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After months of damaging news stories (personal and professional), dwindling poll numbers, and rising doubts from restive donors, Ron DeSantis’ big moment has finally arrived. The first Republican debate is here and, with it, a chance for the Florida governor to reclaim his vaunted status as DeFuture of DeParty.
There’s just one problem: debates have not, historically, been a very forgiving format for DeSantis.
For one thing, he just doesn’t come across as very likable. (An adviser who helped the former congressman prepare for a 2018 debate against Andrew Gillum actually instructed: “When you walk up there, if you have a pad, you have to write in all caps at the top of the pad: LIKABLE.”)
Accounts of DeSantis’ past debate appearances frequently feature the term “rattled” to describe his reactions to questions from the moderator or his opponents. (In 2018, he “seemed rattled over questions about his associations with far-right groups;” In 2022, he “appeared to become rattled when [former Florida Gov. Charlie] Crist returned several times to demanding that the governor answer whether he would serve a full four-year term if re-elected.”)
We here at Rolling Stone sought some last-minute advice on DeSantis’ behalf from the people who know him best: those who have debated him before,or prepared candidates to debate him.
Like with so many things, the first step to improving is admitting you have a problem. “I think it’s worth saying out loud: He’s just very bad at these,” says Joshua Karp, a political strategist who helped prep both Gillum and Crist for their respective face-offs with DeSantis.
Secondly, before DeSantis even opens his mouth on Wednesday, he should to pay attention to any nonverbal cues he may be telegraphing.“When he is on a debate stage, he cannot control his clear body language that he would rather be anywhere else in the universe,” Karp says.
Heather Beaven, who ran for Congress against DeSantis in 2012, agreed: “He certainly does not have a poker face,” she says.
Another challenge for DeSantis on Wednesday is that virtually every one of his past contests has featured a one-on-one, Lincoln-Douglas style debate with two people, as opposed to eight. An exception to this rule was when he was running for Congress in 2012, when DeSantis appeared alongside seven other candidates at a League of Women Voters forum.
Beaven, who was part of that debate, recalls DeSantis had trouble staying engaged when the spotlight was not trained directly on him. “The next day, his primary opponents made some hay in the local media about him being on his phone [during the debate],” she remembers. Other rivals accused him at the time of looking up answers on his phone, but Beaven thinks he was just bored. “He just checks out. If it’s not his turn, he just kind of isn’t interested in what else was happening in the room.”
For that reason, Beaven says, “what I’m going to be watching for is how he reacts to so many people in the room.” She thinks Chris Christie, who has a good-natured way of teasing his opponents, could have the best shot of getting under DeSantis’ skin. “I don’t think anyone would say Ron is humorous. I don’t think he’s going to take a ribbing as just a ribbing. I think he takes it as an insult,” she adds.
Multiple people mentioned DeSantis’ tendency to react defensively as an impulse he’ll need to rein in. When preparing Gillum for his 2018 debate against DeSantis, Karp says, “We assumed that he would be a loud, angry blowhard, because that’s the character he had played throughout that entire campaign. And not only were we correct, but he walked into Gillum’s traps over and over and over again— to the point where Gillum could set up these one-two punches, where you get the guy to overreact, and then you nail him on overreacting. That happened three or four times over the course of the debate.”
The most memorable example of this dynamic was when DeSantis was asked about an associate’s history of racist comments, and he struggled to even let the moderator finish his sentence.
“Gillum delivered the punch line. DeSantis set him up by being unable to control himself —and not even being able to let the moderator ask the question,” Karp recalls.
Fred Costello is a Republican who ran against DeSantis for Congress not once, but twice,and who has now been converted into a supporter. DeSantis, Costello says, “is a very smart guy,” who has been waiting for this moment for a long time. Costello’s chief criticism of DeSantis at the time was his “focus on higher office and his lack of interest in local needs while serving as our congressman” — something that won’t be a problem, for the first time ever, on Wednesday.
“His understanding of national issues, and his apparent lack of knowledge of or interest in local issues was readily apparent,” Costello recalls. “Even from the beginning, it always felt like he was using [his time in Congress] as a stepping stone to bigger things.”
For his part, Costello thinks reporters have gotten DeSantis wrong. “The media seems to have bought into the narrative that Governor DeSantis has no charisma,” Costello says. “I found him to be both quick witted and focused rather than aloof or condescending. Others may disagree. While I would agree he was not much for chit chat, he was not any more dismissive of those wanting his attention than other time-challenged candidates.”
DeSantis, to his credit, seems to recognize both the gravity of this moment and his own limitations. He has hired a well-known Liberty University debate coach to help with his delivery and was offered further assistance in the form of hundreds of pages of suggestions from the firm owned by his super PAC’s chief strategist. (It included, for example, the dubious tip that DeSantis ought to nickname his chief rival “Vivek the Fake”; DeSantis recently told a reporter of the memo, “I haven’t read it.”)
Beaven, for her part, is not convinced it will be enough. “This could really be a JFK-Nixon moment for Ron,” she says. “This could go really, really bad for him — if he can’t keep his propensity to sweat, and rub his face, and be awkward [under control], if he can’t control his facial expressions.”
But keeping expectations low, Karp says, could end up working in DeSantis’ favor. “He’s working with a real debate coach — it wouldn’t surprise me if DeSantis clears the bar of basement-level expectations. At a certain point, all he has to do is get up to the podium and not trip over his own feet. People are gonna say, ‘Oh, wow, great job.’”
