Is Ron DeSantis Likable Enough? Florida Governor Hits Reset

Ron DeSantis raised more money than any other presidential candidate last quarter, built a huge campaign operation and has even pulled endorsements away from Donald Trump in key states.

But his White House bid is already on such shaky ground that he just fired roughly a dozen staffers and sat for an interview with one of his least favorite news outlets to try and turn things around.

He's trailing Trump badly in polls, but the biggest problem for the DeSantis campaign just might be the candidate himself – do voters think he's likable enough?

"There's a supernova effect with DeSantis. The more people meet him, the less they seem to like him," said Patrick Griffin, a Republican consultant who advised a pro-Jeb Bush super PAC during the 2016 primary.

DeSantis pushed back on doubts about his electability in the 2024 presidential primary race during a CNN interview on Tuesday, saying that people on both sides of the aisle view him as a threat.

“The proof is in the pudding. I took a state that had been a one-point state and we won it by 20 percentage points,” DeSantis said, referencing his gubernatorial reelection win on “The Lead with Jake Tapper.” “The left views me as a threat because they think I’ll beat Biden and deliver on all this stuff, and then of course people that have their allegiances on the Republican side have gone after me.” 

DeSantis was seen as Trump’s most formidable challenger before he entered the presidential primary race in May. Although he’s still polling in second place, the Florida governor has struggled to live up to high expectations, sell himself and gain ground on Trump.

DeSantis has faced a spate of bad headlines ranging from his campaign’s expensive payroll, to ill-advised social media tactics, to distraught donors. His awkward retail politics have also come under scrutiny, whether it was the way he laughed in Iowa or how he snapped at the press while mingling with voters on the trail in New Hampshire.

Now he’s looking for a way to reset his second-place bid. 

“He has to find a way to change the narrative. And the narrative is that he had the potential to be a frontrunner, and he's underperformed and he's maybe not ready for primetime,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist. “He’s wasted some time and wasted some momentum.” 

DeSantis emphasized on Tuesday that he is running a campaign operation that is focused on the early nominating states and less interested in national polls, which show him trailing Trump by as much as 35 percentage points. Trump, who keeps a close eye on national polling, bashed DeSantis as “A Very Unappreciative Guy!” in a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, claiming that “his poll numbers are CRASHING!”

"This is a state-by-state process. I’m not running a campaign to try to juice whatever we are in the national polls,” DeSantis said. “That's going to be our focus, focusing on those early states continuing to build our coalition.”

But even the speed of the DeSantis reset has some political watchers questioning his campaign’s viability. The Florida governor has only been a presidential candidate for 55 days. 

“This is the quickest reset in presidential launch history,” a Republican consultant who supports Trump told The Messenger.

The governor did concede on Tuesday that he lost momentum in the months between his gubernatorial reelection win and the end of Florida’s legislative session, saying “I had to do my job as governor.”

DeSantis has taken advantage of the opportunity to visit the early caucus and primary states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — to woo voters and build support one handshake at a time. He spent his Fourth of July holiday on a New Hampshire parade route and courted evangelical voters at the conservative Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines last week. DeSantis became the first major contender to put his name on the South Carolina ballot on Tuesday and flew across the country in June to work the crowd at a Republican "Basque Fry" gathering in Nevada.

However, he hasn’t seen a significant polling bump from his early state visits so far, and has even faced criticism for his campaign tactics.

The anti-Trump lane is opening up – but not for DeSantis

Although Trump has remained the primary frontrunner, there are some early state cracks in his campaign.

Since April, Trump’s support in New Hampshire has declined by 5 percentage points among likely Republican primary voters, according to a University of New Hampshire poll released on Tuesday. DeSantis didn’t appear to pick up many of Trump’s voters: He had 22% of support in April and 23 percent of support in July. 

Trump’s voters may have moved to Sen. Tim Scott, who gained 6% points over the three-month period, or former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who gained 5 percentage points.

“The biggest problem for DeSantis right now is not just that he’s losing ground to Trump, it’s that he’s losing ground to the rest of the field,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican operative in Florida who was a Trump campaign surrogate in 2020. “He has to solidify in people’s minds that he is the consensus alternative to Trump. That has not been solidified.” 

DeSantis has pointed to his fundraising as a strongpoint, noting in a press release that he will use the cash to fuel what his campaign is calling a “momentum shift” in influential Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state where he sees an opening. 

“Our campaign brought in more than the entire field – including a current and former president – because the enthusiasm for Ron DeSantis’ movement to restore sanity to our nation and lead our Great American Comeback is unprecedented,” DeSantis campaign manager Generra Peck said in a statement. 

DeSantis’s field-leading fundraising haul was quickly eclipsed by worries about the campaign’s burn rate, which he seemed to confirm when he fired some staff several days ago. 

“He doesn't seem to be getting the full value of his successes right now, but he does seem to be getting the full value of his weaknesses,” Mackowiak said.

Of the $20 million that DeSantis raised since launching his campaign in May, he spent $7.9 million, according to his second quarter campaign finance report. That’s 39% of what he pulled in during the first six weeks of his campaign. 

The DeSantis campaign payroll cost more than $1 million and the Florida governor spent $848,000 on travel, including private jets and hotel stays. Another $3 million of DeSantis’s fundraising sum is earmarked for the general election, meaning he can’t use it in the primary. 

“This is what we call failure to launch,” Griffin said. “This has been a guy who has been running an imperial campaign in terms of staffing, advance, the way he travels.”

DeSantis brushed off the doubts about his bid, comparing the narrative surrounding his campaign to doubts about his administration’s Covid-19 response or his high-profile battle with Disney. 

“They’re almost trying a little too hard with this. They’ve been saying that I’ve been doing poorly for my whole time as governor, basically,” DeSantis said. “They always want to get there. It never quite works out.” 

Matt Holt contributed to this report.