Ron DeSantis is resetting his campaign again, but that doesn’t mean he’s breaking away from the classics.
During a live transmission of the Ruthless Podcast on Thursday, DeSantis returned to his contention that Florida is “the Iowa of the South.”
“I came here like six months ago, we did an event. I wasn’t running, but we did an event together and someone did a thing saying because they noticed, like, I’m talking about things Florida is doing and they noticed what Iowa is doing.They’re getting all these great successes. So they said Iowa may be the Florida of the North. And I’m like, well, then I started looking at what they’re doing and I’m like, you know, maybe Florida is the Iowa of the south.”
This has been one of the most durable DeSantis images in Iowa, though sometimes phrased as the “Iowa of the Southeast.” He used the phrasing multiple times in his May trip to the state. He has also called Florida the “Utah of the Southeast.”
The Governor and First Lady Casey DeSantis were full of praise for Iowa’s people Thursday.
“The people in Iowa are so nice. Normally, if I want to hang out with people from the Midwest, I just go to Fort Myers in January, the Midwest is down there. But to be able to go into all these different communities and a lot of these counties, very rural, the warmth with which the Iowans greet you. It really does, you know, give you, give you some optimism about Americans and kind of human nature and all this stuff,” Gov. DeSantis said.
The First Couple discussed being “gas station connoisseurs” also, and noted Iowa, like Florida, has facilities worth planning a trip around.
“Because when you travel around Florida, it’s a big state. You need to find one place where you can get gas when you’re campaigning, gas, food, all this stuff. And so we’re very picky about these service stations,” the Governor related, going on to extol two brands from outside the state.
“So we have a lot of Wawa in Florida, which is Philly-based. And then we now have two Buc-ee’s, which are Texas based,” DeSantis said. “You guys should try that.”
“Then we started coming to Iowa. We got the Casey’s and we’re very excited that it does what we need it. And so we’re big fans of Casey’s,” the Governor said.
“We are gas station connoisseurs,” the First Lady added. “I don’t know what that says about us.”
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