Published on August 21, 2023 at 8:22 pm
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It was a good run while it lasted (depending on your perspective) but it feels like we’ve seen Peak DeSantis here in Jacksonville.
The issue locally looks like it does nationally: After years of self-serving and transactional relationships, he’s burned more people than he’s kept loyal.
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The most vivid depiction of that is in the Donald Trump campaign itself. Katie Wiles, who handled comms for the former Jacksonville mayor’s last months in City Hall, snapped this telling picture of her mother, Susie Wiles, and Curry’s former Chief Administrative Officer Brian Hughes, ready to fly to Iowa:
Both now work for Donald Trump: Wiles has a senior role on the national campaign, and Hughes is running the Florida operation.
Those with historical memories will recall that Susie Wiles saved Ron DeSantis’ faltering campaign for governor in 2018, and Hughes worked on DeSantis’ campaign for Congress in 2012 — a key reason that he won the primary and went on to political prominence that wasn’t necessarily guaranteed.
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Not that DeSantis gives any thanks to Wiles and Hughes. Neither earned a mention in his best-selling The Courage to Be Free. But that’s par for the course for a governor who historically has shed consultants with all the sentimentality of a pop star doing costume changes between songs.
What about Lenny Curry? He’s with Ballard Partners, which of course is no longer lobbying for the city of Jacksonville. And he’s officially neutral in the presidential race.
If I had to guess who he’s siding with, though, I would guess Curry prefers Trump to DeSantis. Curry, recall, endorsed DeSantis in 2018 as a “brother from another mother,” a phrase that suggested a close cooperation and a political symbiosis. It didn’t quite work out that way.
Sure, Jacksonville derived some benefit ($75 million for the UF campus coming somewhere Downtown, a priority of mega-donor and powerbroker Mori Hosseini). But there were frustrations from the St. James Building toward the plaza level of the state Capitol. And there were quite a few press conferences DeSantis held in Jax where the former mayor was nowhere to be found.
And the coup de grace, arguably, was DeSantis’ administration working against the bid of Jacksonville Republican Rep. Jessica Baker to be House speaker in favor of Jennifer Canady in 2028. That move, orchestrated by DeSantis campaign manager James Uthmeier while he served as chief of staff, was yet another Duval diss from the governor.
DeSantis probably peaked in 2022. The laugher re-election win over Charlie Crist, the compromise candidate who couldn’t get Democrats to the polls, saw him carry Duval.
That was a better performance than he had against Democrat Andrew Gillum in 2018, of course, when the former chair of the Duval County Republicans blamed DeSantis for “poor messaging…lack of organization…little coordination with county party…activities to bypass county party” and so on.
Last year saw DeSantis help elect April Carney to the Duval County School Board and Kiyan Michael, through two primary challengers, to the state House.
Much better than this year, which saw his endorsed candidates Daniel Davis and Jason Fischer lose to Democrats who had a fraction of the GOP money. DeSantis didn’t even do a robocall for his candidates, which didn’t help. Maybe he didn’t care about the endorsements, sure. But in that case, why make them at all? Would a Monday rally in Jacksonville ahead of Election Day in May have mattered? Donna Deegan and Joyce Morgan didn’t win by much, so it’s conceivable DeSantis could have made the difference.
Running for president obviously takes priority for this governor, and that’s his prerogative. Historical moments are fleeting, and sacrifices of short-term goods are made for long-term opportunities, even if those opportunities have been squandered with a series of strategic blunders ranging from publishing strategy memos ahead of Wednesday’s GOP debate to calling Trump supporters “listless vessels” who take their marching orders from Truth Social.
In any case, what’s clear is that Ron DeSantis has taken his eye off Jacksonville — like the rest of the state — and put it on the White House.
