In 2018, Ron DeSantis only won by a hair, by 32,463 votes, to the point that the ballots had to be recounted. Four years later, the Republican governor of Florida took advantage of a tidal wave and won with a 20-point lead (59.3% of the vote for 88% of the ballots counted) against his Democratic opponent Charlie Crist, former governor of the state from 2007 to 2011. He can now claim the Republican nomination for the White House.
His victory was announced by the AP agency before 9 p.m., unheard of in this former rocking state, which had narrowly given victory to George W. Bush in the year 2000. For the first time, the Republicans had more registered voters than Democrats.
The triumph is general: even the county of Miami-Dade, which had given Hillary Clinton a 29-point lead over Donald Trump in 2016, gave itself to its Republican governor, while Latinos voted for him more 56%, according to a CBS poll. In his victory speech, Mr. DeSantis bragged about having “redrawn the political map”. Florida Republican Marco Rubio was also re-elected to the Senate for a third term, cementing Republican control of Florida.
Acrimonious relations with Donald Trump
At 44, Ron DeSantis sees his national stature confirmed – he is currently the only credible alternative to Donald Trump within the Republican Party. Relations between the two men have recently become acrimonious. They didn’t campaign together, Mr. Trump made a bad pun on his former protege by calling him a « Ron DeSanctimonious ». Mr. Trump could accelerate his candidacy by announcing it next week from his Mar-a-Lago golf course in Palm Beach to cut off the movement in favor of the governor of Florida.
Ron DeSantis is nevertheless one of the “Trump babies”, but he has acquired a more polite profile, which could appeal to Republicans annoyed by the outrageous behavior of the former president. This Catholic born in Florida, son of a television installer and a nurse, studied history at the prestigious Yale University and distinguished himself there by becoming captain of the baseball team . He studied law at Harvard and then joined the Navy in 2004. He became an adviser to the Navy Seals special forces and was deployed to Iraq, where a photo shows him in combat gear in front of a tank.
Trumpist before the hour
Back in the United States, he was appointed to the Florida federal prosecutor’s team, which he left quickly to be elected representative to the State Congress in 2012, at the age of 34. The young DeSantis is a Trumpist before his time and accompanies the populist revolution which will overturn the Grand Old Party (GOP). In the Tea Party’s anti-tax movement, he opposes the Obamacare health care law.
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