Ron DeSantis is officially running for president, having filed his statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday.
The long-awaited move by the Florida governor follows a campaign announcement video released a day earlier by his wife, Casey, on Twitter. His filing was first reported by The Associated Press.
Mr DeSantis is expected to address voters in his first appearance as a candidate for president later on Wednesday evening in a Twitter space hosted by Elon Musk ally David Sacks. He will then appear on Fox News for an interview immediately afterwards with Bret Baier.
The rising Republican star is in his second term as governor of the trending-red Sunshine State, having won re-election by double digits just last year. He previously won election to office in 2018 by a fraction of a percentage point.
He enters the race with one key label tied to his campaign already: that of the second-place challenger, thanks to months of polling that have shown him firmly behind Mr Trump in a Republican primary matchup. That same polling has shown him consistently in the double digits, however, which is more than can be said for his other Republican rivals — Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson and others.
Mr DeSantis’s official launch also signals a likely shift in strategy. Whereas for months the governor has sought to avoid a direct confrontation with Mr Trump, that now is unavoidable, even without the near-constant barrage of attacks that his now-official rival has been lobbing his way.
That strategic shift has been hinted at for some time now, with a DeSantis-aligned PAC even swiping directly at the former president following his CNN town hall earlier this month.
It isn’t clear whether the Jacksonville native, 44, will be successful in his bid to oust Mr Trump as de facto leader of the GOP. But he heads into the 2024 race with all the structural advantages he could possibly hope for: a sympathetic if not outright supportive GOP establishment, a national voter base that has indicated time and time again it does not wish for Mr Trump (or, for that matter, Mr Biden) to run again, and a political pedigree that seems almost lab-generated for a presidential run.
He previously served in the House of Representatives as a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, and before that was a lawyer for the US military. During his service, Mr DeSantis was stationed at Guantanamo Bay before later being part of the 2007 Iraq troop surge which saw him playing legal adviser to a US commander in Fallujah.
As long as his resume extends, however, so too does his list of potential detrimental qualities. Numerous political experts have described the governor as off-putting and awkward in person, lacking the same charisma that his main rival for the GOP nomination. Many doubt that he will be successful in what appears to be a bid to establish himself as the GOP’s culture war champion, which some deride as an attempt to out-Trump the former president.
“I think we've learned over time that there is no substitute for Trump among the Trump base,” said Floridian conservative political operative Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project. “Why would you buy a diet Trump when you can have the full fat all the caffeine, all the sugar of original Trump?
Mr DeSantis continues to fall in polls of the 2024 Republican field amid the barrage of criticism coming from the Trump campaign; he previously led Mr Trump in one Wall Street Journal survey taken last December, only to see that lead reversed in the same poll this spring.
His announcement comes just two days after the official campaign launch of one of his GOP rivals, Mr Scott, who began his bid for the White House on Monday. The South Carolina senator is polling far behind Mr DeSantis but has the support of powerful Republicans on Capitol Hill, including his colleague Sen John Thune.
