DeSantis Spending Money on 'Wrong Message', Ex-Congressman Warns

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis risks wasting his considerable campaign funds by focusing "on the wrong message," according to former GOP Representative David Jolly on Saturday.

DeSantis, once considered a major rising star in the Republican Party, is currently among the many candidates seeking the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Despite the momentum he appeared to have late last year, he has consistently fallen behind former President Donald Trump by double digits in primary polling, though he has still maintained a major lead among the rest of the field. His campaign has also been dogged by negative press, with many questioning if he actually has what it takes to succeed in national politics.

During the Saturday edition of his MSNBC program, host Jonathan Capehart noted recent reports finding that DeSantis had raised a considerable $20 million in the first six weeks of his campaign, pressing Jolly about whether this means that the governor's campaign is doing better than its coverage would suggest. In response, Jolly, a former Florida congressman who left the Republican Party over its embrace of Trump, said the fundraising success was consistent with DeSantis' strengths as a politician and candidate, but that he risks wasting those strengths by focusing on "grievance," social justice, and culture war issues.

"I think Ron DeSantis's fundamental strength has always been around the ability to raise a lot of money, to organize, and honestly to execute on the things that top-tier presidential candidates do," Jolly said. "He is in all the early states, he has a robust digital campaign, mail campaign, door-knocking campaign, and so to see $20 million come in, I don't think it's a surprise. It's consistent with his performance this far."

The former representative continued: "The problem is all of that money is being spent on the wrong message. Ron DeSantis's message of grievance, and 'the gay people are taking over our schools,' 'black and brown people have too much equity in America,' simply isn't working, even in a Republican primary against Donald Trump's message of retribution. And so, you can raise all the money you want, but if you're spending it on the wrong message, you're gonna end up 30 points behind the frontrunner."

In March, a poll conducted by Ipsos found that DeSantis' strong focus on "anti-wokeness" and culture war messages might be backfiring on him, with 56 percent of the 1,023 respondents, split relatively evenly along party lines, found "woke" to be a positive term associated with awareness of social injustices, and not a negative term, as the governor has stressed, associated with overt political correctness.

Elsewhere, a recent forecast found that at the current rate, DeSantis is only likely to win the 2024 primary in his home state of Florida, with Trump likely to secure blowout victories everywhere else.

Newsweek reached out to the DeSantis campaign via email for comment.