DeSantis’s Silent Treatment

**Marianna Sotomayor** (0:01)
Politics is incredibly personal for the DeSantis's, and once they cut you out of their orbit, you are kind of done.

**Peter Hamby** (0:11)
Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby.
It's Tuesday, August 18th. Today, I'm joined by Marianna Sotomayor, coming to us from her home state of Florida to break down today's primaries in the state. There's the race to replace Governor Ron DeSantis, who remains popular in Florida, but doesn't have many political allies left in a state where his former presidential rival Donald Trump remains the Republican top dog. There's also a slew of fascinating primaries, Democrat and Republican for Senate and House, with some big names you'll recognize from cable news. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.
Happy Tuesday everybody and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined today by my colleague Marianna Sotomayor. Because if it's Tuesday in the summertime in an even year, it's probably a primary day and it is today in Florida. Marianna is joining us from the banks of the beautiful Gulf of America in Clearwater. Just kidding. But Florida is where we've got a ton of races going down today. There's some Democrat on Democrat action and House and Senate primaries. We've got a governor's race. And a big question swirling around that governor's race is what is Governor Ron DeSantis doing? He's not running for reelection, but he's got his choice in the race. There's a MAGA guy who's running. DeSantis, though, Marianna reports, has been kind of in the background since running for president. It doesn't mean he's kind of messed up in any way, Marianna, but you just don't hear a lot about Ron DeSantis these days. And I'm curious how much of that is intentional, how much of that is just the national press doesn't care, but he is actually doing stuff in Florida. But from everyone I've talked to in Republican politics down there, he does sort of seem like a non-entity in this governor's race, a race to replace him in Tallahassee, Tallahassee, I should say.

**Marianna Sotomayor** (2:28)
Exactly, Tallahassee. Welcome to Florida, my home state. Every election is now pretty predictable in comparison to past ones. It's become so conservative, especially under DeSantis. We all remember, he is an incredibly vocal figure. He was just this anti-woke crusader, always wanted to, in some former fashion, become president of the United States. I think those ambitions are still there. So it is, I think, for a more national audience, more perplexing as to why he has been so quiet as of late. Frankly, in the state, he's still going around holding events. He is still berating the press down here. He's also incredibly active, still on X, going after Democrats every moment he can, but also some Republicans. But that's about it. And he is incredibly popular down here. His polling is above Trump's. He's about at 50% statewide, which is why you see a number of Republican candidates still saying, you know, if you elect me to be governor or senator or reelect me back to state office, I'm going to still continue to push all these conservative policies that DeSantis has done to make Florida what it is. So what I've been told is that he must be reveling in that. The reason why he is withholding his endorsements largely comes from the fact, at least this is what I've talked to a number of his former staffers in the state, state lawmakers, Hill lawmakers, and also former 2024 campaign staffers, is because he's not good at maintaining relationships. He's actually burned numbers, numbers of bridges across both the state and nationally. And it's worth pointing out that Casey DeSantis also thought about running for governor. There was a moment where there were those rumors swirling.
So that's one reason why he may not have gone all in for anyone early on. That of course didn't pan out. There was a charity that she had that is involved. There are there's allegations of money laundering, potential fraud there. They've distanced themselves from that, but it just didn't seem like it was gonna work out. And frankly, what I heard is donors also weren't really liking the appearance of a potential heir apparent to the governor's mansion. So that's one part.
The other part is that there are a number of people that DeSantis was close to.
He runs for president in 2024 and he expected everybody, all of his friends, allies, if you were a Florida Republican to back him for president. Of course, there was another Floridian in that race, Donald Trump, and scores of people that DeSantis thought would endorse him ended up obviously going for Trump. And Byron Donalds is one of those lawmakers who DeSantis was incredibly close to, like truly good friends. And since-