Ron DeSantis, the larger-than-life Republican governor of Florida, is a swing-state politician running for reelection this November. But that’s not why he’s been in the news lately, is it? I traveled to Tallahassee recently to take stock of the campaign, which is notable mainly for how little attention it’s gotten.
The man who thinks he can stop Ron DeSantis slides into a booth at a dimly lit bar in Tallahassee, around the corner from the Florida Capitol. “The stuff he keeps doing to remind Floridians how bad he is, it’s—I can’t believe it,” former Rep. Charlie Crist says, doing his best to sound genuinely astonished. The day before, DeSantis, Florida’s swaggering right-wing governor, had drawn national headlines by shipping about 50 Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard without warning. “I mean, what’s that got to do with Florida?” Crist says. “I think he’s overreached.”
My new piece in TIME explores how Florida, once the very definition of a swing state, has trended red in recent elections, and how DeSantis has consolidated power while Democrats have struggled. The result, I argue, is likely to bolster DeSantis’s case for the presidential candidacy most assume is in his future:
The typical purple-state political strategy would be to tack to the center, but DeSantis has not done that either. The fact that he has gone hard-right and remained broadly popular—one recent poll put his approval rating at 51%, vs. 43% for Crist—is a major component of his appeal to Republicans. Just as Bernie Sanders’ liberal acolytes contend that his socialist vision would galvanize the electorate more powerfully than the centrists the Democrats tend to nominate, DeSantis’s many fans in the GOP see him as proof that right-wing policies, far from provoking a backlash, actually appeal to voters. He would, they hope, do to America what he’s done to Florida: turn the political current to his will rather than bending in the wind. The bigger the margin he’s able to rack up as he sails to reelection, the greater the currency this argument would have in a GOP presidential primary. Many conservatives see him as a smarter version of Trump, with the shrewdness and focus to implement a vision Trump only flailed at haphazardly.
Longtime readers of my work will recall that this is not the first time I’ve written about Crist, one of the more intriguing characters to grace the modern American political stage. Not only did I profile Crist for The Atlantic in 2014, I also profiled his ubiquitous fan. My new piece, naturally, has a fan cameo. And be sure to read to the end for the Crist-DeSantis encounter that perfectly encapsulates both men’s personalities:
DeSantis and Crist briefly served in the same state delegation in the House, but they only interacted once that Crist can recall. “My first term in Congress was his last, and I remember the encounter we had,” Crist tells me. The two congressmen were in the Capitol and had just emerged from neighboring elevators on the way to the House floor for a vote. “I’m a friendly guy, and I said, ‘Hey, Ron, how are you?’ And he goes, ‘Fine,’” Crist recalls, face drooping in imitation of DeSantis’s flat affect. “That was it. I mean, weird! And so I said to myself, well, you’re a good guy, Charlie, press on. And I told him, ‘I heard the rumors that you’re thinking about running for governor next year, and as one who’s been one, if it works out for you, you’ll find out that it’s the greatest job you can ever have.’ And he goes, ‘Thanks,’ and turns around and walks away.”
Read the whole thing here.