She’s there to appeal to conservative moms in Iowa. So Casey DeSantis, wife of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, wasted no time talking about her three young children — and how much she wanted to leave them at home.
“Funny, someone outside the snowball machine asked, ‘Did you bring your kids?’,” she said, sitting on a small stage Thursday in the suburb of Des Moines for a solo appearance. her husband’s presidential campaign. Her answer was clear: “No.”
She told the crowd that the last time she had the great idea of doing a campaign event with one of her young children was at an event for her husband’s re-election campaign. She’s in Florida. For most of her remarks, Madison, then 5 years old, squirmed beside her. In her final moments, Madison pulled on her sleeve and whispered that she had to go to the bathroom, Ms. DeSantis recalls.
“What moms are going through, is one of those out-of-body experiences. Do I need to wake up? Do I need to take her away?” she said, as the audience roared. “Like, what’s going on?”
Considered by many to be her husband’s most important advisor, Mrs. DeSantis is “secret weapon”the “second command” and “main soundboardabout his political activities. Now, in the first weeks of his presidential campaign, she’s added another position to her portfolio: humanitarian general manager.
Using a spouse to try to soften a thorny political image is a tried and successful tactic in presidential politics. In 2007, Michelle Obama wooed Democratic primary voters with a hello all women devised to explain her husband’s unusual life story. Four years later, Ann Romney toured Iowa and New Hampshire, introducing “the other side of Mitt” — a caring, family-friendly man who doesn’t fit the caricature of heartless corporate robbers drawn by his competitors. And in the final days of the 2016 campaign, Melania Trump appeared in a rare campaign in suburban Philadelphia to combat her husband’s crude image with female voters.
But rarely does this strategy emerge so early in the primary campaign, reflecting both Mr. DeSantis’ efforts to connect with voters and the central role his wife has long assumed in her political career. his rule.
During her husband’s first congressional race, DeSantis, then a local news reporter, crossed the neighborhoods of their northeast Florida county on an electric scooter, knocking on doors. from house to house and present his case. Years later, when he was running for governor, she narrated the campaign ad that caught his most attention, a 2018 commercial in which he encouraged the toddler to their “building a wall” of large cardboard blocks. Her role expanded with his: After he won, she landed a main office in the governor’s capitol room, taking on staff interviews as he he hired staff for his new administration and share podium at hurricane press conferences – some of the most famous state governor appearances in hurricane-prone Florida.
In recent weeks, she and her husband have embraced the quirky traditions of the early state primary circuit, praising Iowa’s gas station pizza and making headlines in a black leather jacket. printed the unofficial campaign slogan “Where Woke Goes to Die” at an annual Republican motorcycle-themed fundraiser in Des Moines.
Her high-profile role has spawned a battle around the rift, as supporters and detractors offer their assessments of the couple’s career partnership. She is his greatest asset. Or, depending on whose opinion, perhaps his greatest responsibility. She is the antidote to his well-documented struggles for connection. Or a virus that infects his mediocrity campaign, encouraging her husband to distrust those outside his tight political orbit.
For Mr DeSantis, however, the simple hope is that his wife can come up with a way to secure the holy grail in presidential campaigns: relativity.
That message was not subtle on Thursday in Johnston, Iowa, where Ms. DeSantis appeared alongside the state’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, for a question-and-answer session. “How in the world do you do it?” The governor said she is the mother of three daughters and the grandmother of 11 grandchildren.
“It was a little bit of organized chaos. I won’t lie,” DeSantis said, before starting a series of stories about her three young children — Madison, Mason, and Mamie — and their adventures in the governor’s mansion.
Then it was down to business. Ms. DeSantis has officially launched “Mamas for DeSantis”, a national version of the statewide group she started during her husband’s re-election bid in 2022. In her remarks, Ms. DeSantis tried to attempt to place him as an avatar of conservative anger toward school administrators and school boards that has exploded during the pandemic.
Much of her commentary focuses on a lax social agenda often described as “parental rights,” a movement that includes efforts to limit how issues of race are taught. and LGBTQ, attacking transgender rights, supporting publicly funded private school scholarship vouchers, and opposing the vaccine mandate.
“I care about protecting the innocence of my children and your children,” she told the audience on Thursday. “As long as I have breath left in my body, I will go out and I will fight for Ron DeSantis, not because he is my husband – that’s part of it – but because I believe in him. to every inch of my being.”
It was a message that resonated with some audiences, many of whom were affiliated with Mothers for Freedom, a group that emerged as a conservative force on social issues. DeSantis, Elicha Brancheau, a member of Moms for Liberty who is a strong advocate for parental rights, said she was impressed by his wife’s commitment to the issue.
“I like her a lot. She’s very intelligent, well-spoken,” said Ms. Brancheau, who met Ms. DeSantis before the event.
Not everyone is convinced.
Malina Cottington, a mother of five who started homeschooling her children after the pandemic, said she is looking for a candidate who will take the strongest position in defending what she describes as women’s rights. brother. She was impressed with Mr. DeSantis but preferred the bolder plan of one of his Republican opponents, Vivek Ramaswamy, the millionaire businessman and author who pledged to abolish the Department of Education.
Ms Cottington, 42, who lives in the suburb of Des Moines, said: “I think we need something that drastic. “We just want to make sure we can raise our kids the way we want.”
