Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis often tells Republican voters on the campaign trail that they should choose him because he is embracing big, bold policy positions that prove he is the presidential candidate most ready to wage an all-out battle on the political left.
A closer look shows much of that agenda — seal the country’s southern border and radically remake the federal bureaucracy — mirrors that of his chief rival, former President Donald Trump.
Since launching his campaign in May, DeSantis has struggled to distinguish his policy positions from the former president. Some of his plans match what Trump has already proposed, and others echo what he already did as president.
It’s a particular challenge for DeSantis, whose substance-heavy pitch to voters relies more on policy than most Republican candidates. And it’s contributed to a growing sense that, at least in the early going of the 2024 primary, the governor is struggling to gain traction against a former president who polls show continues to hold a huge lead in the race.
“Let’s put it this way. What I see is a campaign floundering, trying to find a purpose to run,” said Bryan Lanza, who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign and remains close to the former president’s team. “He’s saying, ‘I’m Trump without the drama,’ but voters aren’t looking for Trump-light. They’re looking for Trump.”
DeSantis again encountered the problem last week, when he visited the U.S.-Mexico border during a campaign stopover in Texas to unveil his proposal to stop illegal immigration. The agenda included a pledge to complete Trump’s wall along the country’s southern border, reinstate the former president’s so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy and end “catch and release,” the practice of releasing migrants into the U.S. while they await court dates.
Even if the proposals were far-reaching and aggressive by traditional conservative standards, they largely matched Trump’s own agenda, both the one he implemented as president and what he proposes to do if given another term.
It’s a dynamic Republican policy experts warned has already been a recurring theme for DeSantis so far this campaign as he runs against a candidate who often adopts the most conservative position on a range of pressing issues.
In addition to immigration, public policy experts on the right say DeSantis’ policies have mirrored Trump’s agenda on issues including:
•Relocating federal agencies and other departments to outside the Washington, D.C., area
•Firing federal employees, even those in the civil service, who are seen as acting contrary to the president’s wishes
•Casting doubt on the validity of U.S. interests in Ukraine as it seeks to repel Russia’s invasion
•Proposing to “break the swamp,” after years of Trump promising to “drain the swamp.”
“If you have somebody who’s already painting with the boldest colors there is, you can’t get any more vivid than that,” said Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Policy Center. “So I do think there’s an element of, what can he do to differentiate himself?”
Conservative support for Trump
DeSantis sits in second place in the GOP primary, according to polls, trailing well behind Trump and earning less support from Republican voters than he did when the year began. Many Republican political strategists say they believe the former president has been bolstered in recent months by his decision to start re-engaging with voters on the campaign trail and two rounds of criminal indictments that have convinced many conservatives he’s being unfairly targeted by the justice system.
Trump has also largely come to define the modern-day conservative movement. A February 2016 poll conducted by Quinnipiac University found that only 27 percent of Republican voters who described themselves as “very conservative” supported Trump in that year’s GOP presidential primary. A poll fielded in June 2023 by the university showed that support at 64 percent.
DeSantis’ allies and defenders acknowledged at least some overlap with Trump on policy issues, noting that the two were close political allies before the Florida governor emerged as a presidential prospect. DeSantis’ best argument for the GOP nomination, they said, is that he actually has the discipline needed to follow through on his promises, unlike Trump.
“President Trump had some good policy goals. The trouble is that his personal behavior got in the way of those policy goals,” Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor who’s backing DeSantis in the primary, said. “It made them harder to achieve and what did pass was quickly reversed by Democrats when they got into office.”
The governor has also found some areas where he’s been able to differentiate himself from Trump, promising that he would choose a different kind of Federal Reserve chairman than Jerome Powell, whom Trump appointed, and do more to hold accountable federal health leaders like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former White House public health adviser whom DeSantis blames for a mismanaged response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Justin Sayfie, a South Florida-based lobbyist who served as a spokesperson and top adviser for former Gov. Jeb Bush, said that DeSantis already has a track record in Tallahassee to back up his promises. When it comes to reforming the federal bureaucracy, Sayfie said, DeSantis can make the case that he can succeed where Trump failed.
“Donald Trump attempted to do it and failed,” Sayfie said. “He empowered a lot of the people there — like Anthony Fauci, like Jerome Powell — that are part of the swamp, and I think it’s going to take a focused, concerted effort to drain it, to reform it and to change it.”
“There is no question in my mind that Gov. DeSantis understands how important it is to do it and how important it is that he personally focuses his own attention on it.”
DeSantis has also defended the six-week abortion ban in Florida that he signed into law earlier this year, contrasting his support for that measure with Trump’s argument that such a ban is “too harsh.”
Campaign trail message
And he has cast himself as a conservative crusader on culture war issues, like transgender rights and diversity initiatives in education. After his team shared a widely criticized video on Twitter last week attacking Trump’s record on LGBTQ issues, DeSantis defended it.
On the campaign trail, however, the Florida Republican has focused a lot of messaging on reforming the federal bureaucracy, arguing that it has unconstitutionally acquired too much power, to the harm of the American people. DeSantis has proposed moving entire departments out of Washington, firing federal employees for dereliction of duty even if they are members of the civil service, and altogether eliminating some agencies such as the Department of Education.
But Trump had already moved one federal department, the Bureau of Land Management from Washington when he was president, and has repeatedly promised that he would take on members of the so-called “deep state” during his second term that he says thwarted his agenda the first time around.
Trying to convince voters that he’s more likely to revamp the federal bureaucracy isn’t easy to do, conservatives say.
“This is an issue somewhat similar to immigration, in that it is so closely associated with Trump, that it’s hard to outflank him,” Brown said.
Attempting to show voters just how far he was willing to go, DeSantis vowed last week to “break the swamp,” an apparent twist on Trump’s years-old promise to “drain the swamp.” But the attempted wordplay only underscored to some Republicans the governor’s struggles to move out of Trump’s shadow.
