Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis officially filed paperwork Wednesday to launch his 2024 presidential campaign, setting the Republican contender on a collision course with former President Donald Trump in the race for the GOP nomination.
The long-anticipated move marks the culmination of years of buzz around DeSantis, 44, whose resistance to Covid-era lockdown rules and willingness to engage in polarizing cultural fights have quickly made him a Republican darling. DeSantis is set to announce his run during a Twitter Spaces conversation with Elon Musk at 6 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
It also makes official DeSantis’ simmering rivalry with Trump, burying their once-close kinship as some in the GOP look to replace the former president as their party’s standard bearer.
Trump has already pummeled the governor with relentless attacks for months. Trump and his allies have assailed DeSantis’ record, his political abilities and even his personality, while amplifying negative news about the governor. One pro-Trump PAC even cut an ad depicting an anecdote about DeSantis eating pudding with his fingers, which the governor has denied.
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Trump’s aggression may have paid off. Polls of the potential primary field have showed DeSantis, once Trump’s close competitor, consistently losing ground for months, even as the governor toured key battlegrounds and racked up policy wins with his state’s GOP-held Legislature.
The move was hardly a surprise: DeSantis has been eyed as a 2024 presidential contender even before the end of the 2020 election cycle. While he has been mostly tight-lipped about his presidential ambitions, the governor in recent months has published a political memoir, hosted events for donors and conservative groups, embarked on a multi-state speaking tour and released campaign-style videos touting his achievements in Florida.
A Yale- and Harvard-educated lawyer, DeSantis was elected to the U.S. House in 2012…
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