It’s official. Florida Governor Ron De Santis has registered the papers with which he is running as a candidate for the 2024 presidential election. DeSantis will compete with former President Donald Trump. On Wednesday afternoon (Florida time, early morning in mainland Spain) he is scheduled to publicly announce his candidacy through a conversation with magnate Elon Musk on Twitter and an interview by a former Republican congressman on Fox News.
DeSantis’s candidacy has been anticipated since his good electoral result in the November elections of last year, when he was re-elected governor with a large majority. His good result contrasted with the disappointment of the Trump candidates in decisive constituencies. Trump, however, made the first move by running his own candidacy and has been trying to dissuade DeSantis from running with him.
Trump and his supporters have publicly criticized him, threatened him with disclosures, called him names, and even began issuing negative publicity against him before he was even a candidate. Clearly, the former president sees her as his most fearsome rival. His team has tried to denigrate him in recent hours, even with the presentation format of the candidacy, saying that he goes to Twitter to avoid having to interact with other people.
DeSantis has tried a kind of Trumpism without Trump in Florida, with very conservative policies, but without the former president’s backpack of scandals and court cases. He can also offer a project for the future and not get caught up in complaints about the 2020 elections, which Trump falsely alleges were rigged.
DeSantis is expected to hold fundraisers this week and hold a rally next week in Dunedin, the West Florida town where he grew up, outside of Tampa.
Already entered the race for the Republican nomination are the only black Republican senator, Tim Scott, former US ambassador to the UN and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley; Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchison; billionaire biotech entrepreneur and scourge of woke ideology Vivek Ramaswamy; fellow businessman Perry Johnson; political commentator Larry Elder; and politician and businessman Rolland Roberts, son of the West Virginia senator of the same name. Also expected to compete for the Republican nomination is Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, while others defoliate the daisy.
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According to the latest poll published this Wednesday by CNN, Trump is the first choice of 53% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters in the primaries, approximately double the 26% of DeSantis. But the poll also reveals that broad swaths of Republican-aligned voters are willing to consider either, as well as other candidates.
More than 8 in 10 support or say they are open to considering Trump (84%) and DeSantis (85%), with smaller majorities saying they support or would consider former UN ambassador Nikki Haley (61%), Scott ( 60%) and former Vice President Mike Pence (54%). Haley and Pence are currently the top choice of 6%, according to the poll, with Scott in the 2% along with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and five other candidates have 1% support or less.
[Noticia de última hora. Habrá ampliación en breve]
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