After a Stumble at the Start, a Candidate Tries to Hit the Reset Button

TAMPA, Fla. — The church gathering was a campaign event intended to boost the candidacy of Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican candidate for governor, but it wasn’t long before the television cameras turned to a rally outside on the street supporting DeSantis’ Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum.

At the end of the day Saturday, the protest had attracted more media coverage than DeSantis. It could have been a metaphor for his campaign’s entire first month.

In late August, DeSantis was riding a wave of momentum forged by a come-from-behind primary victory and the full-throated backing of President Donald Trump. Democrats had nominated Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, perhaps the most liberal candidate for governor in Florida history.

But on the first day of the general election, DeSantis said on Fox News that “the last thing we need to do is monkey this up” — seen by many as a racist reference to Gillum, who is black — and he has been struggling to recover since. The gaffe was, in the words of one of his own allies, the political equivalent of throwing an interception on the opening play of the game.

The 40-year-old former congressman has consistently trailed in public polls since, and has only now started to narrow the gap in a state where governor’s races, not to mention presidential contests, are typically decided by the smallest of margins.

A range of Republican officials, from the White House to the Florida state house, believe DeSantis has squandered valuable time, partly because his own self-inflicted errors were overshadowing Gillum’s vulnerabilities, which include an FBI investigation of government corruption in Tallahassee, an inquiry in which Gillum has said he is not a target.

With the election a little more than a month away, the DeSantis forces appear to be rebooting his campaign. Last week, they announced the appointment of new campaign manager, Susie Wiles, a veteran Republican operative who chaired Trump’s Florida team and was recruited by donors to beef up and bring order to DeSantis’ skeletal operation. And after leaving Florida briefly this week to raise money in Dallas and Houston, he is back on the trail, working to define Gillum — who supports single-payer health care and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — as too extreme for a state that sits squarely in the middle of the political spectrum.

“We’ve made some good additions, and I think we’re really moving in a good direction,” DeSantis said Wednesday in West Palm Beach, at an appearance at the Police Benevolent Association, where he received the group’s endorsement and expressed optimism about the future of his campaign. “We’re rocking and rolling right now. And I think we’ve got good momentum going to victory.” On Thursday, DeSantis appeared at an Italian center in Tampa, where two singers performed oldies songs and more than 100 people — including DeSantis’ first-grade teacher in nearby Dunedin — were treated to an Italian buffet of meatballs, heroes and an assortment of Italian cookies.

“I like him because he’s a veteran,” said one of the rallygoers, Bill De Clemente, 72, a veteran who lives in nearby Beacon Woods. “I like him because of what he’s done in the past. I like his morals and ethics.”

Addressing the crowd for more than 20 minutes, DeSantis attacked his opponent as corrupt. “I’m the only candidate who you can reliably say, ‘He’s not under FBI investigation,'” DeSantis said.

DeSantis and other Republicans believe that what matters most is his willingness to drive a consistent message against Gillum on ideological grounds, portraying him as far removed from the mainstream of Florida politics.

In brief remarks at the Police Benevolent Association headquarters Wednesday, he squeezed in repeated references to Gillum’s “radical proposals,” his “ideological radicalism” and his “George Soros left-wing agenda.”

Commercials produced by the Republican Governors Association as part of their multimillion-dollar barrage against Gillum carry the same warning.

But some of DeSantis’ supporters are going beyond just outlining policy differences.

In an apparent effort to sway the state’s Jewish voters, DeSantis has emphasized his pro-Israeli positions, including his support for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Simultaneously, mysterious text messages were sent last week that appeared to target South Florida residents with Jewish-sounding last names, and referred to comments made in college by Gillum’s running mate, Chris King, that were perceived as anti-Semitic.

Gillum called the text messages an act of desperation and said his “record on Israel is fully intact.”

He says regularly on the stump that workers left behind by the economic recovery favor his campaign platform of expanding Medicaid, reforming the criminal justice system and raising teacher salaries.

