OXON HILL, Maryland — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis steered clear of a split-screen showdown with former President Donald Trump at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference, but he loomed large over the event nonetheless.
Attendees overwhelmingly sang DeSantis’s praises while stipulating that they still very much favor Trump in the 2024 Republican primary.
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“DeSantis is definitely the No. 1 governor in the United States,” Al Richardson, a Florida resident, told the Washington Examiner while contending that Trump will win the 2024 GOP nod. “I don't want to see him leave the governorship of Florida … my mission down here is to push Donald Trump.”
In lieu of CPAC, DeSantis opted to partake in a three-day closed-press donor retreat hosted not far from Mar-a-Lago by the fiscally conservative Club for Growth, which snubbed Trump, much to his rage.
Of all the speculated 2024 hopefuls, DeSantis has routinely polled as the top GOP challenger to Trump, though he has yet to declare. It has been speculated that an announcement will come after the Florida state legislature wraps up its business in May.
His absence guaranteed that a Trump love-fest at CPAC would go uncontested. One of Trump’s primary challengers, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, was heckled by pro-Trump voters following her address Friday. By skipping out, DeSantis averted a similar fate.
While CPAC-goers were amenable to DeSantis, a glimmer of competitiveness flared up when he was pitted against Trump.
“I’m a Trump guy, I'm not a huge fan of DeSantis. I think he's just not it right now. He's too moderate in my opinion,” Charles Mandziara, a Chicago, Illinois resident, said. ”I like Trump because he was gonna take it to the establishment. And I see Ron DeSantis sort of becoming the establishment.”
Mandziara cited DeSantis’s recent shift from moving toward dissolving Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District to taking it over instead as an example of what he meant. However, when pressed about how DeSantis performed as governor, his tone grew more positive.
“I think he is one of the better governors in the United States. He is still moderate compared to Trump. But I'd say that he's better than a lot of the other governors,” Mandziara said. “DeSantis is good for appealing to the center. But what we really want to appeal to is the base, and that's what Trump is.”
The halls of the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center were filled with Make America Great Again hats, stickers, and signs, illustrating how the annual confab has become Trump’s domain. Spectators fawned over Trump and were enthused about him running for a second term.
DeSantis memorabilia, by contrast, was hard to come by, though there were occasional “Stop WOKE Act” stickers” seen throughout the complex, in a nod to the 2022 law he signed intended to restrict classroom instruction of critical race theory.
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Among the over one dozen attendees interviewed by the Washington Examiner, Trump was largely seen as more of a known quantity compared to DeSantis. There was also a sentiment that Trump deserves a second shot at the presidency. DeSantis can be his understudy, but Trump should still be the master.
“Trump got cheated out of the election. And he should have won,” Daniel Francis, a Colorado resident donning a cowboy hat, said. “I think he should get another term. And then we groom DeSantis to go for two terms. That'd be the best thing that would happen for us.”
Last CPAC DeSantis was greeted with much fanfare. This time, despite his meteoric rise, CPAC speakers seldom mentioned DeSantis by name during panels or keynote addresses Thursday and Friday, which were dominated by discussions of transgenderism, the culture wars, and harsh rebukes of the Biden administration.
Steve Bannon namedropped DeSantis during his speech Friday briefly, noting that he and other Republican alternatives were “fine” while stressing “we don't have time for on-the-job training.” This was a point raised by many attendees when comparing Trump and DeSantis.
“Trump has the right policy base, he has the experience,” Blake Marnell, a San Francisco man also nicknamed the “Brick Suit” for the flashy brick-patterned suit he wears to conservative events, said. “Another conservative [might try] to moderate their actions in their first term so that they can win reelection.”
Some argued that GOP competition will make the party stronger, while others preferred Trump and DeSantis team up rather than duke it out in a bitter primary.
“We're actually being independent within our own party. That's why you see a primary that's going to come up where it's going to be a battlefield,” Kevin Alan, who hosts the Kevin Alan Show podcast, said before pivoting to the GOP primary. “Trump's going to kick the daylights out of all those great people, and they're all going to unite at the end.”
While Trump appears to have topped DeSantis in the hearts of many CPAC spectators, previous conferences drew comparatively higher crowd sizes and sponsorships relative to this one.
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Trump has already begun taking preemptive political digs at DeSantis and recently taunted him for skipping out on CPAC. In the face of Trump's onslaught of rhetorical slings and arrows, DeSantis has trodden carefully and sought to avoid an all-out verbal bout with him.
"The only reason certain 'candidates' won’t be going to CPAC is because the crowds have no interest in anything they have to say," Trump needled in a Truth Social post on Thursday. "They’ve heard it all before, and don’t want to hear it again. But my speech, on Saturday night, is already a sold out 'monster.'"