Ron DeSantis

Politician

• Born: September 14, 1978
• Place of Birth: Jacksonville, Florida

Education: Yale University; Harvard Law School

Significance: Ron DeSantis, a conservative Republican politician, became the governor of Florida in 2019 after three terms in the US House of Representatives. He was reelected in 2022 and in 2023 launched his campaign for president of the United States.

Background

Born on September 14, 1978, in Jacksonville, Florida, Ronald DeSantis was the elder of two children of Ron Daniel DeSantis and Karen DeSantis. He grew up in Dunedin, Florida, where he attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School and Dunedin High School and was a star Little League baseball player. After graduating from Dunedin High in 1997, he attended Yale University, where he became the captain of the varsity baseball team. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 2001.

DeSantis went on to study at Harvard Law School and received a juris doctor in 2005. While at Harvard, he was involved with the Federalist Society, a conservative organization focused on legal and judicial reform.

Military Career

In 2004, shortly before he graduated with honors from Harvard, DeSantis enlisted in the US Navy and was commissioned as a Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps officer, or military lawyer. After his graduation, he studied at the Naval Justice School. He was attached to the Region Legal Service Office Southeast, and from 2006 to 2007, worked as a prosecutor in military trials at the Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida. During this time, he served several short assignments as a scheduler and administrative officer at the US terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba.

DeSantis was deployed to Iraq during the 2007 Fallujah campaign as a legal adviser to the Navy Sea Air and Land Teams (SEALs) and received a bronze star for meritorious duty. After his deployment, he returned to the Southeast region and remained on active duty until early 2010. He then joined the US Navy Reserve and was based out of Mayport, Florida, while advising active-duty military lawyers.

Political Career

After leaving active duty, DeSantis wrote Dreams from Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama in 2011. In his self-published book, he excoriated President Barack Obama’s agenda and actions and argued that progressivism conflicted with the Founding Fathers’ intentions. The book particularly appealed to many in the conservative Tea Party movement.

Buoyed by support for his book and political ideas, DeSantis ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives representing Florida’s Sixth Congressional District in 2012. During his campaign, he aligned himself with conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, and the Club for Growth and gained many wealthy donors that allowed him to advertise heavily on Fox News. He easily won the election and took office on January 3, 2013. In Congress, DeSantis immediately earned a reputation for his fiscal conservativism by refusing his congressional pension and health insurance and living in his office rather than an apartment. One of his earliest votes was against a disaster relief bill for areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

DeSantis was reelected in 2014. In 2015, he became one of nine founding members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of ultra-conservative Republicans intent on shifting Republican power in Congress to the far right and to the rank-and-file members. The group, which soon grew to more than thirty-five members, espoused limited government and reduced federal spending and opposed immigration and abortion rights. It used its voting power as a bloc to prevent budget deals and other bills that did not adhere to its ideology. DeSantis also gained greater national recognition by appearing regularly on Fox News, where he often derided Obama’s policies.

In 2015 DeSantis made a short bid for a seat in the US Senate but dropped out of the race after Senator Marco Rubio failed to gain the Republican nomination for president and mounted a Senate campaign. DeSantis successfully ran for a third term in the House in 2016, running on a platform that promoted judicial restraint, increased national defense, economic growth and job creation, combating Islamic terrorists, and reforming the federal government’s elite culture. These views adhered closely to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and DeSantis became an ardent Trump supporter. After Trump won the 2016 presidential election DeSantis continued to back Trump administration policies, such as tightening immigration rules and moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. He also was a vocal critic of the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In January 2018 DeSantis announced on Fox News he was running for governor of Florida. Backed by billionaire donors and an endorsement from Trump, he won an upset in the Republican primary with 57 percent of the vote to main opponent Adam Putnam’s 37 percent. He resigned from Congress on September 10, 2018, to focus on the general election, in which he faced Democrat Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, Florida. DeSantis quickly drew controversy by referring to Gillum, an African American, with what critics considered racially charged language. The campaign proved extremely competitive, and initial election results were so close that a machine recount was ordered. DeSantis was ultimately declared the winner by a margin of about 0.4 percent. He was sworn in as governor on January 8, 2019.

DeSantis's ambitious and often conservative agenda soon placed him in the national spotlight. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the governor took a divisive stance on vaccination and mask requirements, earning praise from conservatives while drawing intense criticism from liberals. In March 2022 his education reform bill limiting what teachers could say regarding LGBTQ+ identity, which critics referred to as the "Don't Say Gay" bill, also proved intensely divisive and triggered a feud between DeSantis and the Walt Disney Company, one of Florida's largest and most profitable companies. However, after receiving praise for his efforts in handling Hurricane Ian and Nicole, DeSantis was again elected to office in 2022 by a landslide margin of nineteen points over Democratic competitor Charlie Crist.

DeSantis's next term as governor saw him continue to pursue a number of conservative policies; for example, in 2023 he proposed a permanent ban on government COVID-19 mandates. In April 2023 he signed a six-week abortion ban. That same month, the lengthy feud between Disney and DeSantis's administration, which had begun with the company's opposition to the governor's education policies and later widened into a land-use dispute, further escalated when the company sued DeSantis and other individuals.

