Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks to the media in the spin room after the fifth Republican presidential primary debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 10.CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA/Getty Images
For months he was a sparkler, a presidential candidate who seemed to light up the Republican political skies, a big-state governor who, like the patriotic fireworks of that name, seemed to have brilliance, strength and remarkable staying power.
But both the problem and potential of Ron DeSantis, who on Sunday withdrew from the race, was that he also resembled the Sparkler, the name that scientists using findings from the James Webb Space Telescope 11 months ago gave to a newly discovered galaxy that looked eerily like a young version of the Milky Way Galaxy.
It turns out that the sparkle fizzled from the Florida Governor precisely because he looks like a young version of the most prominent star in America’s own Republican political galaxy, former president Donald Trump, whom he endorsed in his withdrawal remarks.
And so while Mr. Trump and his pre-eminent challenger, former governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina, were barnstorming New Hampshire in advance of Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary, Mr. DeSantis was hardly visible, a faraway flickering figure who had lost nearly all of his star power.
How Mr. DeSantis fell to Earth is one of the most dramatic political stories of the new century.
“God bless Ron, but he’s done,” New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who has endorsed Ms. Haley, said in an interview Friday night. “He’s out of staff, he’s out of money, there’s no ‘there’ there.”
Suddenly the campaign of Mr. DeSantis resembled nothing so much as a black hole, which NASA describes as “a gravitational field so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.” He’s been absent as his rivals campaign here in the venue of the first presidential primary as he took his campaign out of sight of Granite State voters, primarily to campaign in South Carolina. His hope, now abandoned along with the rest of the effort: embarrass Ms. Haley in her home state and then replace her as the principal alternative to Mr. Trump.
The strategy, which lasted but 48 hours, came less from Star Wars than from the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur’s daring 1950 gamble to take his understrength forces and mount a surprise offensive behind enemy lines. Gen. MacArthur’s gambit reshaped the conflict on the Korean Peninsula – but it did not lead to a clear victory for a military operation that eventually included 30,000 Canadians, more than 500 of whom perished.
Mr. DeSantis’s prime disadvantage in New Hampshire was that he offered a Laura Secord-style assortment of policies and rhetorical bombast that was nearly indistinguishable from that of Mr. Trump. Voters’ reaction here: He’s a shiny new, sparkly figure, worth a look to be sure, but without the personality, the magnetic appeal, the entertainment value of the original item.
“Why go for Diet Trump when you go for Full Strength Trump?” said Andrew Smith, the University of New Hampshire political scientist who heads the UNH Survey Center. Its latest poll, released Sunday, shows that Mr. DeSantis, who exactly a year ago led Mr. Trump by 43 percentage points to 39, now has sunk to a mere 6 per cent.
“DeSantis tried to be Trump without the Trumpiness,” Mr. Smith said, “but the Trumpiness is the fun thing that the Trump people love.”
At a packed rally in a Manchester hockey arena Saturday night, Mr. Trump had his own brand of fun deriding Mr. DeSantis, saying, “I think he’s gone.”
For months of hard campaigning, Mr. DeSantis did his best, working hard at spiffing up his image; in that regard, think of him as Pierre Poilievre of the Florida peninsula. But by the time he displayed a more approachable, less forbidding style, Ms. Haley, with a more pleasing mien and more moderate political profile, catapulted ahead of him.
The irony is that Mr. Trump, who claims success for Mr. DeSantis’ election as governor, predicted as much seven months ago when he said, “Soon I don’t think he’ll be in second place. So I’ll be attacking someone else.” All week, the former president trained his attacks on Ms. Haley, describing her as a “globalist” and the favourite candidate of Democrats.
Last week The Wall Street Journal called on Mr. DeSantis to “leave the race and give Ms. Haley a chance to take on Mr. Trump one on one.”
Mr. DeSantis’s errors were manifold. His emphasis on abortion – and his approval of Florida’s six-week abortion ban – fell flat among Republicans who saw that abortion politics had been poison for them in the 2022 midterm congressional elections; that’s why both Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley decided to soft-pedal the issue, especially here in a state friendly to abortion rights. He ardently identified with evangelicals in Iowa without recognizing that New Hampshire was the most secular state in the nation and that voters here pay no heed to preachers.
And while Mr. Trump, who has been the largest presence in American media for nine years, has defied the old chestnut that familiarity breeds contempt, Mr. DeSantis discovered in New Hampshire that absence breeds derision. Referring to his second failure to show up at an event at the local Red Fox Bar and Grille, the boldface lead headline in Thursday’s Conway Daily Sun was: “DeSantis no-show in Jackson, again.”
In New Hampshire as in the broader nomination battle, Mr. DeSantis began hearing a constant loop of the soundtrack from the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit, for he has a “long way to go and a short time to get there.”
Increasingly, it appeared that for Mr. DeSantis, the long way to go may be four years away. Indeed, he began talking about voters telling him they wanted to vote for Mr. Trump this time – but for him in 2028.
For Mr. DeSantis, a onetime outfielder who once was the Yale baseball captain, the message of his 2024 campaign in New Hampshire matched the credo of the Boston Red Sox, beloved throughout the Granite State and whose fans waited helplessly and despondently for 86 years for a World Series championship. The message? Wait ‘til next year.