ORLANDO, Fla. — Sitting cross-legged on a couch in the Governor’s Mansion wearing a soft lilac sweater and blue jeans, Casey DeSantis stared directly into the camera to talk about how her husband, Gov. Ron DeSantis, helped her get through her treatment for breast cancer.
“I was facing the battle for my life. He was the dad who took care of my children when I couldn’t. He was there to pick me off of the ground when I literally could not stand. He was there to fight for me when I didn’t have the strength to fight for myself,” she said.
While it was meant to show voters the human, caring side of Ron DeSantis the candidate, husband and father, it said even more about Casey DeSantis as both a political and life partner of the governor.
“The most powerful thing she’s done is the video she cut about the governor’s role during her battle with cancer,” said Nick Iarossi, a legislative lobbyist, campaign adviser and part of the small group of confidantes to the couple.
Pundits have been calling Casey DeSantis her husband’s secret weapon at least since he first ran for governor in 2018 as a little-known congressman who toppled the heir apparent in the Republican primary and went on to narrowly beat former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum.
Together, they are a picture-perfect couple with three rambunctious and photogenic kids. They are constantly in the public eye, whether at news conferences, campaign events or high school football games.
He decisively won a second term as governor of Florida, the third-largest state in the nation, and is mentioned as a contender in the 2024 Republican presidential sweepstakes. That makes it all the more important to know who Casey DeSantis is, as she could become the next first lady of the United States.
She is a formidable presence, an equal partner with her own office and staff, whose advice he leans on heavily, allies of the couple say.
“She’s an equal part and partner,” said Brian Ballard, one of the most powerful lobbyists and political insiders in Florida and Washington, D.C., and a former adviser to Donald Trump. “Her advice has served him well.”
Not only does he heed her counsel, Ballard said, but she’s always right. “She sees clearly what’s best for Ron.”
Her instincts have helped her when she gives speeches acting as her husband’s surrogate, advising on campaign ads and getting 1.1 million women to sign up the Moms for DeSantis, showing her ability to attract a large voting bloc.
“There is definitely a strong bond and partnership and they don’t trust anybody as much as each other,” Iarossi said. “They are each other’s person. They have a very strong faith and are very resolute people.”
The early years
Jill Casey Black was born June 26, 1980, in Troy, Ohio, the second child of Robert Black, an optometrist and former United States Air Force officer, and Jeanne Caponigro, a speech pathologist and daughter of a Sicilian immigrant.
Reached by phone to get more information on Casey’s childhood, her mother, who currently lives in Aiken, South Carolina, with her husband, declined to comment. “Sorry, I can’t help,” she said. You’ll have to get all that through your research.”
Her sister Kate Bufton, older by two years and herself a military veteran, could not be reached for comment.
The governor’s and first lady’s offices did not respond to requests for an interview or to questions sent via email for this story.
Casey grew up in comfortable homes on tree-lined streets with lush green lawns in a city of about 20,000 people, overwhelmingly white and Republican, about 19 miles north of Dayton. The city has since grown by about 6,000 people but the demographics remain the same.
Casey’s passion for horseback riding and her sister’s love of ice skating began there, said Sandy Gurklies, who currently runs the town’s historical library, and taught at the same elementary school when Casey was there. Her mother was the school’s speech pathologist at the time.
“They seemed like a very nice family,” Gurklies said.
The girls spent so much time engaged in outside activities they were given special school assignments, Gurklies said. “I’m sure they were good students. They had special assignments because of their other interests.”
Throughout high school, Casey led an active social and extracurricular life. The Troy High School Trojans yearbooks are full of photos of Casey on the junior and senior cabinets, homecoming court, the midwinter court, freshman and varsity basketball, track and field, and cross-country teams.
One photo taken her freshman year shows her and two friends goofing around as they painted a sign for the football team.
An equestrian in college
After graduating from Troy High in 1999, Casey enrolled in the College of Charleston in South Carolina, where she competed in equestrian competitions sponsored by the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association.
She rode for a strong Cougars team, said Steve Maxwell, editor of Campus Equestrian magazine. She started at the entry-level and placed fifth out of 15 riders in her first year, Maxwell said. As a sophomore she rode at a higher level, helping her team place third out of 15 teams. And in 2002, Casey rode well enough to qualify for regionals.
Maxwell took a photo of Casey with her dog Snaffle, named after a type of bit used to steer horses.
Black received a bachelor of science degree in economics with a minor in French in August 2003. That same year, her parents bought a home in Mount Pleasant, near Charleston. He set up an optometry practice in Charleston and took a faculty position at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Casey moved to Jacksonville after graduation for a career in journalism.
In a television interview four years ago, she described her move into that profession as a detour that surprised her parents.
“I think that had that look like, “What are you doing?” Because I was also interning at Merrill Lynch and they’re like that’s a great job, why don’t you go down that road?” she said.
Eventually she’d give up her riding career, telling 850 business magazine after her husband became governor that she “hung up those stirrups a long time ago.”
Broadcasting career begins
After graduating, Casey started working at WJXT, also known as News4Jax, an independent news station in Jacksonville as a weather and traffic reporter, general assignment reporter, police beat, weekend anchor and announcer.
