DeSantis fights for attention while candidates tussle in first Republican primary debate
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Ron DeSantis was expected to be the center of attention during the first Republican presidential debate.
He spent much of the night out of the spotlight instead.
The Florida governor repeatedly found himself fighting to produce memorable moments during a freewheeling GOP debate Wednesday in Milwaukee, at times overshadowed by the other seven candidates on stage — especially entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — who engaged in bare-knuckled verbal exchanges that only rarely included DeSantis.
When the Florida Republican did talk, he stuck almost exclusively to the same message he’s spent months promoting on the campaign trail, emphasizing his conservative record in Florida and arguing he was the candidate best positioned to reverse what he calls America’s decline.
“Our country is in decline,” DeSantis said, reiterating one of the most-used lines of his campaign. “This decline is not inevitable. It’s a choice. We need to send Joe Biden back to his basement and reverse American decline.”
The relative lack of attention on the debate stage meant that the governor was able to leave the night unscathed by criticism, allowing him to focus on a core message of fighting the political left as millions of potential GOP voters watched at home.
But for a candidate who had entered the debate trying to revitalize his flagging campaign after replacing his campaign manager earlier this month, it’s unclear whether the performance offered much evidence to his supporters that he was poised to regain momentum. DeSantis didn’t even receive much of an opportunity to defend his record, with rivals like former President Mike Pence and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie choosing instead to focus on Ramaswamy, a political newcomer who has risen in the polls in recent weeks.
“We don’t need to bring in a rookie,” Pence said in one particularly heated exchange with Ramaswamy. “We don’t need to bring in people without experience.”
Ramaswamy, a political newcomer, fired back that the country couldn’t re-embrace the same career politicians it had turned to in the past.
“The real choice we face in this primary is this. Do you want a super PAC puppet? Or do you want a patriot who speaks the truth? Do you want incremental reform, which is what you’re hearing about, or do you want revolution? I stand on the side of the American revolution,” he said.
Debates are often marquee events in presidential primaries, drawing millions of viewers and giving candidates a chance to criticize their rivals in person.
DeSantis had prepared for weeks for the debate, seeing it as a crucial opportunity to reverse the narrative of a candidate in trouble and prove to voters — and the media — that the 2024 Republican presidential primary remains a two-man race between him and former President Donald Trump, who skipped the debate while leading the rest of the GOP field by double-digit margins.
DeSantis officials argued that the preparation paid off, with night going according to plan for their candidate.
“Debates aren’t about time or volume necessarily,” David Polyansky, DeSantis’ deputy campaign manager, said after the debate. “Debates are about what you do in the moment. And I think our aim tonight was to explain to the American people, Republican primary voters, especially across the country and in the early states, his vision for the country, and he told them very matter of fact that the country is in decline.
More importantly, Polyanksy said, DeSantis explained his vision for how to steady the nation.
“And by doing that he was able to do it in a way that he talked to people at home,” Polyansky said. “He didn’t talk to the moderators, or the debate crowd in this building. He talked to people at home and told them about that vision.”
But DeSantis still often went long stretches between speaking, standing by while other candidates argued with one another. In one instance, a Fox News moderator repeatedly tried to ask the governor a question about rising rates of crime, only to be shouted over by an argument between Ramaswamy and Pence about the national identity of the American people.
When the Florida Republican did get a chance to answer, he cited — as he often does on the campaign trail — his past decision to remove from office two local prosecutors in the state
“We are going to go after all of these people because they are hurting the quality of life, and they are victimizing innocent people in every corner of this country,” he said. “And it will stop when I get into office.”
DeSantis’ most memorable responses might have come when pressed by Fox News moderators and his rivals for specific answers. Asked repeatedly by a moderator whether he would approve a federal six-week abortion ban if president, the governor demurred, saying only that he would broadly support pro-life policies.
Later, when the candidates were asked whether they thought Pence was correct to certify the results of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, DeSantis declined to answer, saying that the election wouldn’t be about what actions Trump had taken in the past.
The governor’s non-answer did not escape Pence’s attention, he later asked DeSantis directly if he thought the vice president had acted appropriately.
“Mike did his duty,” DeSantis said. “I’ve got no beef with him.”
