Questions are swirling around the Ron DeSantis campaign.
Florida's Republican governor launched a much-hyped and well-funded presidential bid in May, but his polling has mostly stagnated in the weeks since, leading him to field questions about whether he's failed to launch. DeSantis insists he's doing what it takes to win.
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“You know, my reelection in Florida, we had the greatest victory that any Republican governor candidate in the history of the state had," he told Fox News on Sunday. "And yet a few months before the election, I had media saying that somehow my reelection campaign was stalling, that we weren’t doing anything."
The media are once again saying the DeSantis campaign has stalled, with the Fox News question coming after the Politico Playbook quoted top DeSantis PAC official Steve Cortes saying he's "way behind" in national polling.
DeSantis added that the media do not want him to be the nominee because "they know I'll beat [President Joe] Biden" and projected ahead to the Republican primary debates, which begin Aug. 23 in Wisconsin.
"That's when people are really going to start paying attention to the primary," he said. "Up to his point, a lot of that has been about some of these legal cases. And I think a lot of the voters are concerned about that, and understandably so."
But the Florida governor likely hoped for better numbers to date. His polling topped 30% in the RealClearPolitics average in March, then dipped into the low 20s amid former President Donald Trump's indictments and has been in the low 20s since. He dismissed the drop at first on the fact he hadn't declared yet, saying, "I'm not a candidate" in late April.
Political experts say it is still far too early to write off any campaign at this point, DeSantis included.
"A year in politics is a lifetime," said Florida-based Democratic strategist Sasha Tirador. "There is still so much that we have to see that Trump is going to go through with all these pending indictments. I still believe that it's going to get to the point where Trump has a lot of trouble."
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made largely the same point last weekend, pointing at 2015 polling as evidence of just how far the campaign has to go.
A CNN poll released July 1, 2015, found Trump support at 12%, 7 points behind Jeb Bush’s 19%, after both launched campaigns in mid-June. Both were significantly behind Hillary Clinton at the time.
Still, recent polling shows DeSantis slipping against both Trump and Biden, outlining a tough road ahead for the top newcomer. Criticism has emerged around his relatively stiff personality and some policy positions, such as signing a six-week abortion ban into Florida law.
As such, the debate stage will be especially crucial as DeSantis makes his case to GOP primary voters, argues Kevin Madden.
"The campaign would benefit from very aggressively making the case for how they plan to use the debates to get ahead of Trump and grow their market share and reverse their current trend line," Madden, a former senior adviser to Sen. Mitt Romney's (R-UT) 2012 presidential campaign, said. "Nothing builds momentum like a confident posture."
One thing DeSantis does have on his side is big money donors. He raised $20 million in just the first six weeks of his campaign and will be able to use that haul to continue building momentum if there is a debate bump.
"The debates provide the perfect platform at just the right time to finally meet or exceed the expectations of all of those voters who were buzzing about a potential DeSantis candidacy," Madden said.
He may then try and appeal to Republican voters by showcasing how he's moved to Trump's right in order to prove who is the true conservative in the race.
The Florida governor emphasizes his ability to get things done and acknowledges it will take a lot of toil, sweat, and tears to get out ahead as the crucial votes are counted.
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Yet even in Florida, Trump holds a 20-point lead over DeSantis, per a Florida Atlantic University poll, with another 20% feeling it's disloyal to vote for any non-Trump candidate.
“The difficulty for Gov. DeSantis and for any of the Republicans running for the presidency is that they have to figure out a way to reach Trump voters without alienating Trump voters.” FAU political professor Kevin Wagner said. “That has been a very difficult needle to thread for them.”