Gov. Ron DeSantis is staying out of the intraparty fight to succeed him.
“I’m not involved in any Primaries,” the Governor said in Lehigh Acres.
DeSantis said if someone is doing what he thinks it takes, he would be “happy to get involved.”
But he made it clear he’s not completely sold on Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, businessman James Fishback or former House Speaker Paul Renner.
He said “there’s different candidates that are doing some good things,” while some candidates “aren’t doing others,” before drawing a distinction between running for office and holding it.
“Being Governor is different than winning Governor,” DeSantis said.
“And honestly, what goes into winning it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be a good Governor, because a lot of it is name recognition. And the way to get name recognition in a really big state is you either have to pay for it by buying advertising, or you have to generate a lot of free media, which is hard in a state this big, because we have so many different media markets. You could make a splash in Southwest Florida, people in Jacksonville aren’t going to know about that, right? And so it’s just very difficult.”
He explained why he previously said the decision of Renner, who was a loyal ally in the Legislature, was ill-advised.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t think he would be a good Governor. I think he’d be really good. He’s got a great record of policy, but what’s your strategy to get known? How do you get known to people, right?”
DeSantis said that while activists are engaged, “low-information” voters are moved by media buys rather than policy purity.
Donalds, whom DeSantis has said wasn’t a part of the state’s fights against the left in recent years, is far and away the biggest beneficiary of money. He’s raised more than $100 million so far, much more than the rest of the field combined in both parties.
“So much of it is about who has the most special interests, supporting PACs, and if you can’t reach that threshold, or people don’t know who you are, then it’s very, very difficult to go from there. So maybe in the future, we look at this and say, there may be a way where you’re really channeling a lot of high information people into this process that will be able to generate maybe a less reliance on so much money coming in.”
DeSantis has experienced both sides of the coin, as he said Thursday.
“I’ve raised money for all this stuff and all this stuff. You know, it’s harder to do like when I was running in ‘18. It was not easy, especially in the Primary, because I had the machine against me. When I was running for re-election, they knew I was going to win. So everyone wanted to be there. So that’s just kind of how these folks think.”
He added that “it’s really tough to get known” in Florida.
“And so that’s just been a threshold. These candidates have to reach that. And then if they reach that, then I can see, is that something I agree with? Do I agree with them on the issues?”
A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. His work also can be seen in the Washington Post, the New York Post, the Washington Times, and National Review, among other publications. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski
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