In May 2023 DeSantis announced his candidacy in the 2024 US presidential election, placing him in competition for the Republican nomination with former US president Donald Trump, who had previously announced his candidacy in November 2022. As part of his presidential campaign, DeSantis traveled and spoke extensively across the US and released a nonfiction book entitled The Courage to Be Free (2023). In August 2023 he participated in a debate alongside other leading Republican candidates; at that time Fox News, which moderated the debate, released statistics which placed Trump in the lead, with 53 percent of Republican primary voters selecting him as their top choice. While DeSantis remained in second place, his support among Republican voters had dropped from 22 percent in June to 16 percent in August.

January 15, 2024, signaled a turning point in DeSantis's campaign after Trump defeated him by 30 percentage points in the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses; Trump garnered 51 percent of the vote, while DeSantis trailed behind in second place at 21.3 percent. Several days after the Iowa caucuses and two days ahead of the New Hampshire primary election, DeSantis suspended his bid for the presidency. He exited the race for the 2024 election cycle on January 21, 2024. In his announcement message, DeSantis endorsed Trump as the Republican nominee. His decision to exit the race left Nikki Haley as Trump's final challenger for the Republican nomination until she suspended her campaign on March 6, 2024.

Impact

From his entry into politics, Ron DeSantis epitomized the deeply conservative populism of the Tea Party movement. He helped change the congressional landscape as a member of the Freedom Caucus, notably forcing out Speaker of the House John Boehner and shifting the entire Republican Party to the right. DeSantis’s victory in the closely watched 2018 Florida gubernatorial race, as well as his landslide victory in the 2022 race, were considered highly significant on both the state and nationwide levels, as it helped keep an important swing state under Republican control. It was also widely seen as evidence of President Trump’s continued influence, due to DeSantis's adoption of many Trump talking points, and of the ongoing political and racial tension throughout the country. Within weeks of taking office in 2018 DeSantis had reshaped the state’s judiciary by appointing three conservative judges to the Florida Supreme Court, influencing the court’s outlook for decades. He continued to pursue a conservative agenda throughout the early 2020s and as a result became a leading figure in the Republican Party. His profile was further heightened with his presidential campaign for the 2024 election.

Personal Life

DeSantis and Casey Black DeSantis, an Emmy Award winning television host, married in 2010. They had two daughters, Madison and Mamie, and one son, Mason.

Bibliography

Blanton, Dana. “Fox News Poll: Ramaswamy Rising, as DeSantis Loses Ground in GOP Primary.” Fox News, 16 Aug. 2023, www.foxnews.com/official-polls/fox-news-poll-ramaswamy-rising-desantis-loses-ground-gop-primary. Accessed 8 Sep. 2023.

Mahoney, Emily L. “Florida Governor Candidate Ron DeSantis Carved Aggressive Path from Dunedin to D.C.” Miami Herald, 8 Jan. 2019, www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article220303490.html. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

Mahoney, Emily L. “Ron DeSantis Resigns from Congress to Focus on Running for Governor.” Tampa Bay Times, 11 Sept. 2018, www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2018/09/10/ron-desantis-resigns-from-congress-to-focus-on-campaign-for-governor/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

Montanaro, Domenico. “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Top Rival to Trump, Jumps into the Race for President.” NPR, 24 May 2023, www.npr.org/2023/05/24/1166796229/ron-densantis-president-election-2024. Accessed 7 June 2023.

Nehamas, Nicholas. "Ron DeSantis Ends Campaign for President." The New York Times, 21 Jan. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/us/politics/desantis-drops-out.html. Accessed 14 Mar. 2024.

Rado, Diane. “The Influence of the Federalist Society Stretches from the FL Supreme Court to Everyday Floridians. But What Is It?” Florida Phoenix, 15 Jan. 2019, www.floridaphoenix.com/2019/01/15/the-influence-of-the-federalist-society-stretches-from-the-fl-supreme-court-to-everyday-floridians-but-what-is-it/. Accessed 23 Feb. 2019.

Reihan, Salam. “Ron DeSantis Is Showing the GOP a Different Path Forward.” The Atlantic, 24 Jan. 2019, www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/ron-desantis-and-future-gop/581137/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

Peoples, Steve. “What to Know about Ron DeSantis, the Florida Governor Running for President.” Associated Press, 24 May 2023, apnews.com/article/who-is-ron-desantis-eda0e666c92e071645c6f43add3fbf59. Accessed 8 Sep. 2023.

Smith, Adam C., and Alex Leary. “Ron DeSantis: Capitol Hill Loner, Fox News Fixture, Trump Favorite in Florida Governor’s Race.”Tampa Bay Times, 9 Feb. 2018, www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2018/02/09/ron-desantis-capitol-hill-loner-fox-news-fixture-trump-favorite-in-florida-governors-race/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

Zraick, Karen. “Ron DeSantis, the Republican Trump Wants to Be Florida’s Governor.” The New York Times, 29 Aug. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/08/29/us/politics/ron-desantis-bio-facts.html. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.