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<\/p>\nIn November, Representative Byron Donalds scored a coveted speaking slot: introducing Gov. Ron DeSantis after a landslide re-election turned the swing state of Florida deep red. Standing onstage at a victory party for Mr. DeSantis in Tampa, Mr. Donalds praised him as \u201cAmerica\u2019s governor.\u201d<\/p>\n
By April, Mr. Donalds was seated at a table next to another Florida Republican: Donald J. Trump. He was at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump\u2019s private club, for a multicourse dinner with nine other House Republicans from Florida who had spurned their home-state governor to endorse the former president\u2019s 2024 run. Red \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d hats decorated their place settings.<\/p>\n
In six short months from November to May, Mr. DeSantis\u2019s 2024 run has faltered before it has even begun.<\/p>\n
Allies have abandoned him. Tales of his icy interpersonal touch have spread. Donors have groused. And a legislative session in Tallahassee designed to burnish his conservative credentials has instead coincided with a drop in the polls.<\/p>\n
His decision not to begin any formal campaign until after the Florida legislative session \u2014 allowing him to cast himself as a conservative fighter who not only won but actually delivered results \u2014 instead opened a window of opportunity for Mr. Trump. The former president filled the void with personal attacks and a heavy rotation of negative advertising from his super PAC. Combined with Mr. DeSantis\u2019s cocooning himself in the right-wing media and the Trump team\u2019s success in outflanking him on several fronts, the governor has lost control of his own national narrative.<\/p>\n
Now, as Mr. DeSantis\u2019s Tallahassee-based operation pivots to formally entering the race in the coming weeks, Mr. DeSantis and his allies are retooling for a more aggressive new phase. His staunchest supporters privately acknowledge that Mr. DeSantis needs to recalibrate a political outreach and media strategy that has allowed Mr. Trump to define the race.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Changes are afoot. Mr. DeSantis is building a strong Iowa operation. He has been calling influential Republicans in Iowa and is rolling out a large slate of state legislator endorsements before a weekend trip there.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe definitely indicated that if he gets in, he will work exceptionally hard \u2014 nothing will be below him,\u201d said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Iowa evangelical leader whom Mr. DeSantis hosted recently for a meal at the governor\u2019s mansion. \u201cI think he understands \u2014 I emphasized that Iowa\u2019s a retail politics state. You need to shake people\u2019s hands, look them in the eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, his central electability pitch \u2014 MAGA without the mess \u2014 has been badly bruised.<\/p>\n
A book tour that was supposed to have introduced him nationally was marked by missteps that deepened concerns about his readiness for the biggest stage. He took positions on two pressing domestic and international issues \u2014 abortion and the war in Ukraine \u2014 that generated second-guessing and backlash among some allies and would-be benefactors. And the moves he has made to appeal to the hard right \u2014 escalating his feud with Disney, signing a strict six-week abortion ban \u2014 have unnerved donors who are worried about the general election.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in the DeSantis camp,\u201d said Andrew Sabin, a metals magnate who gave the Florida governor $50,000 last year. \u201cBut he started opening his mouth, and a lot of big donors said his views aren\u2019t tolerable.\u201d He specifically cited abortion and Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Three billionaires who are major G.O.P. donors \u2014 Steve Wynn, Ike Perlmutter and Thomas Peterffy, a past DeSantis patron who has publicly soured on him \u2014 dined recently with Vivek Ramaswamy, the 37-year-old long-shot Republican.<\/p>\n
The early months of 2023 have exposed a central challenge for Mr. DeSantis. He needs to stitch together an unwieldy ideological <\/strong>coalition bridging both anti-Trump Republicans and Trump supporters who are nonetheless considering turning the page on the past president. Hitting and hugging Mr. Trump at the same time has bedeviled rivals since Senator Ted Cruz tried to do so in 2016, and Cruz veterans fill key roles in Mr. DeSantis\u2019s campaign and his super PAC.<\/p>\n Allies of both leading Republicans caution that it\u2019s still early.<\/p>\n Mr. DeSantis has more than $100 million stored across various pro-DeSantis accounts. He is building good will with state party leaders by headlining fund-raisers. He remains, in public polls, the most serious rival to Mr. Trump. And a supportive super PAC called Never Back Down is staffing up across more than a dozen states, has already spent more than $10 million on television ads and has peppered early states with direct mail.