Former Florida GOP Chairman Gruters ‘expected the downfall’ of DeSantis 2024 campaign: report
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (FLV) – Former Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida and state Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, said he has maintained doubt of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2024 ambitions, speaking to the Washington Post.
Gruters endorsed former President Donald Trump for 2024 in April, around a month before DeSantis launched his own campaign.
The state senator repeated a sentiment among sectors of opposition to DeSantis’ campaign that the more people get to know DeSantis, the less they like him.
“The more he is met by people, the more they are not going to like him,” Gruters told the Post. “The more he’s out there, the more his numbers go down.”
“It’s not a good long-term scenario for him,” he continued. “I fully expected the downfall of his campaign a long time ago.”
Gruters repeated a sentiment expressed in June, when DeSantis’ budget vetoes were announced, that such vetoes might have been used as leverage in garnering presidential endorsements.
“It wasn’t a tit-for-tat, but in conversations about endorsements, they were mentioning projects that people wanted in the budget,” Gruters told the Post. “There’s no question there is a general fear of projects being vetoed.”
In June, Gruters told Florida’s Voice that the governor is “clearly upset” at the state senator’s Trump endorsement and “took it out on the people of Sarasota County,” referencing some of DeSantis’ project vetoes.
The governor’s office responded, telling Florida’s Voice that Gruters’ assertion is “absurd.”
“Senator Gruters turning conservative governance and fiscal responsibility into a political statement is absurd,” Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for DeSantis, said. “Governor DeSantis approved more than $125 million for Sarasota County, including $25 million for New College of Florida.”
Doubts of DeSantis’ campaign from critics have come as his national polling average, as aggregated by RealClearPolitics, has gone down by around seven points since May 25, the launch of his campaign.
Despite those doubts, primary season is only recently heating up, with the Iowa caucus, when voters will first appear at the polls to make their voices heard in the 2024 presidential primaries, taking place in January 2024.
DeSantis recently continued a bus tour across Iowa as he aims to visit all of the state’s 99 counties, garnering praise from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.
