DeSantis shows his friendlier side in campaign swing to New Hampshire

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Last Friday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis traveled to New Hampshire, which is set to host the first Republican presidential primary next year, to rally support for the state GOP — and for his prospective campaign — under the guise of a book tour.

A few months ago, DeSantis was riding high in national polls and running neck and neck with former President Donald Trump. But following Trump’s aggressive recent attacks on DeSantis, the governor’s support has steadily declined and political insiders’ optimism for his campaign has diminished. Trump and his team have insinuated, with scant evidence, that DeSantis had inappropriate relationships with underaged girls when he was a schoolteacher, and a Trump-supporting super-PAC latched onto an anonymous source that claimed that DeSantis sometimes ate pudding with his fingers.

So DeSantis made his pre-campaign swing through the crucial early primary state under a cloud of growing uncertainty about his prospects.

On his first trip to New Hampshire as a possible 2024 contender, DeSantis packed a large event room at the Doubletree in Manchester for the state Republican Party’s major annual fundraiser, the Amos Tuck Dinner. (A few days after DeSantis’s stop, Trump announced he would appear at the exact same hotel next week for his own swing through New Hampshire.)

DeSantis was not known for being friendly when he was in Congress from 2013 to 2018. While other House lawmakers are typically chummy and personable around the Capitol, DeSantis would walk around with earbuds in his ears, generally avoiding people.

But inside the DoubleTree hotel in downtown Manchester, packed with Republican officials and activists who will play a key role in selecting the next Republican nominee, DeSantis came across as a regular guy — affable and easygoing. And his warm reception from local Republican activists suggests that many remain undecided and are open to backing DeSantis.

His speech was not without a hiccup: He stoically dismissed a handful of protesters who rushed the stage and unfurled a banner reading “Jews against DeSantis” during his speech, saying, “You gotta have a little spice in the speech, right?” The protesters were quickly removed by security, and the Florida governor stuck close to a stump speech tailored to New Hampshire’s brand of libertarian conservatism.

The day after signing a 6-week abortion ban into law in Florida, DeSantis made no mention of the issue. Instead he touted his leadership of Florida and described victories that helped raise his national profile, like flying undocumented immigrants from Texas to Massachusetts and fighting Disney’s special tax status in Florida because the company supported “woke” policies.

The Florida governor said that on taking office he was advised to adopt a more moderate tone to survive life in what used to be a swing state, but he refused to be a “potted plant” in office.

DeSantis said he was told, “‘Keep your head down, don’t make any waves, bide your time and lay low.’ I understood that advice, it was not crazy advice. But I rejected that advice.”

DeSantis also avoided directly mentioning Trump by name, but landed some jabs clearly directed at the former president, promising that if he was in the White House they wouldn’t be bogged down in perpetual palace drama and fighting among staff.

After wrapping up his hour-long speech, DeSantis hopped off the stage into the crowd to start working the room. Republican activists crowded him as he walked around the tables, signing copies of his new book, “The Courage to be Free,” and taking selfies with them.

Trump remains the person to beat in most polls of early primary states like New Hampshire. The rank and file of the party still speak highly of the former president, but that doesn’t mean they’ve closed the door on alternatives to Trump. Throughout the room, activists said they hadn’t yet decided who they would vote for, but were interested in what they considered to be DeSantis’s brand of cleaned-up Trumpism.

“I was a very early Trump supporter, even prior to him actually getting in and 2016, but I like Ron DeSantis as well,” Doug Lambert, vice chair of the Belknap County GOP in New Hampshire and long a fixture in New Hampshire conservative politics, told Yahoo News after taking a selfie with the governor. “I think that there's a lot of similarities on the issues between the two of them. And I’m giving Ron a very serious look, I think that he has a lot of the good of Trump without some of the baggage.”

DeSantis’s prickly personality has long been cited by Republican operatives as an indicator that the Florida governor would struggle in early voting states like New Hampshire and Iowa, where voters demand one-on-one time with the candidates.

But like so many other aspects of modern politics, there are signs that personal contact and charisma doesn’t matter as much as it used to. DeSantis’s would-be campaign team has already started to map out a plan to win votes in states across the country that often get overlooked because they hold their contests later. Their plans to secure delegates to the Republican National Convention in 2016 suggests a drawn-out battle that could stretch all the way from the first primary votes cast next February to the 2024 Republican convention in Milwaukee.

Despite not having formally announced yet, DeSantis’s de facto campaign has kept up the pace of a full-fledged White House run. He is in Washington, D.C., this week to build support from members of Congress in a meeting put together by “And to the Republic” — a political group formed by a supporter from Michigan who has been helping him win congressional endorsements.

He is also set to headline a 50th anniversary event for the Heritage Foundation later this week. Behind the scenes, DeSantis’s team has been working to stop Florida Republican House members from endorsing Trump.

And a super-PAC backing the Florida governor this week issued its own first blast against Trump, accusing him of being a “gun-grabber” who would support efforts at gun control.

Alan Glassman, treasurer of the New Hampshire Republican Party, recounted taking photos of DeSantis years ago, when he threw the opening pitch at a Little League game in Florida, and later presented DeSantis with some of the photos.

“I’m pretty confident that Governor DeSantis can do everything that people would want as a president. That's not to say that he would be the president, that's up in the air. Nobody knows who’s going to be the president in 2024,” Glassman said. “But we have to give all of our good candidates an opportunity, and he's certainly a good candidate.”