<\/p>\n DeSantis supporters point to polls showing that the governor remains well-liked by Republicans.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hits aren\u2019t working,\u201d said Kristin Davidson, chief operating officer of Never Back Down. \u201cHis favorability has not changed.\u201d<\/p>\n The DeSantis team declined to provide any comment for this story.<\/p>\n Six months ago, as Republicans were blaming Mr. Trump for the party\u2019s 2022 midterm underperformance, a high-flying Mr. DeSantis made the traditional political decision that he would govern first in early 2023 and campaign second. The rush of conservative priorities that Mr. DeSantis has turned into law in Florida \u2014 on guns, immigration, abortion, school vouchers, opposing China \u2014 is expected to form the backbone of his campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, the governor can create momentum by spending time publicly touting his endless accomplishments, calling supporters and engaging more publicly to push back on the false narratives his potential competitors are spewing,\u201d said Nick Iarossi, a lobbyist in Florida and a longtime DeSantis supporter.<\/p>\n A turning point this year for Mr. Trump was his Manhattan indictment, which Mr. DeSantis waffled on responding to as the G.O.P. base rallied to Mr. Trump\u2019s defense.<\/p>\n Yet Mr. Trump\u2019s compounding legal woes and potential future indictments could eventually have the opposite effect \u2014 exhausting voters, which is Mr. DeSantis\u2019s hope. A jury found Mr. Trump liable this week for sexual abuse and defamation. \u201cWhen you get all these lawsuits coming at you,\u201d Mr. DeSantis told one associate recently, \u201cit\u2019s just distracting.\u201d<\/p>\n The DeSantis team seemed to buy its own hype.<\/p>\n Days before the midterms, the DeSantis campaign released a video that cast his rise as ordained from on high. \u201cOn the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, \u2018I need a protector,\u2019\u201d a narrator booms as Mr. DeSantis appears onscreen. \u201cSo God made a fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n For years, the self-confident Mr. DeSantis has relied on his own instincts and the counsel of his wife, Casey DeSantis, who posted the video, to set his political course, according to past aides and current associates. <\/strong>Mr. DeSantis has been written off before \u2014 in his first primary for governor; in his first congressional primary \u2014 so both he and his wife have gotten used to tuning out critics.<\/p>\n Today, allies say there are few people around who are willing to tell Mr. DeSantis he\u2019s wrong, even in private.<\/p>\n In late 2022, the thinking was that a decision on 2024 could wait, and Mr. Trump\u2019s midterm hangover would linger. Mr. DeSantis published a book \u2014 \u201cI was, you know, kind of a hot commodity,\u201d he said of writing it \u2014 that became a best seller. And Mr. DeSantis was on the offensive, tweaking Mr. Trump with a February donor retreat held only miles from Mar-a-Lago that drew Trump contributors.<\/p>\n But it has been Mr. Trump who has consistently one-upped Mr. DeSantis, flying into East Palestine, Ohio, after the rail disaster there, appearing with a larger crowd in the same Iowa city days after Mr. DeSantis <\/strong>and swiping Florida congressional endorsements while Mr. DeSantis traveled to Washington.<\/p>\n One Trump endorser, Representative Lance Gooden of Texas, backed the former president only hours after attending a private group meeting with Mr. DeSantis. In an interview, Mr. Gooden likened Mr. DeSantis\u2019s decision to delay entry until after a legislative session to the example of a past Texas governor, Rick Perry, who did the same a decade ago \u2014 and quickly flamed out of the 2012 contest.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s relied, much like Rick Perry did, on local political experts in his home state that just don\u2019t know the presidential landscape,\u201d Mr. Gooden said.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump has insinuated, without providing evidence, that Mr. DeSantis had inappropriate relationships with high school girls during a stint as a teacher in the early 2000s and that Mr. DeSantis might be gay.<\/p>\n His team has portrayed Mr. DeSantis as socially inept, <\/strong>and a pro-Trump super PAC distributed a video \u2014 dubbed \u201cPudding Fingers\u201d \u2014 playing off news articles about Mr. DeSantis\u2019s uncouth eating habits.<\/p>\n People close to Mr. Trump have been blunt in private discussions that the hits so far are just the start: If Mr. DeSantis ever appears poised to capture the nomination, the former president will do everything he can to tear him apart.