Welcome to Trail Mix, a fun but nutritious snack for your election news diet. See something interesting on the trail? Email me at jake.lahut@thedailybeast.com.
This week, we pull back the curtain on Ron DeSantis’ practically non-existent Capitol Hill support and what it says about his broader struggles. Plus, a dispatch from the post-indictment Trump show in New Hampshire with some very strange ground rules.
Not Quite Ron Demand
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Before Ron DeSantis officially announced his 2024 run, one of the first members of Congress to endorse the Florida governor for president, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), predicted a deluge of support for the Florida governor from Capitol Hill—so much so that there would be “too many” of them for Donald Trump to attack.
Now, more than a month since DeSantis announced his candidacy on May 24, it’s safe to say the deluge never materialized—in fact, there hasn’t even been a drop.
The last congressional endorsement DeSantis received was on May 9, when Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) became the fifth GOP lawmaker to officially back the Florida governor.
Currently, DeSantis has Reps. Massie, Good, Chip Roy (R-TX), Laurel Lee (R-FL), and Rich McCormick (R-GA) in his corner.
Trump, meanwhile, has endorsements from 62 House Republicans in his back pocket. That group includes many members of the Florida delegation, some of whom joined the Trump train together in April, in a body blow to DeSantis.
For a candidate who seemed to encapsulate GOP officials’ hopes to move on from Trump—and who served in Congress himself—DeSantis' disappointing showing might be shocking, but not surprising.
In the lead-up to the governor’s announcement, stories circulated not just of his interpersonal awkwardness but his operation’s apparent lack of interest in cultivating influential GOP supporters.
Still, DeSantis supporters insisted more would come out of the woodwork after he launched his campaign. A closed-door Capitol Hill event in April for GOP lawmakers to meet with the governor seemed to nod to the likelihood.
Roy, who has served as a de facto chief surrogate for DeSantis, even told CNN that the governor “has a whole lot of support from a whole lot of people who have said they support the president publicly.”
When asked if there are any other endorsements in the works or to be expected beyond the DeSantis Five in the House, the DeSantis campaign did not return a request for comment.
But the governor’s rocky campaign launch and slow start in the polls, Republicans say, seems to be keeping those would-be DeSantis supporters in the shadows.
“DeSantis’ sell is, ‘Why don’t you go invest in Lehman Brothers?’” a plugged-in GOP strategist with experience on Capitol Hill told The Daily Beast. “Only problem is, it doesn’t exist anymore. His stock has crashed. And he really is a Lehman Brothers stock broker right now, going around trying to convince people there will be a comeback when it’s already over.”
Another problem not limited to DeSantis’ endorsement quest, according to the GOP strategist and other early primary state Republicans familiar with the discussions, is that DeSantis rarely, if ever, personally calls the principals himself to ask for an endorsement.
“There’s really no game that DeSantis has, and members have said this: When you’re having staffers reach out to members of Congress—who have bloated egos as it is—they don’t want to have a staffer tell you, ‘Oh we really need your endorsement,’” the strategist said. “No. They wanna hear it from the fucking candidate.”
As The Daily Beast previously reported, the governor’s aversion to glad-handing and setting aside the time to cultivate relationships with fellow lawmakers—including the original members of the House Freedom Caucus he served with for three terms—is not just a trivial media obsession, but a continued and very real impediment to his presidential ambitions.
In the early primary states, where endorsements from state lawmakers, mayors, and civic leaders are highly sought after—if something of a chore to land—DeSantis isn’t faring too much better.
One well-connected New Hampshire Republican told The Daily Beast around a month ago that the polls were selling DeSantis short and, like Massie, predicted a wave of local endorsements was on the way.
Since then, DeSantis slipped 10 points in the polls in New Hampshire, while the twice-indicted Trump has gained ground, continuing to lead the Florida governor when it comes to in-state support.
Still, the DeSantis camp may be trying to right the ship. In New Hampshire, Ruth Ward was one of only two of the 14 Republican state senators in attendance Tuesday morning at Trump’s Lilac Luncheon address to the state’s highly influential Federation of Republican Women.
Ward, a GOP stalwart who tends to keep her cards close to the vest and is unlikely to endorse a candidate anytime soon, said she’s already reaching her limit with the endorsement outreach. When asked if DeSantis or anyone else has stood out to her, she said she’s heard from several different campaign representatives, but not the Florida man himself.
“Every day. They have someone calling me just about every day,” Ward told The Daily Beast, later quipping that there’s nothing new the revolving door of DeSantis pitchmen can say that she hasn’t already heard elsewhere.
