DeSantis Gets Boost as Trump-Backed Candidates Flop in Key Races

Mark Niquette
·7 min read
2
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

(Bloomberg) -- Republican leaders are moving on from former President Donald Trump and embracing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the party’s best hope for retaking the White House.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Trump’s favored candidates suffered humiliating defeats Tuesday in crucial House and Senate races, jeopardizing the GOP push to regain a congressional majority. That stood in stark contrast to DeSantis’s decisive re-election win, where he racked up votes in Democratic strongholds -- a feat Republicans need to replicate nationally in order to retake the White House.

DeSantis’s victory -- combined with Americans’ rebuke of Trump’s brand -- will boost the governor as attention turns to the 2024 presidential races and serve as a rallying cry for those looking for an alternative to Trump, former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said in an interview.

“It was a very, very big win for him, and I think it positions him automatically as a national figure,” said Gingrich, known as the architect of the “Contract with America” platform that helped the GOP take control of Congress in the 1994 midterms. The defeat of Trump’s high-profile endorsed candidates in Pennsylvania and other states “highlights the scale of DeSantis’s victory.”

The former president and the governor have been on a collision course as DeSantis’s star rises on the national stage, with business leaders including Citadel’s billionaire founder Ken Griffin falling in behind DeSantis as their preferred choice among Republican contenders for 2024. Their support has fattened the governor’s coffers, with DeSantis raising a record $164 million for a gubernatorial candidate, outpacing the $161 million Trump has raised over a nearly two year period.

Sensing his potential vulnerability to DeSantis, Trump has all but announced his intention to mount a third White House run as soon as next week. And the former president has treated the governor increasingly like a rival by escalating personal attacks, including a threat uttered on the eve of the election to release damaging information on DeSantis should he decide to run, too.

Even before election day, Trump was bristling as DeSantis gained more of the limelight. The former president has a knack for coming after political enemies with demeaning nicknames and in the lead-up to Nov. 8 he finally came up with “DeSanctimonious” to undermine the man who’s now his biggest obstacle to the Republican nomination in 2024.

So far, DeSantis has resisted taking the bait. On Tuesday evening, television networks captured him flashing a wry smile to supporters at his re-election party as they chanted “two more years,” winking at his presidential aspirations. On Wednesday morning, Rupert Murdoch’s conservative New York Post tabloid had a photo of DeSantis splashed across the front page with a play on his name: “DeFuture.”

Trump was banking on Republicans winning big, letting him take credit and shut down talk of alternatives. DeSantis spoiled those plans by having such a good night, and many of the more bizarre and extreme candidates Trump backed were rejected by voters.

Asked by Fox News Digital if he would heed pundits who have suggested Tuesday’s results would change his plans, Trump dismissed the idea.

“We had tremendous success,” Trump said. “Why would anything change?”

At a Wednesday press conference to tout Democrats’ better-than-expected midterm showing, Trump’s other nemesis, President Joe Biden, said that he plans to seek re-election and that he’d likely make an official call early next year, a declaration likely to further fuel Trump’s resolve to run.

Asked who would be the tougher opponent, Biden said “it’ll be fun watching them take on each other.”

Alice Stewart, a Republican communications consultant who worked on Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential bid, said she’s been getting messages from key GOP donors who are Trump allies but think he’s “an anchor on this party, it is time to turn the page” after Republicans lost the House, Senate and White House under Trump and key races on Tuesday.

“They’re saying it’s time for Republicans to move on,” Stewart said on CNN.

Trump-backed candidates lost at least four US Senate races, including celebrity physician Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania for a Republican-held seat. Trump’s candidates also lost at least nine governor’s races and 11 US House contests. Other hand-picked Trump candidates are trailing, including Kari Lake for governor and Blake Masters for US Senate in battleground Arizona.

While Trump’s endorsement was potent in GOP primaries, it proved to be a liability in some of Tuesday’s races -- resurfacing questions about whether he should be blamed for boosting weak candidates in an environment favorable for Republicans.

Republican strategist and pollster Frank Luntz said exit polls show typically Republican-leaning independent voters went Democratic in Tuesday’s races, which he attributed to Trump only appealing narrowly to his base.

Meanwhile, preliminary CNN exit polls in Florida, showed DeSantis outperforming Trump with voters that Democrats need to keep the White House in 2024.

DeSantis won Latino voters in the state by 13 percentage points on Tuesday while Trump trailed Biden among those voters by 7 percentage points in 2020, exit polls show. DeSantis also held a slight edge among independents, whom Biden carried in Florida by 11 percentage points.

“He’s still a god to the Republican Party, he’s just a devil to everyone else,” Luntz said of the former president. “Donald Trump got people through the nomination, but he blocked them from winning the election.”

Pennsylvania Republicans were especially unhappy with Trump endorsing Oz, a TV-doctor-turned candidate who struggled to win over conservatives and other voters, and they’re convinced the GOP would have held the seat had the former president stayed neutral.

“A lot of people are going to ask, can you lay this loss at the feet of the president,” Republican strategist David Urban said on CNN of Oz’s defeat in Pennsylvania. Urban, a former Trump adviser, supported ex-Bridgewater Associates Chief Executive David McCormick in the state’s GOP primary.

Even some of Trump’s candidates who won on Tuesday, such as Republican venture capitalist JD Vance in Ohio’s US Senate race, prevailed only after the super-PAC affiliated with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell marshaled almost $32 million to bolster him after signs of struggle.

But while at least 195 of the candidates that Trump endorsed for US Senate, US House, governor, attorney general and secretary of state won on Tuesday, at least 28 lost, with several others trailing in their races as votes continue to be counted, according to a Bloomberg News compilation.

Trump held rallies to ostensibly boost his candidates, but spent the bulk of them talking about himself and his grievances while teasing a 2024 comeback. Some Republican analysts feared even before the election that his involvement would hurt the party by energizing Democrats and making him the focus rather than inflation, crime and other issues favorable to the GOP.

Since leaving office in January 2021, Trump has endorsed almost 330 candidates in local, party, state, federal and international races and for two ballot issues, according to a Bloomberg News compilation. They included one he rescinded, endorsements for four candidates who withdrew or were disqualified, and a duel endorsement in Missouri’s US Senate primary.

Of the 277 Trump-backed candidates who have faced voters in primaries and other races before Tuesday’s general election, all but 20 won or advanced. But Trump’s support had the greatest effect in multi-candidate GOP primaries without incumbents and fell flat in high-profile races with established incumbents, according to Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

--With assistance from Andre Tartar, Christopher Cannon and Bill Allison.

(Adds Trump comment on announcement in 10th and 11th paragraphs.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.