| | | | |  | | By Kimberly Leonard | |  Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a New Year's Eve campaign event, Sunday, Dec. 31, 2023, in West Des Moines, Iowa. | Charlie Neibergall/AP | Good morning and welcome to 2024. Gov. Ron DeSantis has entered the new year as an underdog. It’s not the first time in his political career, but it’s a far cry from where he was last year, when he was one of the brightest Republican stars in the U.S. DeSantis was just days away from his second-term swearing-in ceremony at the historic Florida Capitol, and pundits treated his yet-to-be announced decision to run for the White House as a foregone conclusion. DeSantis even seemed to be the most promising Republican to seek the GOP presidential nomination. After the 2022 midterms, former President Donald Trump came across like yesterday’s Republican Party: many of his endorsements fell flat, and voters and donors seemed to be looking for a new option. But the Trump campaign had other plans. While DeSantis launched a book tour and polished his right-wing bona fides in Tallahassee, Team Trump started attacking and defining the governor early, criticizing everything from his personality to his congressional record on Medicare and Social Security. In a sardonic twist, Trump beat DeSantis in his own backyard by rolling out surprise endorsements from Florida’s congressional delegation. Once DeSantis got in the race, he couldn’t live up to the high expectations that followed his 2022 historic reelection victory. He didn’t improve the situation with early fumbles, from a glitchy campaign launch to ever-evolving anti-Trump messaging that never seemed to stick. Drawn-out campaign layoffs and PAC firings created an appearance of chaos. Add to that Trump’s criminal charges — which only grew his support with every subsequent indictment. All of that amounted to more of a flop era for DeSantis. (For a more detailed look, the Palm Beach Post’s Antonio Fins and Stephany Matat have a good 2023 month-by-month breakdown of how Trump re-wrote the narrative about the presidential nomination contest.) Today, DeSantis seems poised to lose a contest for the first time despite landing coveted endorsements and barnstorming every county in Iowa, the state he’s still counting on for an upset. The New York Times even closed out 2023 with a lengthy pre-mortem of how it all came crashing down. As for Trump, he’s more than 30 points ahead of DeSantis in Iowa and leads the GOP pack in New Hampshire and South Carolina. DeSantis is still campaigning hard with less than two weeks to go, urging Iowa caucus-goers to defy the odds. Asked to reflect on the governor’s underdog status, the DeSantis campaign blamed journalists for treating the primary as though it were already over. "The mainstream media are terrified of Ron DeSantis and are working overtime to tear him down in this primary,” said Bryan Griffin, DeSantis’ press secretary. “Never have the media themselves worked so transparently to influence the outcome of a race before a single vote has been cast, but that's exactly what they're doing. It's us versus the whole system — the other candidates and the media — working together to try to stop voters from casting a vote for Ron DeSantis." DeSantis said in his May 2023 presidential campaign launch that he wanted to bring about the “Great American Comeback.” Kicking off 2024, the description reads like a tagline for Trump’s political campaign. — WHERE'S RON? Gov. DeSantis’ campaign hasn’t announced precisely where he’ll be today, but he has been holding a full travel schedule in Iowa. He spent New Year’s eve at a Never Back Down celebration in West Des Moines. (Trump was at a party at Mar-a-Lago, which featured “a star-studded affair with a performance by ‘90s rapper Vanilla Ice and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle,” per the Palm Beach Post.) LOOKING AHEAD: DeSantis will be taking part in a CNN town hall on Thursday. Have a tip, story, suggestion, birthday, anniversary, new job, or any other nugget for Playbook? Get in touch at: kleonard@politico.com TUNE IN — POLITICO Florida’s own GARY FINEOUT will be on the ground in Iowa this week. Follow along on X. |  | ... DATELINE TALLAHASSEE ... | |
NEW FLORIDA LAWS JUST WENT INTO EFFECT FOR 2024 — Per the Miami Herald’s Howard Cohen. A few highlights:
- Drivers now have to shift over a lane if they see any vehicle stopped on the side of the road. The previous law applied only to emergency vehicles.
- Commissioners and mayors will now have to file more details about their personal finances.
- Law enforcement agencies can create a registry of people with mental health challenges or intellectual disabilities to help them respond appropriately in crisis situations.
- All Florida county courthouses now have to provide a dedicated lactation space.
