Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said signing a law restricting abortion in his state had cost him donors and support, defending the decision as he sought to burnish his credentials with evangelical voters in Iowa.
“I lost a lot of really big supporters — some of them just aren’t pro- life, some of them think it’s a political liability,” DeSantis told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who moderated the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines. “At the end of the day, you get into office, to be able to do what’s right, and you’ve got to stand on principle.”
The summit drew a slew of Republican 2024 hopefuls, but one candidate cast a shadow from afar: former President Donald Trump who skipped the event and earlier in the week publicly attacked Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, the state’s Republican governor, for saying she would remain neutral in the GOP primary race despite his having endorsed her in the past.
Reynolds has appeared at public events with DeSantis, Trump’s strongest challenger, but who lags the former president in polls by a wide margin.
DeSantis was the final candidate to take the stage with Carlson and he was showered with a standing ovation. Within moments of speaking, DeSantis name-checked Reynolds, throwing an implicit jab at Trump, while responding to a question from Carlson on abortion restrictions.
The Iowa governor earlier at the summit signed a six-week abortion ban, making Iowa alongside Florida one of the states with the most restrictive bans on the books.
“Well, I’m very proud to say Kim Reynolds is here and she signed a great heartbeat bill today,” DeSantis said, smiling and pointing in Reynolds’ direction. “We were able to do that in Florida. We had a lot of opposition to that.”
The Florida governor entered the GOP race in May, branded as a viable alternative to Trump among Republicans eager for a new standard-bearer, but he has struggled to gain traction in the race. Polls show him a distant second to Trump, with the RealClearPolitics average of polls having Trump with 53% support to DeSantis at 20.6%.
On Friday, DeSantis’s campaign said that two key advisers — Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain — left this week to help an outside group backing his presidential effort. Abrams was a communications adviser and Obenshain led external affairs. His campaign didn’t comment on who would fill those roles. Politico earlier reported the campaign changes.
DeSantis and other Republican contenders aim to peel away evangelical support in Iowa and separate themselves from the crowded GOP field.
Evangelicals delivered Trump the White House in 2016, but rivals are hoping to exploit friction after the former president blamed the party’s messaging after the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back federal abortion rights last year for Republicans’ underwhelming 2022 midterm election showing.
Trump sought to shore up ties at an evangelical event last month, touting his appointment of the three conservative Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and reassuring evangelical voters that there is “a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life.”
(Nancy Cook and Gregory Korte contributed to this report.)
