He is considered the “big winner” of the US midterm elections on Tuesday (8/11). As some have said, it’s a Donald Trump 2.0 that could win back the White House for Republicans in 2024.

However, to do so, he may need to beat Trump first.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who has garnered national attention for his strong opposition to controls implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic, was re-elected by a wide margin on Tuesday.

The 44-year-old politician, who started his career by being elected to the House of Representatives in 2012, has managed to consolidate the southern state as the second most populous Republican stronghold in the United States.

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His strong views on controversial issues like gender, teaching racial issues in schools, and abortion seem to have resonated with his voters, as he is said to have increased the electoral base across nearly all demographic groups.

Just four years ago, DeSantis won by less than half a percentage point as governor.

On Tuesday, she defeated Democratic rival Charlie Christ, who won more than 59 percent of the vote to 40.2 percent, and succeeded in increasing voter numbers between the two groups she lost in the last election: women and Latinos.

The politician succeeded in winning in Miami-Dade County, Florida’s most populous area, where it has been 20 years since a Republican won the election.

DeSantis used his crushing victory to declare himself a champion of freedom and to project his image as a politician of strong convictions.

“Florida was a mental health haven when the world went crazy. We were a bastion of freedom for the people of this country, and indeed for the entire world,” he said in a speech before his supporters as he celebrated the victory.

We faced attacks, we took blows. We faced storms but we stood firm. We did not withdraw. We had the belief to guide ourselves and the courage to lead,” he said.

Now there are many analysts and party friends who identify him as a potential candidate for the US presidency. This idea was so reinforced by the poll results that ex-President Trump himself, flirting with a return to the political arena, decided to issue a warning.

“I think I’m going to make a mistake. I don’t think the voter base is going to like it,” the former president said in an interview with Fox News on the same day of the election, before DeSantis’ anticipated victory was announced.

Promising to announce an important decision at his home in Mar-A-Lago (Florida) on November 15, Trump said in his own private manner that he could publish damaging information about the Florida governor.

“I don’t know if he’ll run. I don’t know if he’ll run. If he runs, he could get hurt a lot. I really think he could get hurt a lot,” Trump told Fox.

“I don’t think it’s good for the party.”

In his closing speech, Trump praised Republican politicians like Florida’s Marco Rubio, but made no mention of DeSantis’ pivotal victory.

But what are Ron DeSantis’ ideas? Why did Trump decide to attack him? Where does this politician come from, which we will probably talk about for years to come?

From Yale to Governor

DeSantis, 44, is still seen as a relatively new face in US politics.

He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2012. He became governor just six years later, in 2018, after a brief run for senator.

Born in 1978 in Jacksonville, Florida, he studied history at Yale University, where he captained the baseball team, and soon entered Harvard Law School.

In his second year of law school, he was assigned to the US Navy’s legal arm, where he worked with detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and was also the legal adviser to the Navy Seals, the US Navy’s elite group sent to Iraq. . . .

Although honorably discharged from the military in 2010, he continues to serve in the US Navy Reserve.

It was also around this time that he met his wife, Casey, a local TV reporter who was a cancer survivor and helped raise money after Hurricane Ian in 2022.

In 2018, after spending five years on Capitol Hill where he helped found the far-right conservative group “Freedom Caucus,” DeSantis announced his intention to run for governor with the full support of then-President Donald Trump.

He took office as governor in January 2019.

DeSantis and the epidemic

DeSantis’ first major challenge as governor came in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic. He ordered a statewide shutdown in April, set up hundreds of testing centers and ordered millions of masks, publicly declaring that they “can prevent infections for the most vulnerable.”

However, in April 2021, DeSantis began lifting state restrictions and in July ordered schools to reopen despite the sharp rise in cases of the disease and fierce criticism.

“The Covid pandemic was when he made a name for himself as a challenger to national knowledge at the time,” Republican strategist Sarah Longwell told the BBC.

What he’s done since then has made him one of the country’s best-known Republican figures. In March 2022, for example, he passed a law activist named Don’t Say Gay, which bans discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity in elementary schools.

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After the United States Supreme Court revoked the constitutional right to abortion, DeSantis declared that “the prayers of millions” had been answered.

Since then, he has talked less about it. Some think this is a political calculation designed to balance the pressure from conservative elements in the Republican Party with the views of Florida voters, many of whom are in favor of abortion rights.

His critics recently accused him of using immigrants as a political ploy when he managed to transfer a group of mostly Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, a thriving island that is a liberal stronghold in Massachusetts.

“HE [o caso dos imigrantes] “He was again very proactively getting himself into a culture war,” said Doug Heye, former Republican National Committee spokesman.

“He is willing to play the role of a cultural warrior leader,” he added.

For his part, Longwell says DeSantis’ clashes with the press over his most controversial policies may have been what propelled him to political stardom.

“The press thinks he’s a lousy guy and loves him. That’s another thing he’s learned from Trump. If you piss off the media, they’ll talk a lot about you and that helps get your name heard and that benefits you and your fans and supporters.”

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Why do they see him as Trump’s heir?

So far, DeSantis has made no intention of running for president in 2024, saying he’s only focused on running Florida.

Still, some polls suggest DeSantis is now ahead of Trump, at least in Florida, in a possible showdown in 2024 and in close competition with him at the national level.

Just before Tuesday’s election, the rivalry between the two culminated with Trump’s scorn for not inviting DeSantis to a Florida rally for Senator Marco Rubio.

At another event in Pennsylvania, Trump referred to him as “Ron De-Sanctimonious” (a pun on the De Santis surname for “holy” meaning “hypocrite”), which drew criticism from the party.

But a day later, Trump admitted that DeSantis would likely win, even if he didn’t openly support him.

Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, who has held focus group discussions with Trump voters, said DeSantis was “by far the first to emerge” when respondents were asked who they would like to run as a Republican if Trump does not run for House. White.

While he believes he is “positioning” himself as Trump’s opponent, it is “not clear” he can win the nomination within the party.

“I’m not sure DeSantis has the ability to meet Trump face-to-face,” says Sarah Longwell.

“There are a lot of people talking about him as the future of the GOP. But it’s too early to predict that, we haven’t seen him operate on a national stage before.”

– This text was published at https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-63566686.