A single, shadowy titan of Republican politics delivered Florida to Donald Trump on a silver platter in 2016, got Ron DeSantis elected governor in 2018, and then kneecapped his presidential rise in 2023, Politico reported in a new profile. Susie Wiles, the kingmaker of the state’s GOP for decades, rescued DeSantis’ gubernatorial campaign from failure in late 2018, winning over key moderate and independent votes. But DeSantis made the poor choice of pushing Wiles and her team aside after his victory, afraid she had self-serving motives and was an untrustworthy leaker. The decision was costly. Wiles, who describes herself on LinkedIn as an expert in “creating order from chaos,” was hired by the Trump PAC and immediately began using her media savvy to shift the narrative around DeSantis. According to Politico, Wiles was responsible for the negative stories about the governor’s “pudding fingers” (a Daily Beast exclusive), his private flights, and his wife’s ambitions.
