The fundraising blitz is on. The Wall Street Journal reports that Ron DeSantis, the either much-loved or much-hated Republican Governor of Florida plans to file the formal paperwork to run for President with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Thursday, 25 May.
Until recently Florida state law prohibited a sitting Governor from running for President without resigning his current office, so though DeSantis has been crisscrossing the world to campaign and raise funds, he had not been officially a Presidential contender.
DeSantis will join former President Trump, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, conservative personality Larry Elder and GOP Senator Tim Scott for the GOP nod to take on Biden in the general election in November 2024.
In current polls, most GOP voters still currently favor Donald Trump, who has been attacking DeSantis regularly. Trump had previously warned DeSantis not to run against him in the 2024 Republican primary, promising to tell reporters “things” about the Florida governor “that won’t be very flattering”.
Trump may have been readying his recent innuendo and photo post that DeSantis was somehow involved with underage students at the private school in Georgia where he was a history teacher for a short time, before joining the Navy.
DeSantis will have no choice but to engage with Trump even though he told Piers Morgan that if he "were to run," he would put his focus squarely on Biden and his failures as president. "I think he’s failed the country. I think the country wants a change. I think they want a fresh start and a new direction, and so we’ll be very vocal about that," he said.
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