Twitter @RonDeSantis/Handout via REUTERS

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced he is running for the Republican nomination in a bid to lead the "great American comeback."

Details: After months of speculation and suggestion, DeSantis is officially in the race. He filed the campaign paperwork Wednesday, and released his first campaign advertisement that night.

DeSantis joined Twitter owner Elon Musk and a handful of journalists in a Twitter Spaces audio channel to discuss his campaign, the current administration and the direction of the country. The discussion was delayed for around 20 minutes after the social media platform buckled under the weight of the roughly half-million users attempting to listen in.

DeSantis: DeSantis is currently serving his second term as governor of Florida. Previously, he represented Florida's 6th district in the House of Representatives from 2013 to 2018. During his tenure in Congress, he was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus and ally of President Donald Trump.

DeSantis rose to national prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic for his opposition to lockdowns and vaccine mandates. He has since championed a number of bills praised by social conservatives, such as restrictions on some discussions of race and sexuality in Florida public schools. DeSantis also banned critical race theory in Florida education with the Stop WOKE Act.

How the Media Covered It: Left-rated outlets focused less on DeSantis's message and more heavily on the technical difficulties faced during the Twitter Spaces announcement: Daily Beast (Left Bias) called it a 'launch fail' with the subhead "#DESASTER," CNN (Lean Left Bias) called it "embarrassing" and claimed DeSantis committed a "cardinal political sin."

Right-rated outlets focused more on DeSantis's odds matching up against former President Donald Trump. The National Review (Right Bias) Editorial Board determined DeSantis is "the candidate Donald Trump fears most." An analysis in the Washington Examiner (Lean Right Bias) stated a successful DeSantis campaign would need to "dethrone Trump as leader of the party without alienating the base."


More from AllSides


Snippets from the Center

Why GOP candidates are piling on DeSantis — not Trump
The Hill (analysis)

"Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who also entered the race this week, have often struggled to identify clear policy differences with Trump, instead relying more on arguments about a need for new leadership in the GOP or for more persuasive messaging to win over new voters."

Can Ron DeSantis take his Miami miracle national in 2024?
Reuters (analysis)

"Roberto Suro, an expert on Latino politics at the University of Southern California, said segments of the Latino electorate in recent years are beginning to behave more like their white counterparts, with working-class voters and evangelicals being drawn toward Republicans."

Snippets from the Left

The DeSantis Delusion
Frank Bruni (opinion)

"The campaigns of DeSantis and the other would-be Trump slayers rest on the usual mix of outsize vanity, uncommon ambition and stubborn hopefulness in politicians who reach for the upper rungs."

4 takeaways from Ron DeSantis’s 2024 launch
The Washington Post (analysis)

"There were no images of DeSantis speaking and looking presidential. It was basically like listening to talk radio, except the hosts weren’t experienced broadcasters who could keep the conversation moving and focused, and they spent an inordinate amount of time playing up how historic the format was, shifting attention from the candidate himself."

Snippets from the Right

The Promise of Ron DeSantis
National Review (analysis)

"The conventional wisdom, when it doesn’t say that Trump is simply inevitable, holds that it’s a two-man race. If that’s the way it has looked, primary campaigns often have unexpected twists and turns. How the candidates run will matter."

Why DeSantis is right to lean into the culture war
Washington Examiner (opinion)

"As DeSantis said on Wednesday, decline is a choice. That decline begins in the culture, where the public has grown apathetic toward its responsibility for self-government, and where rogue ideologues have taken advantage of this apathy to wage war on the institutions and values that made America great in the first place."


See more big stories from the past week.