Washington: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis won a landslide election victory over his Democratic rival, securing a second term, cementing his status as a Republican presidential contender, and confirming the one-time swing state’s tilt to the right.
Although neither he nor his erstwhile backer Donald Trump have announced their candidacy for the White House, the race for the 2024 Republican nomination may well have unofficially begun with Tuesday’s midterms.
“We’ve got so much more to do and I have only begun to fight,” the 44-year-old DeSantis — who emerged as perhaps the biggest winner of Election Day 2022 — said in his victory speech.
According to unofficial results, the man who ran an incendiary campaign against President Joe Biden’s administration and turned Florida into a laboratory for right-wing policies won nearly 60 percent of the vote against Democrat Charlie Crist.
“I believe the survival of the American experiment requires a revival of true American principles. Florida has proved that it can be done,” DeSantis said to cheers from his supporters.
He did not mention Trump, whose support gave DeSantis a boost in his first race for the governor’s mansion in 2018.
The former president seems both aware and visibly annoyed by the threat posed by the rise of Florida’s popular leader.
Trump gave a brief speech Tuesday night in which he congratulated himself on some Republican victories in the hotly contested midterm elections, but was careful not to mention the win by the politician who is already seen as his primary rival.
On Monday, Trump sought to discourage DeSantis from entering the race for the White House in 2024.
“I think he would be making a mistake, I think the base would not like it,” Fox News quoted Trump as saying. “I don’t think it would be good for the party.”
As he often does with his opponents, Trump has branded DeSantis with a derogatory moniker: Ron DeSanctimonious.
The resounding DeSantis victory also confirms a clear shift to the right in Florida, long considered a swing state that could go to either Democrats or Republicans.
The governor was not mistaken when he said on Tuesday that “we not only won election, we have rewritten the political map.”
“It’s clearly apparent that this election we will have garnered a significant number of votes from people who may not have voted for me four years ago,” DeSantis said.
In a result that would have been all but unthinkable a few years ago, DeSantis won the predominantly Hispanic county of Miami-Dade, which no Republican gubernatorial candidate had carried in two decades.
Democrats are concerned that while Hispanics have traditionally voted for their party, more and more are now being drawn to the other side, with many in the Cuban and Venezuelan communities especially sensitive to Republicans’ anti-socialist rhetoric.
DeSantis’ handling of the Covid-19 pandemic may have also boosted his appeal and
contributed to his decisive victory.
The governor, who fiercely opposed mandatory vaccination and masks, allowed Florida businesses and schools to reopen well before many other areas of the country.
He also recently caused controversy — and delighted many Republicans — by sending dozens of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in the Democratic-led state of Massachusetts.
And he is one of the loudest voices in the culture wars that divide the country, signing the so-called “Don’t say gay” bill, which prohibits discussing LGBTQ topics in classrooms, into law earlier this year.
In recent days, a video tweeted by his wife Casey has also garnered extensive attention: the short black-and-white clip presents the governor as being invested with a divine mission.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s Democrats seem to have escaped a feared drubbing in Tuesday’s midterm elections, but it remains to be seen whether that will revive the US president’s flagging fortunes until 2024 — or beyond.
The 79-year-old, who framed the race as a clash between defenders of democracy and the “extremist” camp of Donald Trump, spent election night in back-to-back calls with Democrats savoring their wins in Senate, House and gubernatorial races around the country.
“Just got off the phone with some of tonight’s winners — including some folks I saw on the road this year,” Biden tweeted as the results came in — alongside a picture of himself in a turtle neck and baseball cap, seeming happy to take at least some of the credit.
White House staff, according to the former press secretary Jen Psaki, were “giddy and gleeful” as results came in.
The outcome taking shape was far from ideal for Democrats, who stand to lose the House of Representatives in what Biden has admitted will make his life much more “difficult” — likely hobbling parts of his agenda.
But if overnight predictions hold and the Democrats lose the House by a handful of seats, with the Senate still in play, Biden’s camp will have vastly outperformed expectations.
The president’s party has traditionally lost seats in midterm elections and with Biden’s approval ratings stuck in the low 40s, and sky-high inflation topping voter concerns, Republicans had high hopes of seizing both chambers of Congress in a “red wave.”
Such a drubbing would have raised tough questions on whether America’s oldest-ever president, who turns 80 this month, should run again.
Instead Biden stands to emerge in much better shape than either of his Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, who both took a hammering at the midterms.
Nevertheless, Biden will be headed into choppy waters if the House flips.
In a country whose divisions run deeper than ever, even a longtime senator and moderate Democrat like Biden will likely struggle to find common ground with a Republican-led chamber.
Large parts of his legislative agenda could utterly stall as a result.
Another open question is whether a new Republican leadership would keep its promise to aggressively hold the president to account — which even a slim House majority gives it the power to do.
That could easily translate into endless congressional investigations targeting Biden, his record and his family.
One of the loudest voices, far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, has already promised stepped-up scrutiny of Biden’s son Hunter, who Republicans accuse of exploiting his father’s connections to do business with Ukraine and China.
With control of the House, Republicans would also be able to apply considerable budgetary pressure on the president — with the potential to cut funding to the federal government.
As for the Senate — which confers greater powers — its fate still hangs in the balance.
But beyond, the big question facing Biden — and his Democrats — is who will carry the party’s colors into the 2024 White House race.
Until now the US president has consistently said he intends to seek a second term, and any suggestion to the contrary would have immediately undermined his authority.
But there is little appetite among the US public — or within his own party — for a second White House run by an octogenarian commander in chief.
Biden leaves Friday on a diplomatic marathon taking him from the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, to Cambodia for an ASEAN summit, and on to Indonesia for the G20 gathering.
The veteran Democrat may keep America guessing some time yet about his intentions for 2024.
But with the president far from US shores, his rival Trump will be pressing ahead — promising a big reveal, widely expected to be a new White House run, next Tuesday in Florida.
