly has more pitfalls to deal with.”
Matt Dixon reported from Orlando, Jonathan Allen from Washington, and Henry J. Gomez from Cleveland.
