What a pair
This piece by Ruby Cramer about the DeSantis’ is fascinating. To me she seems like a version of Kari lake — a local broadcaster with a little bit of kook behind the eyes. (I don’t think she’s as out there as Lake, however.) But apparently, DeSantis is pretty much a robot and she’s his engineer:
She knew, starting with his early days in politics, when Ron was still a member of Congress, elected at the age of 34, how she wanted to figure in his world. She knew the staff he should hire, former aides said, the invitations he should accept and the invitations he should decline. She knew his walking path at events, the people he’d stand next to on a stage. She knew his schedule, down to every meeting and call and fundraiser and congressional vote, because she asked to be copied on every calendar entry. She knew the cowboy boots he should wear, even though, at first, he complained that they hurt his feet, until a staffer suggested he buy dress shoes instead, at which point he said, “Casey got them for me,” and that was the end of the conversation about the cowboy boots. She knew the earpiece he should use for live interviews, because she had spent 15 years in television, even though, at first, the earpiece was uncomfortable in his ear, at which point an aide said, “Casey got this for you,” and that was the end of the conversation about the earpiece.
Ron was always talking about the two of them as one — when “we” got elected, when “we” protect freedom, when “we” fight the woke agenda — as if it was hard to see his role and hers in clear relief. Reporters approached Casey’s story with phrases like“co-governor,” “secret weapon,”“not-so-secret weapon” — the“X-factor” who “knows what’s best for Ron.” Ron was known to inspire fear, even in his allies.“If you can’t make ’em see the light,” he has said,quoting Ronald Reagan, “make ’em feel the heat.” But Casey — she was a subject theywouldn’t touch if they didn’t have to. […]
In 2011, she was in the back of small Republican gatherings, handing out copies of the book her husband had paid to publish, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers,” a treatise on constitutional conservatism that mocked Barack Obama’s best-selling memoir. In 2012, she was working one TV show in Jacksonville, and planning to launch another, while spending her weekends knocking on doors for her husband’s first congressionalcampaign. In 2013, she was packing up their house in Sawgrass, a gated club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.,to move to his new congressional district, making her commute to work an hour and seven minutes each way. In 2016, she was home with a newborn while he spent weekdays in Washington. In 2018, she was leaving TV altogether to help him run for governor. And then she was packing boxes again, this time to move to 700 N. Adams Street, the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee. She deactivated her cellphone number and didn’t give out the new onewidely. She had always been exceptionally private. But there were friends and colleagues and people she mentored who didn’t hear from her again. “You’re chasing a ghost,” onesaid. […]
Casey faded from an entire life in Jacksonville to be here, by her husband’s side as he runs for president. She was with him on stages, telling voters she got to marryher “hero.” She was with him on rope lines, wearing a black leather jacket bearing his slogan, “Where Woke Goes to Die.” She was with him at picnics like this one in Iowa, where the governor moved through a tent to grill steaks for the cameras. Or he thought she was. He tied a red apron around his waist and gripped a spatula. “Where’s your better half, governor?” someone asked. Behind him, a matching apron, printed with CASEY DESANTIS in bold, lay untouched beneath the tent.
“Where’s the first lady at?” Ron said.
Casey was back in the SUV. The wind was causing a disturbance in Iowa, with gusts reaching 30 mph and tornado warnings on the radio. After her husband’s speech, she had made it about 15 yards toward the tent, before she grasped her hair with both hands, twisted it low around the nape of her neck and retreated for the calm air of the car. The wind was a no.
“I gotta get my missus,” the governor said under the tent. “I gotta make sure she’s good.”
Casey does not have to be physically present, though she very often is, to make her influence felt. Her role in Ron’s political and governing life has no exact limit or shape. It is the air in which he moves. […]
Ron and Casey live as an inner circle of two. They were always two private people, trusting of each other, often exclusively so, but the level of prominence and power they achieved in Tallahassee seemed to insulate their world further, creating a level of distance between Ron and Casey and everyone else. They don’t take social calls to the mansion, except for Christmas receptions and Easter egg rolls and the like. DeSantis’s supporters say this is a good thing, to be so focused on “the mission” at work and on their family at home. They say Ron and Casey are normal people in abnormal positions. Normal people go to Chick-fil-A, they say, just like Ron and Casey do. Normal people play T-ball with their kids, just like Ron and Casey do. At the residence, invited guests post Instagram photos standing next to a sign that reads “Governor’s Mansion: Closed to Visiting.” Outside, new layers of security fencing have been added to the perimeter.
“It’s just them,” said Javier Manjarres, a journalist at the conservative-leaning Floridian Press who describes himself as friendly with Ron. “They don’t have time for girl friends and guy friends. Ron doesn’t go fishing. Maybe he’ll go golfing with legislators. But it’s not, like, his buddies. That’s not a thing with him. And same for her. It doesn’t exist.”
It’s clear from the rest of the article (which you should read in full) that Casey is a very disciplined, ambitious person. She had a whole career before they decided that Ron was going to become president and by this account she was good at it. She gave it up to become RonandCasey which is fine. Politics is always easier when you have a spouse supporting you and one like Casey is invaluable. It’s really Ron that’s a freak:
Ron did not like Washington. One of the first things he asked his team to do was order a “Do Not Disturb” signto place on his office door. The placard was double-sided, but both sides said “Do Not Disturb.” The office wasn’t toxic, recalled a former aide; it was just “weird.” DeSantis had his quirks: He kept the same yellow stadium-style cup by his desk that he filled daily with water and soft drinks. No one ever touched it. There were three things he liked to talk about with his staff: the Constitution, baseball and golf. The one thing they joked about, the former staffersaid, was Trump. “Ron always said this guy was just an idiot.” Often, communication with staffers occurred through text message,even if they were in the next room — or it happened through Casey.
She’s a much more interesting person than I realized and it’s clear that Ron alone is the one making the grotesque policies that define his political persona. But she’s something else too. And the two of them together are downright frightening.