There’s also a back-to-school tax holiday that started yesterday and runs through Jan. 14. Florida’s 6 percent sales tax won’t be levied on school supplies under $50, computers under $1,500, clothes, shoes or learning aids won’t, per a roundup from WFLA.
|  Hurricane Idalia hit the Big Bend area on the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 3 storm. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images | NEW BILLS FILED — Florida’s legislative session starts Jan. 9, and several proposals would address sky-high property insurance. Florida lawmakers — mostly Democrats — have introduced several measures to get at home insurance’s high costs, reports Lawrence Mower of the Miami Herald. DeSantis wants to cut taxes on insurance, while others want to create a grant program to help Floridians pay premiums or create rebate programs for seniors. ON EDUCATION — “Florida lawmakers look to curb student absenteeism,” reports Ryan Dailey of the News Service of Florida. In Florida, “20.9 percent of students in public schools, including students in adult education courses, missed 21 or more school days during the 2021-2022 academic year … The 2021-2022 data showed that 32.3 percent of students, or more than 1 million students, were absent for 10 percent or more of the year.” ON BUSINESS — “Florida may ban most businesses from going cashless. Proposal has Democratic and Republican support,” by South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Anthony Man MORE BILLS — From a prohibition on removing monuments to requiring disclaimers if artificial intelligence is used in political ads, the Pensacola News Journal’s Brandon Girod curated some highlights among the 1,100 bills filed. SWIPE FEES — “Visa and Mastercard are lobbying for inflated credit card fees in Florida,” reports Jason Garcia of Seeking Rents. “The battle to eliminate swipe fees on sales taxes has become major special-interest showdown in Tallahassee — a kind of Godzilla vs. King Kong clash, pitting retailers like Walmart, Outback Steakhouse and Universal Studios against Visa and Mastercard, plus all the banks and credit unions that issue their cards.” — 10 big legal issues to watch this year, including on abortion rights, Disney and redistricting, per News Service of Florida | | PENINSULA AND BEYOND | |
JAN. 10 HEARING — “Federal judge says state can argue in support of Escambia County School Board in book removal case,” reports News Service of Florida. The Florida attorney general’s office will side with the school board in asking a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by parents, authors, publishing company Penguin Random House and the free-speech organization PEN America which alleges that the school board violated the First Amendment and equal-protection rights by removing certain books. Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office argues that school library books aren’t subject to the First Amendment because it constitutes government speech.
‘SYMBOLS MATTER’ — “Jacksonville removes Confederate monument after years of controversy,” reports the Washington Post’s Lori Rozsa. Democratic Mayor Donna Deegan “had promised after her election in May to have the statue taken down but couldn’t get agreement from the city council’s 19 members … The mayor said in a statement that she used her own authority — and nearly $200,000 in private funds — to have the work done. Early cost estimates were as high as $1.3 million.” | | CAMPAIGN MODE | |
NEXT WEEK — DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are likely to be the only GOP presidential candidates who’ll face off for the CNN debate at Drake University in Des Moines on Jan. 10. The deadline to qualify is noon today, per DC Playbook, and Trump is expected to skip again.
LAY OF THE LAND — “Two weeks out from the caucuses, DeSantis-Haley rivalry dominates airwaves as Trump maintains front-runner status,” reports CNN. “As the Republican presidential contenders ready their closing arguments to Iowans, they have offered few indications that these dynamics will change before the January 15 caucuses. And having failed to emerge as the unquestioned alternative to Trump in 2023, the success of his challengers in 2024 now hinges on quickly pushing the others out of the picture.” ‘ALREADY SAID THAT LONG AGO’ — DeSantis confirmed that if Trump is convicted and he is elected, then he would pardon him, reports Alec Hernández and Jake Traylor of NBC News. | | DATELINE D.C. | | | | 
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). | Saul Martinez/Getty Images | NEW RUBIO-BACKED LAW — “No more anonymous shell companies buying houses,” by WLRN’s Daniel Rivero. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) “raised alarm at over $1 billion connected to top Venezuelan officials flooding the real estate market in Miami. Some of those cases resulted in federal indictments and convictions, but the use of anonymous shell companies has long been a headache for law enforcement trying to track down the origin of questionable money and business dealings … Starting on New Year’s Day, shell companies and LLCs that do business in the US will have to fully disclose who is behind them and who actually owns the assets.” | | ODDS, ENDS AND FLORIDA MEN | |
WHO’S NEXT? — Scientists have been working to predict what Florida’s next invasive species could be, and they’ve narrowed it down to four possibilities, per Alex Harris of the Miami Herald. Contenders include alewife, zebra mussels, crab-eating macaques and red shrimp crayfish.
WEDDING — Carly Atchison, national spokesperson for the Ron DeSantis campaign and a NRCC and Tom Emmer alum, on Wednesday married Eric Bird, a professional soccer player who has played in the MLS and the USL, most recently for FC Tulsa. The couple wed in their hometown of Virginia Beach, Va. They met in 7th grade and stayed in touch but only started dating in 2020. Pic ENGAGED — Nick Butterfield, a director at Jared Kushner’s PE firm Affinity Partners and a Trump White House alum, on Saturday proposed to Lindsay Luzader, who owns a doggie daycare business. The couple got engaged in Malibu Creek State Park and met in DC during Covid. Pic BIRTHDAY: Former U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |
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