From loner to phenom: DeSantis' old colleagues are surprised at his rise
Amid a contentious government shutdown in October 2013, Rep. Ron DeSantis approached a fellow Republican freshman, Rodney Davis, and offered to do him a favor.
Days before, back in Davis’s Illinois district, a Democratic challenger had staged a protest at the shuttered National Park Service site of Abraham Lincoln’s home, where a U.S. Department of Agriculture official joined her in blasting Davis for the GOP’s hardball tactics.
Davis, a centrist who was facing a difficult reelection, had complained to DeSantis about how a political event had been allowed on federal property amid a shutdown. A few days later, the conservative DeSantis found Davis in the gym, told him the Park Service directo...