“She was insanely talented from the start, She just had that something,” said Nikki Kimbleton, a former colleague at News4Jax and currently head of public affairs for the city of Jacksonville. “From the minute I came on board, it was clear that Casey was ... headed for bigger and better things.”
Longtime News4Jax Morning Show anchor Bruce Hamilton remembered Casey as professional, “smart, quick-witted and bubbly.”
They were a tight-knit group, like a family, who worked hard and socialized together, he said, but never discussed politics.
“We worked a lot of hours together, very closely, and hung out after work.” Hamilton said. “We went out to have fun. She enjoyed what she did.”
How she and Ron first met
How Casey met Ron over a bucket of golf balls at the University of North Florida driving range when DeSantis was stationed at Mayport Naval Station is well-known.
“I kept looking over my shoulder because I wanted the bucket of balls that somebody had left because my swing was so terrible,” Casey told First Coast News in 2018. “As I’m looking over behind me, Ron is over there. He thinks I’m looking at him. I was really looking at the balls. Long story short, we started to talk and that’s how we met.”
She took a job at the PGA Tour for a year, in 2010, then joined the staff at another TV station, First Coast News. It was there she helped develop a morning show, First Coast Living, as well as a talk show called The Chat.
At the same time, Ron DeSantis left the Navy, worked briefly for the Holland & Knight law firm, and wrote a book called “Dreams from our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the age of Obama.”
Ron DeSantis first got elected to Congress in 2012.
Curtis Dvorak, her co-host on First Coast Living from 2015 to 2017, knew her back in her days at News4Jax and the PGA Tour when he was the mascot for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Their time together at First Coast Living “was a big transition in her life,” with a newborn child (Madison was born in 2016), and a husband in Washington, D.C., all week.
Dvorak said it seemed like they had no ambitions beyond Congress at the time. “I got the impression that he was going to do this for a little while and then get back to the real world,” Dvorak said.
The first few years he was in Congress, it was just the two of them. She got caught up in the whirlwind of Washington, sharing photos of the 2012 inaugural for President Obama with First Coast News.
She also read off former Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn’s annual turkey list describing perceived pork in the federal budget, which included such nuggets as money to study breakups on Facebook and to build a soccer field at Guantanamo Bay to help improve its image.
And in another segment on First Coast Living, with former cohost Nick Loren, she showed off her coffee mug from Club for Growth, a conservative organization focused on cutting taxes. One of its largest contributors is Richard Uilhein, a billionaire donor to Ron DeSantis’ political committee.
“Americans want nothing more than growth and prosperity through economic freedom,” she said.
A galvanizing moment for both Ron and Casey DeSantis occurred in 2017, when he had what he called a “strange encounter” with a man in a baseball field parking lot moments before he shot several people, including House Republican Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana in the hip. A 10-minute shootout with police followed, and the shooter was killed.
Dvorak and Casey were at the station when the news of the shooting broke. Ron had been playing third base before he left, and the shooter had perched himself in the third base dugout minutes later and started shooting.
“We’re on in an hour and a half and nobody could find Casey,” Dvorak recounted. “I found her in the parking lot in tears, just melting. She was talking to him on the phone, and he was telling her he was all right.”
From that moment forward, he said, Casey’s resolve to be a political partner was solidified. “It was like, ‘This is serious.’ And it was more important than ever to fight for what they believed in.” he said.
A year later they jumped into the Florida Republican gubernatorial primary, knocking out a field of candidates that included Agricultural Commissioner Adam Putnam, largely because of an endorsement from Trump.
Weeks before the primary, DeSantis’ camp released a video narrated by Casey touting his fatherhood skills: building a wall with daughter Madison, and reading a bedtime story to son Mason where Trump tells someone that they’re fired.
Casey explained in a television interview that her husband had been bombarded with a $17 million negative ad campaign ad, and they decided to respond with humor.
Redefining the role of first lady
She’s also reshaped the role of Florida first lady in her own likeness, those close to her and the governor have said.
“I’ve never seen a first lady like her,” Iarossi said. “She combines all the qualities she has – superior communications skills as an on-air broadcast journalist, a mother’s warmth, a great sense of style and grace, and also a call to service.”
She has a few staff people that help her out, but she draws mostly on people in the private sector, Iarossi said.
“She’s not making policy decisions, just finding areas that are neglected and in need, and finding ways to address these problems without involving the government by using nonprofits and faith-based organizations,” Iarossi said.
She took it upon herself to activate the Florida Disaster Fund after Hurricane Ian and be the fundraising face for that nonprofit, raising nearly $60 million to date using her connections, making TV appearances and working the phones, Iarossi said.
She’s also helped secure $100 million in cancer research funding in the current budget and launched the Hope for Healing Florida initiative in 2019, which helps Floridians find mental health and substance abuse resources.
Other initiatives she spearheaded include Hope Florida, a partnership with the Department of Children and Families to help families become self-sufficient, and the Resiliency Florida Initiative, a partnership with pro athletes to help overcome the stigma associated with mental health.
“I am not surprised how active she is as first lady,” Dvorak said. “I didn’t expect her to sit back at the Governor’s Mansion and have tea.”
Ballard, who first met Casey DeSantis at the first inaugural, said, “she has a real sense of her purpose in life, and she’s built a world around the governor. She can see greatness in Ron, if he’s allowed.”
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