Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will make a brief return to his day job on Tuesday with the delivery of his annual State of the State speech, less than a week before Iowa caucusgoers have their say on his political future.
If DeSantis gets his way, his trip to the Sunshine State will be short, and next week, Hawkeye State Republicans will deliver the momentum he needs to remain on the road as a presidential candidate for the foreseeable future. Dozens of Republican lawmakers, his lieutenant governor and education commissioner, and the state’s attorney general are planning to follow him to Iowa this weekend, where they will campaign on his behalf and help share stories of his political victories in Florida on caucus night, CNN has learned.
But here in the Florida capital city that helped launch DeSantis’ presidential ambitions, optimism about his odds of winning the nomination are waning and expectations are settling in that the governor may return sooner rather than later.
“Everybody in Tallahassee thinks that Iowa will put the knife in him and New Hampshire will twist the knife,” one longtime Republican operative and lobbyist in Tallahassee said.
The prevailing sentiment here is a stark reversal from a year ago, when DeSantis was the toast of the town coming off a dominating performance in his November 2022 reelection and stood at the zenith of his political power. Then, his State of the State speech kicked off the unofficial countdown to his highly anticipated presidential campaign launch, and his fingerprints were all over the ensuing legislative session, when Republican lawmakers muscled through a contentious agenda engineered to appeal to the conservative voters who would help pick the next GOP nominee. That session produced new laws making it easier to carry a gun in public and harder to get an abortion and targeting drag shows, teachers unions and transgender…
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