Still, as the race has tightened, Gillum’s campaign has begun to push back more forcefully on DeSantis’ jabs; this week, Latino Democrats jumped on the phone with reporters to object to Gillum’s portrayal as a “socialist.” This weekend, Gillum will campaign with two prominent Jewish politicians, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, at a South Florida retirement community.

DeSantis, who gave up his House seat in early September to focus on the election, won the nomination almost entirely because Trump blessed his candidacy, a reward for the fealty DeSantis showed as a frequent guest on Fox News. But he has not appeared with Trump since winning the nomination in August.

Senior Republican officials say that the relationship between the two is not strained. But Trump was angry in September when DeSantis’ campaign rebutted the president’s inaccurate claim that the death toll in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria had been inflated.

And a White House official said bluntly this week that Trump believes DeSantis and Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who is running for the Senate this year, both damaged their prospects by distancing themselves from the president amid the controversy.

Trump is not expected to appear with DeSantis until later this month, when early voting begins in Florida, according to a senior Republican official familiar with the plans. (The president will be in the state next week for an official event — he is addressing a convention of police chiefs — but DeSantis will not attend.) This period of separation is just fine to many establishment-aligned Republicans, who feel that reinforcing DeSantis’ ties to Trump is folly in a state with so many moderate voters.

But others in the party believe it’s crucial that their standard-bearer mobilize the Trump base. Perhaps no Republican is more eager to reconnect Trump and DeSantis than Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who, like DeSantis, is a cable news fixture and an outspoken ally of the president.

Gaetz has privately been making the case that DeSantis should bring on Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager-in-waiting, for the final stretch of the race, citing DeSantis’ need to field “the A team.'’

But his counsel to DeSantis concerns some Florida Republicans, who fault Gaetz for dissuading DeSantis from offering a mea culpa following his “monkey this up” gaffe — a sign of the unease that some more cautious elements of the party feel about running a Trump-style campaign.

As the campaign enters the final weeks, there remains disagreement among Florida Republicans as to whether DeSantis should focus on rousing Trump’s voters, and emulate the president’s tough talk on immigration, or instead seek to win over centrists here by talking about important local concerns like toxic algae blooms.

Not even those close to DeSantis deny that his campaign got off to a rocky start after the Aug. 28 primary. Gillum, in contrast, quickly built up a robust team that capitalized on national attention from the Tallahassee mayor’s surprise win.

Gillum is a charismatic speaker who has drawn large crowds even in Republican strongholds, such as Palm Coast, a manicured Atlantic coast community that DeSantis, until recently, represented in Congress and where he also owned a home. At a recent appearance there, where he drew a crowd of about 400, Gillum seemed to enjoy the fact that he was on his opponent’s turf. On Sunday in the small town of Palatka, the Putnam County Democratic chairman, Richard Segall, said he had to put out 100 extra chairs to accommodate the crowd that showed up for Gillum. And at a gala fundraiser in Miami-Dade County on Saturday, Gillum was met with a thunderous standing ovation after being introduced by Tom Steyer, the progressive California billionaire who has helped bankroll his candidacy.

“We’ve got our work cut out with Gillum, there’s no question about it,” said Bill Bunting, the Republican state committeeman in Pasco County, noting the uptick in African-American voters he saw casting ballots on the day of the primary. Still, Bunting said he strongly believes that DeSantis can pull out a win.

Following his speech in Tampa on Thursday, DeSantis, who has been criticized for his tepid interest in the grip-and-grin demands of personal politics, left the stage to shake hands with voters. He and his wife, a Jacksonville television host, hope to bring their two children — ages 22 months and 6 months — with them on the campaign trail this weekend.

“Here our mission, here today, for the next 30 some odd days, is to do everything we can to rally the troops, get our folks out, so we can protect Florida’s future for a generation,” DeSantis told the crowd.