Absolute failure is the only way to describe the disastrous presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. After being touted as “DeFuture” of the Republican Party and the biggest threat to pry the 2024 GOP nomination away from the greedy hands of Donald Trump, DeSantis suspended his campaign on Sunday, only two days before the critical New Hampshire primary, effectively sealing the deal for Trump to receive the nomination. The DeSantis campaign had a golden opportunity to win in the wake of Trump’s mounting legal struggles. Instead, he failed to even make the race competitive thanks to one of the most disastrous presidential campaigns in recent memory.
DeSantis’ campaign was doomed before it even began. By the end of 2022, DeSantis was riding high after winning reelection by almost 20 points, one of the lone bright spots for Republicans in an otherwise disappointing midterm year. He was viewed as the next logical successor to Trump in the hierarchy of the Republican Party, as he pushed a hard-right MAGA agenda and didn’t have the baggage associated with Trump. Instead of seizing this momentum and starting his campaign early, he instead focused on his book, “The Courage to Be Free,” where he rambled on with his overplayed talking points about “woke elites.” He failed to capitalize on the momentum he had earned in 2022 by not declaring his campaign until May 2023. If DeSantis declared his candidacy earlier, he would likely still be in the race, at least through the pre-Super Tuesday primaries.
When he decided to officially launch his campaign, he didn’t hold a traditional rally; instead, he opted for a virtual announcement over Twitter Spaces hosted by tech guru-turned-wannabe political commentator Elon Musk. The event was marred by technical difficulties, as the app kept crashing for users trying to join the event and the audio kept cutting in and out. Though the event attracted an estimated 161,000 listeners, the failure of the non-traditional launch portrayed the DeSantis campaign as incompetent and gave the already laughable DeSantis more ammunition to be mocked by his opponents on both the left and right.
With the campaign starting on a strange note, DeSantis immediately sought to attack Trump through a series of questionable ads released by the DeSantis War Room Twitter page in June that did more harm than good to the campaign. One of these ads focused on Trump and Anthony Fauci, featuring a clip of Trump talking about how he would not fire Fauci, a figure that DeSantis has regularly attacked. However, the ad also featured AI-generated images of Trump hugging Fauci, something that was immediately fact-checked. Trump acolytes like Senator J.D. Vance and conspiracy theorist-turned-congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene were quick to deride DeSantis for using AI to attack their beloved, insurrectionist savior. Later in the month, DeSantis released an ad slamming Trump for not being a hardliner on LGBTQ+ issues and contrasting that by promoting the “extreme” and “draconian” laws that Florida had implemented over the past year. The ad was attacked by his opponents on the left for being homophobic, which was understandable given Florida’s relentless attacks on LGBTQ+ citizens of the state. It’s mind-boggling to think that his campaign believed that it would be a good idea to release ads that looked more like something produced by incels on 4Chan rather than political strategists. The incredibly questionable decision by the DeSantis campaign to produce these ads resulted in him being blasted by both sides of the political aisle.
Over the next six months, DeSantis failed to establish himself as the heir apparent to Trump that he was once viewed as. This can largely be attributed to the GOP debates held in the fall, where he consistently delivered mediocre performances in which he came off as awkward, unrelatable and uncomfortable on the debate stage. Though his performances weren’t terrible, DeSantis didn’t do enough on the debate stage to gain any momentum. The debates also gave rise to Vivek Ramaswamy, the smooth-talking young businessman who became the newest GOP star with his Trump-esque vitality and forceful debate style. Ramaswamy’s growing presence caused him to replace DeSantis as the “Trump without the baggage” alternative, a label that DeSantis had long held onto, sending his campaign into further irrelevancy.
After a distant second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, a race that DeSantis desperately needed to win in order to have a fighting chance to win the Republican presidential nomination, DeSantis bowed out of the presidential race and endorsed Trump, who has affectionately given DeSantis various nicknames such as “Meatball Ron” and “Ron DeSanctimonious.” 2024 was DeSantis’ best shot to win the presidency and he squandered his chance with a campaign that turned him from the next face of the Republican Party to a soon-to-be-forgotten failure. It’s too early to rule out another presidential run in 2028, but his remaining starpower will likely be gone by then. DeSantis blew his greatest opportunity to become president and now must accept the reality that he will never hold that office in his lifetime thanks to his failure of a campaign that deserves to be studied by political analysts as one of the worst campaigns of the 21st century.