In shaky start, Ron DeSantis joins 2024 race, hoping to topple Trump

MIAMI — Ron DeSantis’ long-awaited official entry into the 2024 presidential campaign went haywire at its start Wednesday during a glitch-filled livestream over Twitter.

Despite the problems, DeSantis, the combative 44-year-old Republican governor of Florida who has championed conservative causes and thrown a yearslong flurry of punches at America’s left, provides Donald Trump the most formidable Republican rival he has faced since his ascent in 2016. His candidacy comes at a pivotal moment for the Republican Party, which must choose between aligning once more behind Trump — who lost in 2020 and continues to rage falsely about a stolen election — or uniting around a new challenger to take on President Joe Biden.

But on Wednesday, DeSantis’ official run for the White House got off to an embarrassing start as the planned livestream with Twitter’s eccentric billionaire owner, Elon Musk, was marred by technical problems and dead air. The audio cut in and out amid talk of “melting the servers,” hot mic whispering and on-the-spot troubleshooting.

When, after more than 25 minutes, DeSantis finally spoke, he declared, “I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback.”

The extended social media hiccup — as more than 500,000 people were waiting — was gleefully cheered on the very platform DeSantis was supposed to be commandeering for his campaign. Donald Trump Jr. wrote a single word: “#DeSaster.” Biden posted a donation button to his reelection campaign with the words, “This link works.” The audience when DeSantis did deliver his remarks was smaller than it had been during the initial minutes when no one was speaking.

Despite the inauspicious start Wednesday and having slipped well behind Trump in polls in recent months, DeSantis retains a host of strengths: a mountain of cash, a robust campaign operation and a series of conservative policy victories in Florida after a landslide reelection triumph last fall. The governor, who rose to national prominence with his restriction-averse handling of the coronavirus pandemic, argues that his “Florida Blueprint” can be a model for reshaping the United States in a starkly conservative mold, especially on social issues.

“American decline is not inevitable,” DeSantis said. “It is a choice. And we should choose a new direction, a path that will lead to American revitalization.” He accused Biden of taking “his cues from the woke mob.”

DeSantis did not mention Trump by name. But he did sketch out some of the contrasts he is expected to sharpen in the coming months. “We must look forward, not backwards,” he said on the Twitter Space livestream. “We need the courage to lead and we must have the strength to win.”

The DeSantis campaign had invited prominent donors to Miami on Wednesday for a fundraising event, hosting them at a conference space at the Four Seasons as the Twitter discussion was projected onto a large screen. Then they waited. And waited.

“Elon’s got to staff up a little more to boost that server capacity,” said Brandon Rosner, a donor from Milwaukee. He was not discouraged. “Once we got through the original glitch there, I think people were very excited,” he said.

DeSantis is confronting the daunting endeavor of toppling a former president whose belligerence and loyal base of support have discouraged most leading Republicans from making frontal attacks against him. Trump, who has a mounting list of legal troubles, clearly sees DeSantis as a political threat and has unloaded on him for months, mocking him as “Ron DeSanctimonious” and slamming his stewardship of Florida.

“Trump is not as invincible as he once seemed and DeSantis is a serious contender,” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist. “There are Republican voters looking for someone who can move beyond Trump, someone who can fight the liberals but also win elections. That’s the space DeSantis is trying to inhabit.”

DeSantis’ chances of capturing the nomination may depend on whether the Republican primary becomes a crowded, Trump-dominated food fight — something similar to what unfolded in 2016 — or if he can turn the contest into a two-man race. The Republican field has slowly ballooned, with Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina announcing a bid this week and Vice President Mike Pence expected to join soon.

To winnow the field back down, DeSantis is likely to need strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two nominating states, with anti-Trump voters coalescing around him. His advisers and allies see a victory in socially conservative Iowa as a must, and believe he needs to follow with at least a close second-place finish in more moderate New Hampshire.

DeSantis has the financial ammunition to compete: He is likely to start with more money in an outside group than any Republican primary candidate in history. He has more than $80 million expected to be transferred from his state account to his super PAC, which says it has also raised $40 million, in addition to having tens of millions more in donor commitments, according to people familiar with the fundraising.

A key focus of the primary, and the general election should DeSantis make it that far, will be his record as governor.

He and a pliant Florida Legislature have passed contentious laws that have excited the right and angered many Democrats, including Black and LGBTQ people, students and abortion-rights supporters in Florida. The bills seem to reflect DeSantis’ plan to run to the right of Trump in the primary, which could leave him vulnerable with moderates and independents.

DeSantis has also shown a willingness to use executive power in ways little seen before in Tallahassee, the state capital, leading some Democrats and civil rights leaders to worry that he shares Trump’s strongman style but has a greater ability to carry out that vision.

He has picked a long-running fight with The Walt Disney Co., one of Florida’s largest employers and a canny political adversary. He removed a local prosecutor from office in what records show was a decision motivated by politics, installed his allies at a public liberal arts university in a bid to transform it into a bastion of conservative thought, said he would reject a high school Advanced Placement course on African American studies for “indoctrinating” students, and had state law enforcement officers monitor holiday drag shows for lewd behavior.

While his stump speech focuses on a lengthy recounting of those and other conservative policy achievements, DeSantis is expected to start talking more about his biography, with help from his wife, Casey DeSantis, a former television journalist who plays an influential role in his office and decision-making.

Raised in Dunedin, a suburb of Tampa, Ron DeSantis grew up in a working-class home. He excelled at baseball, captaining the squad at Yale University as a hard-hitting outfielder.

He later enrolled at Harvard Law School, then served in the Navy as a military lawyer, deploying to Guantánamo Bay and Iraq. He worked as a federal prosecutor in Florida before winning election to Congress in 2012. He was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of anti-establishment conservatives.

After three terms in Washington, he ran for Florida’s open governorship, winning the Republican primary largely thanks to an endorsement from Trump. But they fell out when DeSantis began making noises about running for president in 2024.

The pandemic turned DeSantis into a Fox News fixture. He has criticized social distancing measures, masks and vaccines — tools fitfully employed by the Trump administration — and has already hinted that he will contrast his actions in Florida with Trump’s approach.

In particular, DeSantis has gone after Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the nation’s pandemic response.

But the step-up from a statewide campaign, even one as successful as DeSantis’ nearly 20-percentage-point romp, to a presidential campaign is not easy. As the initial Twitter Space floundered Wednesday, Musk was forced to post a new link, severely reducing the audience for DeSantis’ announcement.

While more than 500,000 people tuned in to the first Twitter Space, the second one had only 163,000 listeners by the time Musk and technology entrepreneur David Sacks began interviewing the governor. The conversation quickly turned into a surprisingly dry discussion about the overreach of federal agencies, the merits of Twitter and occasionally bizarre tangents like the license plate number of Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who has endorsed DeSantis and joined the online conversation.

DeSantis’ campaign tried to put a positive spin on the technical mishaps, writing on Twitter:

“It seems we broke the internet with so much excitement.” An aide announced they had raised $1 million in an hour. All the while, Trump’s team rejoiced. “This is criminal for a campaign,” said Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the former president.

In the Twitter event, DeSantis took some sideswipes at the former president, a onetime reality television star, at one point saying, “Government is not entertainment. It’s not about building a brand or virtue-signaling.”

As they wrapped up the hourlong conversation, which meandered from Article 2 of the Constitution to bitcoin, DeSantis said, “We should do it again. I mean, I think it was fun.”

Sacks concurred. “It’s not how you start,” he added, “it’s how you finish.”