The issue for DeSantis isn’t as simple as his poor trend line in the polls or the lingering strength of the MAGA base. His broader woes can be distilled into his difficulties winning over two buckets of lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
There are hardcore Trumpers, such as Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who “was never on the board” for the DeSantis campaign in the first place, the strategist said. Then there’s everyone else, a group of perhaps 140 members who are open to a Trump alternative, but petrified of what endorsing one could mean for their re-election prospects back home.
Having dealt with Trump’s base in their home districts for years, many of these members have long feared or already experienced a MAGA primary challenger. Given that fear, if these members feel like DeSantis doesn’t have their backs politically and isn’t working to win them over, they have to ask themselves a simple question, said the first GOP strategist:
“Why the fuck would you do it?”
A supervised visit with Donald J. Trump
Normally, when reporters roll up to a Trump rally or other event for the former president, there are a few common refrains about his team’s setup.
Are the outlets for press computers, for example, left exposed in the rain on a table soaked in water? Is the WiFi password a clever troll? Did Team Trump forget to set up a VIP line for the local GOP bigwigs, again?
But this time, on a sticky Tuesday morning in Concord, New Hampshire, the relatively trimmed-down press corps could only talk about one thing at the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women luncheon.
“Do we need a fucking babysitter?” one reporter from a national outlet muttered under their breath.
The grumbling was prompted when a staffer said that no reporters were allowed to interview any members of the GOP women’s group—nor were they allowed to roam freely outside the tight confines of the press pen.
Ahead of Trump’s remarks, Trail Mix overheard a conversation between the Trump campaign and a representative for the women’s group reminding front-desk staff that members of the media would only be allowed inside the press pen during the luncheon.
What’s more, the Trump staffer said, “we really don’t want them just walking up to anyone” asking questions—say, for example, about the group denouncing DeSantis for holding a campaign event elsewhere around the same time, despite their requests for him to move it.
“They’re here to see the president, not you guys,” one of the bathroom escorts yelled at the reporters after repeating the ground rules for a third time.
Instead, reporters were asked by Trump campaign aides and the event hosts to request “an escort” if they wished to use the bathroom, with yet another reminder that interviewing anyone in the corridor between the ballroom and the restrooms was a no-no.
“We don’t want to have to tackle people,” one of the aides remarked when confronted by yet another befuddled reporter about the policy.
Another aide tasked with escorting members of the press to and from the bathrooms, however, confessed they had never in their career been asked to carry out such an assignment.
“Does someone need to follow us into the bathroom?” another national political reporter deadpanned.
Polling Station
Despite a strong performance from Pennsylvania's newly elected governor, Josh Shapiro, Democrats are still facing a slog ahead of 2024 in what is perhaps the country’s most important swing state.
A new Quinnipiac University poll from Pennsylvania shows a surprising degree of variance between the three major Democratic officeholders. Shapiro is enjoying a healthy 57 percent approval rating, while freshman Sen. John Fetterman’s numbers have taken a dip since his return to office following a voluntary hospitalization for clinical depression.
While Fetterman’s disclosure was a watershed moment for mental health and transparency, he’s clearly paid a price with voters, standing at just a 39 percent job approval rating, with 50 percent of respondents disapproving.
Sen. Bob Casey, who is up for re-election in 2024, is sitting with a 44 percent job approval rating and a 32 percent disapproval rating, an encouraging sign for Democrats’ prospects to hold this critical seat.
The same poll also shows Pennsylvania trending back towards being a toss-up in 2024, with President Joe Biden at 46 percent and former President Trump at 47 percent, well within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 points.
Campaign lit
My old Kentucky donors. It’s gone from bad to worse for Kentucky GOP governor hopeful Daniel Cameron: The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger had another scoop on his campaign finance woes.
The Diplomat. GOP megadonor Jeffrey Ross Gunter is looking toward his next gig after a tumultuous tenure as Trump’s ambassador to Iceland, and Deputy Politics Editor Sam Brodey scooped it might be a run for U.S. Senate in Nevada.
Get to the chopper. A DeSantis photo junket at the U.S.-Mexico border in front of a helicopter could prove costly, another Sollenberger special.
Desperado or bravado, sitting in Trump Force One. Semafor’s Shelby Talcott and ABC’s Rachel Scott asked Trump what exactly he meant in that classified documents tape obtained by CNN.
Don’t take it for granted. Politico’s Lisa Kashinsky and Meredith McGraw offered a foreboding breakdown ahead of DeSantis’ brief swing through New Hampshire this week.
