Keller @ Large: DeSantis approval rating drops despite Trump indictments
BOSTON - "We think we're going to be able, you know, to win this thing," said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a recent rally, with little of his trademark bravado.
If DeSantis sounded a bit deflated, it's with good reason. A new CNN poll taken after the recent federal indictments of Donald Trump over his handling of classified documents shows some modest softening of Republican support for the former president. But is also showed him with a whopping 46-27% lead among Republicans over DeSantis, his closest competitor.
Back in March, after months of hype, DeSantis was pulling a healthy 36% support in the CNN poll of registered Republicans and GOP-leaning independents. Since then Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a civil trial and indicted by the feds. But while he's lost a bit off his GOP approval ratings, DeSantis' approval has dropped ten points to 26%, the same number he posted last month just before his official campaign rollout.
"He won independents overwhelmingly in Florida in his last election and we have every intention of winning them in the states where they're available like Massachusetts," said former Trump administration official Ken Cuccinelli, who heads up the pro-DeSantis Super PAC Never Back Down, during a WBZ interview. "There's an emotional separation with President Trump that voters are going through right now. You've heard of Trump derangement syndrome, we see it in the media, but there's also a great deal of Trump exhaustion syndrome."
No question, it's very early in the campaign. But there are some obvious weaknesses in the pro-DeSantis spin.
It will be tricky for DeSantis to sell his critiques of Trump given his past as a Trump wannabe. Expect to see more of his infamous 2018 gubernatorial campaign ad where he reads Trump's book "The Art of the Deal" to his infant son and tells him he "loves the part" where Trump tells "Apprentice" contestants "you're fired."
And to the extent that DeSantis's policies mirror those of the Trump presidency ("We will actually build a border wall," he says in his stump speech), his biggest early hurdle may be explaining to Trump loyalists why they should choose him when they could have the real thing.
Cuccinelli argues that the media is "putting its thumb on the scale" with all the Trump coverage, which he claims has partially drowned out DeSantis's message. But he also acknowledges the Trump saga is too compelling to ignore.
So for now, DeSantis and all the other candidates have to accept the early reality of this race - it's Trump's world, everyone else just lives in it.