<\/p>\n Beginning with his response to the coronavirus outbreak, Mr. DeSantis\u2019s national rise has been uniquely powered by his ability to make the right enemies: in academia, in the news media, among liberal activists and at the White House. But Mr. Trump\u2019s broadsides and some of his own actions have put Mr. DeSantis crosswise with the right for the first time. It has been a disorienting experience for the DeSantis operation, according to allies.<\/p>\n For the past three years, Mr. DeSantis has had the luxury of completely shutting out what he pejoratively brands the \u201cnational regime media\u201d or \u201cthe corporate media\u201d \u2014 though Rupert Murdoch\u2019s Fox Corporation does not, in his view, count as corporate media.<\/p>\n This strategy served Mr. DeSantis well in Florida. But avoiding sit-down interviews with skeptical journalists has left him out of practice as he prepares for the most intense scrutiny of his career.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Murdochs encapsulated him in a bubble and force-fed him to a conservative audience,\u201d said Steve Bannon, a former strategist for Mr. Trump. \u201cHe hasn\u2019t been scuffed up. He hasn\u2019t had these questions put in his grill.\u201d<\/p>\n Even in friendly settings, Mr. DeSantis has stumbled. In a February interview with The Times of London, a Murdoch property, Mr. DeSantis cut off questions after the reporter pushed him on how he thought President Biden should handle Ukraine differently.<\/p>\n The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was so irked by Mr. DeSantis\u2019s evasion that he sent a detailed questionnaire to potential Republican presidential candidates to force them to state their positions on the war, according to two people familiar with his decision.<\/p>\n In a written response, Mr. DeSantis characterized Russia\u2019s invasion as a \u201cterritorial dispute.\u201d Republican hawks and some of Mr. DeSantis\u2019s top donors were troubled. In public, the governor soon cleaned up his statement to say Russia had not had \u201ca right\u201d to invade. In private, Mr. DeSantis tried to calm supporters by noting that his statement had not taken a position against aid to Ukraine.<\/p>\n While Mr. DeSantis has stuck to his preferred way of doing things, Mr. Trump has given seats on his plane to reporters from outlets that have published harsh stories about him. And despite having spent years calling CNN \u201cfake news,\u201d Mr. Trump recently attended a CNN town hall.<\/p>\n DeSantis allies said the governor would begrudgingly bring in some of the \u201cnational regime media.\u201d Some early proof: The governor\u2019s tight-lipped team invited a Politico columnist to Tallahassee and supplied rare on-the-record access.<\/p>\n Not long after Mr. DeSantis had won in a landslide last fall, the incoming freshman Representative Cory Mills, a Florida Republican, called the governor\u2019s team to try to thank him for his support. Mr. Mills had campaigned on the eve of the election with Casey DeSantis and had appeared with the governor, too. \u201cI called to show my appreciation and never even got a call back,\u201d Mr. Mills said in an interview. \u201cTo be honest with you, I was a bit insulted by it.\u201d<\/p>\n The lack of relationships on Capitol Hill became a public headache in April when Mr. Trump rolled out what eventually became 10 Florida House Republican endorsements during Mr. DeSantis\u2019s trip to Washington.<\/p>\n Donors who contributed to Mr. DeSantis\u2019s previous campaigns tell stories of meetings in which the candidate looked as though he would rather be anywhere else. He fiddled with his phone, showed no interest in his hosts and escaped as quickly as possible. But people who have recently met with Mr. DeSantis say he has been far more engaged. At recent Wisconsin and New Hampshire events, the governor worked the room as he had rarely done before.<\/p>\n The governor and his team have had internal conversations acknowledging the need for him to engage in the basics of political courtship: small talk, handshaking, eye contact.<\/p>\n For his part, Mr. Trump recently relished hosting the Florida House Republicans who had endorsed him.<\/p>\n On one side of him was Mr. Mills. On the other was Mr. Donalds, who had introduced Mr. DeSantis on election night and who had been in Mr. DeSantis\u2019s orbit since helping with debate prep during Mr. DeSantis\u2019s 2018 run for governor.<\/p>\n Mr. Donalds declined an interview. But footage of those private debate-prep sessions, first reported by ABC News, show Mr. DeSantis trying to formulate an answer to a question that will define his imminent 2024 run: how to disagree with Mr. Trump without appearing disagreeable to Trump supporters.<\/p>\n \u201cI have to frame it in a way,\u201d Mr. DeSantis said then, \u201cthat\u2019s not going to piss off all his voters.\u201d<\/p>\n\u2018So God Made a Fighter\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018I\u2019ve Said Enough\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018I Was a Bit Insulted\u2019<\/h2>\n