DeSantis can’t seem to get Florida officials to endorse him
He’s an ass. That’s all there is to it:
It was supposed to be RON DeSANTIS’ big day on Capitol Hill. Yet DONALD TRUMP managed to overshadow him from almost 1,000 miles away.
In the 24 hours leading up to the Florida governor’s much-anticipated meeting with GOP lawmakers, two members from his own state — Reps. JOHN RUTHERFORD and GREG STEUBE — endorsed Trump. A third Floridian — Rep. BRIAN MAST, who was once considered close with DeSantis — told CNN’s Mel Zanona that he’ll soon follow suit.
And a few hours later, in a stone-cold act of political brutality, Rep. LANCE GOODEN (R-Texas) walked out of the DeSantis meeting and declared his support for Trump.
“It’s a killer!” said one positively giddy Trump confidant, who was on the phone with Playbook when news of Gooden’s surprise endorsement broke.
To be fair, DeSantis notched a couple small victories yesterday: Freshman Rep. LAUREL LEE, his former secretary of state, endorsed him, and his Capitol Hill event — where he spoke about his state’s policy agenda, decried the “radical” Biden administration, and offered to help expand the House majority, without once mentioning Trump — drew at least three dozen lawmakers.
But at the end of the day, Trump had picked up more endorsements from Florida than DeSantis could muster with his boots on the ground in Washington.
Not only did lawmakers leave the DeSantis event without delivering their backing, our colleagues Sarah Ferris, Ally Mutnick and Burgess Everett report, but several “tried to downplay their attendance, saying they went because the governor was a former colleague and they wanted to say hello.”
INSIDE THE AMBUSH: We made some calls to Trump world last night to figure out just how much of this was coordinated. Gooden’s dramatic gesture, we’re told, came as a surprise to the former president’s brain trust. But much of the rest was quickly and carefully orchestrated over the past few days.
It began over the weekend, when Trump traveled to Nashville for the RNC donor retreat and attended a meeting arranged by Sen. BILL HAGERTY (R-Tenn.) with most of the state’s GOP congressional delegation. Trump and his team were pleasantly surprised to learn the delegation was ready and eager to endorse him — and they did.
That got Trump’s people thinking: While he’d already received the endorsements of several prominent Florida Republicans, Trump’s team wondered if others in the delegation might follow suit — just as DeSantis traveled to Capitol Hill.
So on Sunday night, Trump officials sent emails to Sunshine State members asking if they would be willing to play ball. “Heck yes, I’d love to endorse him,” one lawmaker replied. (Beyond Mast, Rutherford and Steube, other members are expected to back Trump in the coming days, we’re told.)
“The amazing part of it is how easy it was,” one person close to Trump said, noting his team was shocked, for example, that Florida Rep. BYRON DONALDS — who had introduced DeSantis and his family at the governor’s Election Night victory party — was all-in when they called him up recently.
THE STEPBACK: It’s a troubling sign for DeSantis if he can’t convince more Republican lawmakers, who know better than most how Trump can be a general-election liability. It certainly doesn’t bode well for his appeal to the common GOP voter, who probably isn’t as concerned about electability, the core of DeSantis’ pitch.
But the snub from GOP lawmakers in his home state is particularly striking, and it’s playing into the narrative that DeSantis is too aloof and inattentive to the interpersonal niceties of big-league politics.
Just ask Steube, who told Playbook in a brief interview last night that DeSantis has never once reached out to him during his five years in Congress nor replied to his multiple attempts to connect. He recalled a recent news conference dealing with damage from Hurricane Ian where the governor’s aides initially invited him to stand alongside DeSantis, only to tell him that he wouldn’t be part of the event when he showed up.
Trump, on the other hand, was the first person Steube remembers calling him in the ICU to wish him well after he was injured in a January tree-trimming accident. “To this day I have not heard from Gov. DeSantis,” he said.
Things suddenly changed last week, Steube said, as Trump started rolling out his Florida congressional backers. ”For the first time ever, I hear from DeSantis’s political person,” he said, referring to aide RYAN TYSON, who reportedly contacted other Florida Republicans about their endorsements.e leader and po
For Steube, the outreach was too little, too late. And he continues to have sharp words for DeSantis, criticizing him for his robust political travel schedule amid a busy legislative session and just months after winning a new four-year term.
“Floridians want him focused on Florida,” he said, “which is the job they elected him to do.”
For Trump everything in life is personal. The downside of that is that it makes him a terrible leader because he cares about nothing but himself. It’s a benefit as a politician because he is good at manipulating other politicians with whom he has personal relationships. He plays them well.
DeSantis, on the other hand, is a sour, nasty creep nobody can stand. Some politicians are smart or talented enough to overcome this with other skills but it does not appear that DeSantis is one of them. At least not yet. He’s off to a very rocky start, alienating people in a situation where he needs every friend he can get. Maybe he can turn this around but he was already looking at a tough uphill climb with the Trump cult still in full effect. Unless Trump drops dead on the golf course his chances are looking slimmer and slimmer.