florida governor ron desantis on Thursday he sought to move on from an embarrassing start to his presidential campaign, outlining an aggressive travel schedule as his allies insisted they remain well-funded and well-positioned for a long Republican primary fight ahead.
While DeSantis supporters privately acknowledged that the botched ad was an unwanted distraction, there was a widespread feeling, even among some Republican critics, that it was likely to have limited, if any, long-term political consequences.
“Wish they could do it again? Probably,” said David Oman, who ran two top-tier presidential campaigns in Iowa. “Are we going to be talking about it in 10 days? Probably not.”
DeSantis formally launched his campaign Wednesday night during an online chat with Twitter CEO Elon Musk. But the audio stream repeatedly failed, making it difficult for most users to hear the announcement in real time.
On Thursday, the Republican governor announced plans for a three-state blitz next week with at least a dozen stops. He is scheduled to campaign Tuesday and Wednesday in Iowa before a trip to New Hampshire on Thursday and South Carolina on Friday.
“We are precisely focused on bringing Governor DeSantis’s progressive message to restore America to all potential voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina,” said campaign manager Generra Peck. “Our campaign is committed to putting in the time to win these first nominee states. No one will work harder than Governor DeSantis to share his vision with the country; it has only begun to fight.”
DeSantis is presenting himself as the only legitimate Republican challenger in the crowded Republican primary to former President Donald Trump, who has a huge lead in early polls along with a firm grip on a significant portion of the GOP’s passionate base.
However, Trump is plagued with his own baggage, including multiple legal threats and a haunting over his 2020 election loss.
Meanwhile, DeSantis’ team opens the season with tens of millions of dollars in the bank. A spokesman said the campaign raised $1 million in the first hour after Wednesday’s announcement, but declined to provide an updated total on Thursday. An adviser to the DeSantis-allied super PAC said there are 30 full-time paid employees in the first four states on the presidential primary schedule, with many more hires already planned for the next 14 states to hold primary elections.
As he is set to publicly say he is running for president, Governor Ron DeSantis had already raised millions of funds in 2022. NBC6’s Phil Prazan reports
No other Republican presidential candidate has such an infrastructure, including Trump. His aides declined to say how many staff he has in the early states. “The only numbers we will talk about are the huge advantages that President Trump is accumulating in the early states,” spokesman Steven Cheung said.
But as DeSantis tried to project confidence Thursday, the two-term governor faced lingering questions about his rocky launch during a conservative media tour.
“I was kind of sitting in Tallahassee, like I didn’t really know what was going on because Twitter runs all of that,” DeSantis told conservative commentator Glenn Beck. “They were receiving so many people, beyond what they had ever received, that I think it melted the servers.”
As the Trump team gleefully jeered—“a #DeSaster of epic proportions,” wrote Donald Trump Jr. on Truth Social—many Republican officials, donors, and early state activists suggested there would be little long-term consequence.
“Look, I like Elon Musk, but he apparently fired too many IT guys,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate and a regular critic of DeSantis, said on ABC’s “The View.” “You can’t blame Ron DeSantis for that.”
“I mean, if Elon Musk said to me, ‘Let’s broadcast it,’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, this guy knows what he’s doing.’ It didn’t work,” added Sununu. “Ron’s job was to deliver the speech and make the points. I think he did a good job of that.”
Republican strategist Terry Sullivan, who managed Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, suggested that DeSantis is well positioned to overcome an early stumble.
“Big presidential campaign ads are just about getting a short-term bounce (in the polls) and raising money online,” Sullivan said. “DeSantis doesn’t need any of those. He just needed to get in the race and start the campaign. Mission accomplished.”
Former New Hampshire Republican Party Chair Jennifer Horn described DeSantis’ pitching as an “embarrassing missed opportunity.” The only potential long-term challenge, she said, is that it serves as “a gift to Donald Trump,” who will almost certainly make sure it isn’t quickly forgotten.
But on the ground in the states that matter most in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, there continued to be “a high level of interest” in DeSantis, according to New Hampshire GOP Chairman Chris Ager. He said that various groups in the Republican Party are asking DeSantis to speak at their events.
“I think it was a pretty bold move to try something totally new in an ad,” Ager said.
And while early polls show Trump leading DeSantis among New Hampshire primary voters, Ager said a lot can change over time.
“I hope the race is compressed,” he said. “Gov. DeSantis is definitely a serious and legitimate contender for the top spot.”
Republican donor and vocal Trump critic Eric Levine said there was little talk in the donor community about DeSantis stumbling out of the gate. He said the governor of Florida remains one of his top three candidates.
“No one is going to leave him for that. Whether or not he’s lost a couple of people who could have jumped on the bandwagon had it been better, I don’t know,” Levine said. “Now, it’s a marathon from now to Iowa.”
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