Florida’s Governor is telling New Hampshire Republicans that Donald Trump added difficulty to his congressional outreach while in Congress.
Ron DeSantis told a crowd in Laconia, New Hampshire, that once Trump took office, once-sedate events in his gerrymandered congressional district became more dramatic.
“I had places like St. Augustine, Daytona Beach in my district which, you know, is a relatively Republican district, I won it by 15, 20, 25 points, something like that, each time I ran. So it wasn’t like this is a liberal district and I would do town halls and it basically was like a conservative pep rally, right?”
DeSantis had come to rely on “red meat” questions, but when Trump was elected, the “district that was not liberal at all” drew different people to events.
“All of a sudden these people come out of the woodwork, like fire out of their eyes. They were so upset and they’re screaming, just yelling this or that. And you could tell he energized something in that electorate where probably a lot of those people didn’t even vote in the presidential,” DeSantis said.
Ironically, DeSantis’ district map changed in 2016, with redistricting moving his seat farther south, forcing him to move from Ponte Vedra for his final two years in Congress after he abandoned his run for Senate. He briefly rented a home from donors Kent Stermon and Matt Connell to facilitate that relocation.
DeSantis noted, as he has before, that Trump was a drag on his electoral performance in the 2018 election for Governor, a remarkable position to take given that he courted the then-President’s endorsement and had him host numerous rallies on his behalf ahead of elections against Adam Putnam and Andrew Gillum.
He said people said they “just voted against him because Trump was supporting him,” and added that his margin in the 2022 election further showed that Trump was a “deal breaker” for “some voters.”
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