Ron DeSantis Has a Problem. It’s Florida.
Ron DeSantis is set to join the 2024 campaign amid high Republican hopes that he’s precisely the kind of conservative who can knock off President Joe Biden. But the odds are stacked against him.
The problem isn’t really Biden, or even former President Donald Trump, who leads the Florida governor in early GOP polls. It’s his state and the weight of history.
No Florida politician has ever been elected president. A half-dozen have run in the last 50 years — essentially the period in which the state evolved from political backwater to electoral powerhouse — but all have ended up in the same place, dead in the water long before the nominating convention. Most never even made it past New Hampshire...
