Former senior Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said in a recent interview that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate — is doing a “remarkable” job leading the Sunshine State.
Speaking with former White House senior adviser David Axelrod on CNN’s “The Ax Files,” Conway noted the tenure of one of the most talked-about potential Republican candidates as former President Donald Trump continues to lay the groundwork for a potential run of his own.
“Governor DeSantis has done a remarkable job as governor of Florida,” she said, adding that the former congressman is “on the verge of a monster re-election.”
In 2018, DeSantis narrowly defeated his Democratic challenger, then-Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, by 0.4 percentage points, or just over 32,000 votes out of more than 8.2 million ballots cast.
However, the incumbent is favored to win re-election to a second term this fall, according to Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, which currently classifies the race as “likely Republican.”
Many political observers predict DeSantis will use a comfortable re-election victory to launch a 2024 presidential campaign.
Conway, whose ties to Trump run deep, told Axelrod that DeSantis “was really smart to focus on his own re-election” and “not get too involved with too many other races.”
However, the veteran pollster also noted that the GOP frontrunners for previous presidential races have also wavered, creating a vacuum for emerging candidates who may not have been part of the early political conversation.
“I love donors. They are so successful in life. They are wonderful men and women in the Republican Party. They are often wrong about who the next president is,” she told Axelrod.
“They chose Scott Walker, Chris Christie, anyone named Bush, Tim Polenti at the time. All people, by the way, I like and respect,” she said of the former governors of Wisconsin, New Jersey and Minnesota, respectively.
“At least two of them are close personal friends that I talk to regularly. But ordinary people will be the most important,” she added.
Conway paid zero attention to the question of the governor’s comfort level with grassroots supporters, an element that is part of Trump’s entire political brand, as he has continued to host “Save America” rallies across the country since leaving the White House last year.
“One big test for Governor DeSantis is, ‘Does he enjoy stirring things up for people as much as he enjoys attending these press conferences?'” she said. “But he’s done a great job and proven that he can fight the media, which is important for any Republican presidential candidate.”
“And he’s also proven that he can run a state with a huge budget surplus without raising taxes, which is important to a lot of people,” she added.
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