Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida came to Iowa on his first trip as a presidential candidate and made it clear that he was no longer Donald J. Trump’s punching bag.
After absorbing months of attacks from Mr. Trump that went mostly unansweredMr. DeSantis borrowed one of his rival’s favorite phrases: “I’m going to counterpunch,” and fired back.
He called one of the spending bills Trump signed “grotesque” and accused it of increasing the national debt. He said that the way Trump sided with Disney in Mr. DeSantis’ war with the entertainment giant it was strange”. He described Trump’s criticism of the governor’s handling of Covid as “ridiculous.” And he challenged Mr. Trump to take a stand on the debt limit bill pending in Washington.
“Are you leading from the front?” said Mr. DeSantis, almost jokingly. “Or are you waiting for the polls to tell you what position to take?”
A tricky balancing act awaits Mr. DeSantis. All those comments didn’t make it to the stage in his first campaign speech before hundreds of Republicans at an evangelical church, but during a 15-minute press conference with reporters afterwards. He did not mention Trump by name when he spoke directly to voters at each of his first four stops in Iowa, though he has drawn implicit contrasts.
The two-pronged approach reflects the remarkable degree to which his path to the nomination depends on his ability to win over, rather than alienate, the significant bloc of Republican voters who still like Trump, even if they are willing to consider an alternative.
“I don’t like to see them fight and do smear campaigns,” said Jay Schelhaas, 55, a nursing professor who visited DeSantis on Wednesday in Pella, Iowa. As an evangelical voter, he said he was undecided who to support in 2024 after to endorse Trump in his last two presidential runs.
A few themes have come up in DeSantis’ early volleys. He has tried to question Trump’s commitment to conservatism (“I think, unfortunately, he has decided to move to the left on some of these issues”); his ability to execute his agenda (“I’ve been listening to these politicians talk about securing the border for years and years and years”); and his ability to win the 2024 general election (“There are a lot of voters who will simply never vote for him”).
It was no coincidence that Trump arrived in Iowa hot on the heels of DeSantis on Wednesday, in a sign of the intensifying political skirmish between the top Republican presidential contenders and Iowa’s centrality on his road to the nomination. Mr. Trump has an advantage of about 30 percentage points in the first national polls of the Republican primaries.
In a statement, Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said DeSantis’ first speech was “crafted to appease established Never Trumpers looking for a swamp puppet to do their bidding.”
Mr. DeSantis is seeking a challenging middle ground as he begins this new phase of increased confrontation. He’s trying to show voters that he’s the kind of fighter who won’t back down, even against the dominant figure in his party. At the same time, he must avoid being seen as too focused on Republican infighting.
“I am going to focus my fire on Biden,” DeSantis said in his inaugural address Tuesday night in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines, even as he stepped up his attacks on Trump. “And I think he should do the same.”
DeSantis’s advisers said his more assertive stance was due in large part to the fact that he is now a real candidate. But it is a noticeable change. At a recent dinner with donors in Tallahassee, Florida, DeSantis was asked when he would start criticizing Trump and suggested he wouldn’t immediately, according to an attendee, who spoke on condition of anonymity. describe a private conversation.
For the third time in DeSantis’ three trips to Iowa this year, Trump planned to follow closely with a two-day tour of his own. In March, when DeSantis came for his book tour, Trump arrived days later in the same city and drew a bigger crowd. In mid-May, Trump had scheduled a rally to stop the Florida governor’s trip, but he canceled it at the last minute, saying it was due to weather. It was Mr. DeSantis who got over him then, turning up at a nearby barbecue.
“The weather was so nice we felt like we had to come,” Mr. DeSantis said with a laugh on Clive.
Trump will give an interview on local television on Wednesday and will host a luncheon with religious leaders in Des Moines on Thursday after attending breakfast with a local Republican group. He is also hosting a Fox News town hall event moderated by Sean Hannity.
Trump has been far from subtle in his attacks on DeSantis, calling him “Ron DeSanctimonious,” decrying his leadership in Florida and lambasting him from the left for past proposals to cut spending on Social Security and Medicare. No matter how much mud Trump throws around, Republican voters have tended not to punish him, a double standard that has long worked in his favor.
“I guess he has to respond somehow,” Tim Hamer, a retired Iowan who worked in banking and owned a lavender farm, said of DeSantis. Hamer, who was at the governor’s event in Council Bluffs on Wednesday, said he had voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but was now leaning toward DeSantis.
“The point is,” he added, “don’t sink to the level of Trump.”
Among the issues on which DeSantis has explicitly broken with Trump is legislation the former president signed that allows a pathway for nonviolent offenders to reduce their prison time. Last week, Mr. DeSantis he called the measure “a breakout bill.”
In stop after stop, DeSantis has also pointed to his ability to serve as president for two terms, unlike Trump, saying the next president could appoint up to four Supreme Court justices.
He said Tuesday: “I don’t need someone to give me a list to know what a conservative justice looks like.” Mr. Trump, whose appointment of the justices that swayed the Supreme Court to the right and struck down Roe v. Wade cheered conservatives, vowing in the 2016 campaign to pick a judge from a list created by conservative judicial activists, and vowing to release another list by 2024.
Regina Hansen, who attended DeSantis’ event in Council Bluffs, said she hoped Trump and DeSantis would patch up their relationship that was once friendly. But in the meantime, he said, he thought the best way for DeSantis to win over Trump supporters was to keep talking about himself, his record and his family.
“I have a very positive opinion of him, more so now than before he came here today,” Ms. Hansen said after hearing Mr. DeSantis speak.
But Will Schademann, who attended the rally with a copy of DeSantis’ recent book, said he believed the governor needed to stay on the attack on the former president.
“I think it’s the right approach,” said Schademann, adding that he twice voted for Trump. “He needs to contrast what he did with what Trump did.”
At his stops Wednesday in Council Bluffs, Salix and Pella, Iowa, DeSantis directed his verbal assaults at President Biden and kept his jabs at Trump more oblique.
“Our great comeback America tour begins by sending Joe Biden back to his basement in Delaware,” he said at Council Bluffs.
By contrast, DeSantis criticized Trump, a former reality TV star, indirectly but pointedly.
“The Bible makes it very clear that God frowns on pride and looks at people who have humility,” he said.
In recent days, Mr. DeSantis seemed especially eager to speak about his handling of the coronavirus, which catapulted him to national prominence. Mr. Trump recently unfavorably compared the governor’s handling of the pandemic to that of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, D-New York.
Mr. DeSantis has expressed shock at this line of attack, arguing that the lockdowns and isolation measures instituted early in the pandemic did more harm than help.
“The former president would double his blocks starting in March 2020,” DeSantis said.
“Do you want Cuomo or do you want Florida free?” she added. “If we just decided that at the caucuses, I would be happy with the verdict of the Iowa voters.”
Bret Hayworth contributed reporting from Salix, Iowa.
