Protege of the president, DeSantis looks to repay Trump in nation's biggest toss-up state

TALLAHASSEE — More than two years after a tweet endorsement from Donald Trump helped rocket barely known congressman Ron DeSantis to the Florida Governor’s Mansion, the president’s protégé is spending this election season eagerly trying to pay him back.

DeSantis, a three-term congressman now governor of the nation’s largest presidential battleground state, has echoed and amplified the White House at every step of the fight against the coronavirus.

Its management, along with the economy, is critical to how voters will decide between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, polls show.

But winning Florida is vital to a Trump re-election in almost every electoral map. White House pressure on DeSantis and Republican leaders is enormous — and building each day, said Florida Republican Party Chair Joe Gruters.

Florida enters Phase 3:DeSantis lifts coronavirus restrictions; restauranteurs cheer Phase 3

“Pressure? Oh, yeah,” said Gruters, also a Sarasota state senator. “Florida is the prize. It’s the largest swing state and everybody knows if we can’t win Florida, the election is lost.”

Public health experts and even some allies say Trump’s response to the pandemic has been all over the field —  before his own infection with COVID-19. But throughout every twist, the president has had in DeSantis a devoted follower who endorses every message.

How has presidential influence affected Florida's reaction to COVID-19?

The Florida governor’s mind meld with the president has seen him embrace  dubious views: Promoting treating patients with hydroxychloroquine, eliminating the need for testing of those exposed to the virus without symptoms and advancing the idea that enough Floridians have contracted coronavirus that “herd immunity” will slow the spread.

Meanwhile, the governor last month pushed Florida into an almost fully reopened economy, weeks after ordering in-person instruction to renew in schools – moves he took within hours of Trump publicly urging such action by governments.

DeSantis last month also outlined a law and order legislative proposal that fits with Trump’s re-election themes.

DeSantis has never supported a statewide mask requirement, and recently issued an executive order erasing any penalties enacted by local governments that ordered mask-wearing.

“It seems like Florida is the state version of the national response,” said Dr. Marissa Levine, a public health expert at the University of South Florida-Health and the former Virginia state health commissioner.

Trump impact:Trump’s positive coronavirus test already is shaking up the race in must-win Florida

“I never thought it had to be the economy versus public health. But that seems to be how both the DeSantis and Trump administrations have framed things,” she said.

DeSantis, though, sees the two clearly linked.

“We knew that we had to just keep society functioning … we kept gyms, restaurants, beaches, hotels, theme parks, youth activities, sports open and operating and I think that’s important to do,” DeSantis said during an August visit to Central Florida’s The Villages, accompanied by Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiologist with little public health background who has guided Trump toward the herd immunity approach.

DeSantis defends relationship with Trump

DeSantis returned Tuesday to The Villages to tout Florida as set to receive 400,000 15-minute, rapid virus tests per week from the federal government, which the state will share with nursing homes, senior communities and schools.

The Florida governor has defended his relationship with Trump, saying it’s helped the state gain millions of pieces of personal protective equipment, needed tests, and financial reimbursement for state and local governments.

“I really want to thank the Trump administration for working hard on this and getting this out,” DeSantis said.

Gruters, the Republican chair, said that DeSantis has helped Trump by affirming the GOP view that a reopened economy can co-exist with virus fighting.

“This is a brand election,” Gruters said. “Do people support our core principles of freedom and security, a strong economy? Or do you want more government control and less liberty with Biden?”

Florida rally:Trump Jr. bashes Biden campaign during rally in Panama City Beach

Both Trump and DeSantis have a lot riding on whether Florida voters buy the approach.

While the governor is a frequent Fox News guest and identified as a potential White House candidate in four years, a Biden victory and a loss of the president’s home state could damage DeSantis.

“He’d have a sitting president in Biden coming to this state campaigning against him,” said Rep. Evan Jenne, D-Dania Beach, the incoming co-leader of state House Democrats. “For the governor long-term, a Trump loss would throw a wrench into his plans.”

Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the state’s lone statewide elected Democrat and a potential DeSantis challenger in the 2022 governor’s race, said the state’s leader should have created some distance from Trump, especially with the president’s erratic approach to the coronavirus.

“This is going to haunt him,” Fried said. “People have lost trust in the governor.”

While DeSantis has backed the president’s every move in the pandemic, Fried said he has done little to help a struggling state economy marked by high unemployment and a tourist industry possibly facing a multi-year downturn.

“Time and again, we just see him following the marching orders of the president,” she said. “He has no plan. For Florida, it’s been the president’s plan, whatever that is.”

Many credit DeSantis for attempting to reduce coronavirus case counts by closing nursing homes to visitors for five months and demanding heightened testing of residents and staff.

Lockdown:'Praying that it will ease up': COVID-19 keeps group homes locked down since March

Still, about 40% of the state’s more than 15,000 deaths from COVID-19 have been among long-term care residents and staff. And there are signs that with one-in-five Floridians age 65 and older, this most vulnerable cohort for the virus is turning away from Trump, no matter what DeSantis does.

While exit polls in 2016 showed Trump with a 17% advantage over Hillary Clinton among Florida voters age 65 and older, a recent New York Times-Siena College poll had Biden leading among these seniors by 2%, giving him a 5% statewide edge.

What about concerns voiced by older voters?

Older voters’ concerns about the coronavirus may be causing them to abandon the president, analysts say.

“When you look at mobility data, using cell phones, the older segment of the population never again became as mobile as the younger population, even after the lockdowns ended in the spring,” said Levine of USF. “There’s a good chance they’re tired of dealing with how the government has responded.”

Sen. Gary Farmer, D-Lighthouse Point, who is in line to become Senate Democratic leader following the November election, put it starkly.

“Trump has shown a total disregard for the safety of that voting bloc,” Farmer said.

Florida has been averaging around 2,300 cases of coronavirus the past two weeks, pushing the state’s total to around 730,000 since the pandemic began.

The bond between Trump and DeSantis goes back to December 2017, when the president tweeted that the longshot candidate for the Florida Republican nomination would make a “GREAT Governor of Florida.”

DeSantis, a Palm Coast congressman, at the time was trailing well-financed Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam for the GOP nomination. A late June tweet from Trump amped that up, predicting he’d be “a Great Governor & has my full Endorsement.”

DeSantis won the nomination and later the governor’s office by less than 33,000 votes, a .7% margin.

Trump carried Florida on his way to the White House in 2016 by 112,911 votes, a 1.2% edge.

A USA-Today-Suffolk University survey this week showed Trump-Biden deadlocked in Florida. But the Real Clear Politics average of all polls show Biden with a narrow lead in the state, along with growing leads in other key swing states.

Florida voters in the USA Today poll gave DeSantis higher marks than many recent surveys, with 47% saying they had a favorable view of the governor, compared to 40% unfavorable. A Florida Atlantic University poll earlier this month had DeSantis at 43% approval – but down from 54% in March, when the state’s pandemic shutdown began.

“There weren’t a lot of great options politically for the governor. He couldn’t really stray from the president,” said Kevin Wagner, an FAU political scientist. “But dealing with COVID more effectively, in the end, probably would have been the best political move.”

Still, Wagner added that “you can win Florida by just appealing to your base voters – if you can get them to turn out in higher numbers.”

In the end, that appears to be the Trump strategy. And, like DeSantis, much of the Trump base, still looks loyal.

“I have great pause about his personal conduct,” said John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, a religious conservative advocacy organization.

“But ultimately, politics is about policy: Whether people are going to be employed or not, whether we can exercise our religious freedom…Our society is unraveling,” he added. “Trump has been our bodyguard against so many bad things that could happen. I’m enthusiastically advocating for him.”

Want more election news coverage? If you're already a subscriber, thank you! If not, please subscribe and help keep coverage of the most important breaking news coming.