Ron DeSantis

1978-present

Politician Ron DeSantis is the 46^th governor of Florida. Prior to becoming governor, he spent almost three terms in Congress, where he was co-founder of the hard-line Republican House Freedom Caucus. He has received both criticism and praise for his handling of Florida’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and his support of often divisive culturally conservative policies. DeSantis entered the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in May 2023.

FULL NAME: Ronald Dion DeSantis
BORN: September 14, 1978
BIRTHPLACE: Jacksonville, Florida
SPOUSE: Casey DeSantis (2009-present)
CHILDREN: Madison, Mason, and Mamie
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Virgo

Ronald Dion DeSantis was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on September 14, 1978. According to NBC News, DeSantis’ unique middle name is in honor of 1950s and ’60s doo-wop singer Dion DiMucci, former lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts. He is the elder of two children born to Karen, a nurse, and Ronald DeSantis, who worked as a Nielsen TV box installer. However, his younger sister, Christina, died in 2015 at age 30. DeSantis’ parents met while attending college in Youngstown, Ohio, and moved the Florida in the mid-1970s.

After a brief stint in Orlando, the DeSantis family moved to Dunedin, near Tampa Bay. Raised a Catholic, DeSantis started his education at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School. An avid baseball player, in 1991, DeSantis and his Dunedin team made it to the 1991 Little League World Series, losing in the quarterfinals. DeSantis later recalled his early experiences when speaking with a group of players from another Florida Little League team making a World Series appearance, telling them, “Those are friends that you’re going to have forever. Play hard, work hard… just feel lucky that you’re doing it.”

After graduating from Dunedin High School in 1997, DeSantis continued his baseball career at Yale, becoming captain of the varsity team. He also worked a variety of jobs to pay his way, before graduating in 2001 magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in history. He received his juris doctor from Harvard Law School in 2005.

While still enrolled at Harvard Law School, DeSantis joined the U.S. Navy in 2004, where he completed training as a naval judge advocate general (JAG) and was first sent to a naval base in Florida before transferring to the U.S. detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. As a JAG, DeSantis provided legal advice to military staff and detainees. In 2023, a former detainee alleged that DeSantis had been present while he and other detainees were force-fed in an effort to break hunger strikes that protested conditions in Guantánamo, a charge DeSantis denied.

After less than a year at Guantanamo, DeSantis began working as an advisor to an elite Navy SEAL team at Naval Base Coronado in California and then in Iraq in 2007. He returned after a year and became a U.S. Attorney for the Justice Department in Florida. He left active military duty in 2010 but remained in the U.S. Navy Reserve until shortly after he became governor, retiring with the rank of lieutenant commander. In 2011, DeSantis published his first book, Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama, a harshly critical look at the progressive politics of then-President Barack Obama and DeSantis’ belief that the country had strayed from the philosophical vision of the Founding Fathers.

Ron DeSantis, seen here in 2013, served in U.S. Congress for nearly six years.

Fueled by the conservative political groundswell of the growing Tea Party Movement, DeSantis ran for Congress in a newly drawn north Florida district in 2012, defeating six challengers to secure the Republican nomination before scoring an easy victory in the general election. While he had little legislative success passing bills he sponsored, he became a prominent vocal critic of the Obama administration, arguing against increased spending, calling for stronger border security, and voting to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and for measures that would have cut Medicare and raised the age for Social Security (controversial positions he would later try to walk back as his political aspirations rose). He also turned down his Congressional pension and argued for term limits for members of Congress.

He was reelected in 2014 and, the following year, became a cofounder of the House Freedom Caucus, a hard-line conservative group with the stated goal of pushing the House Republican leadership to the right. In 2015, DeSantis announced he was running for the U.S. Senate but withdrew from the race when Florida’s incumbent Senator Marco Rubio decided to run for reelection after withdrawing from the presidential race. DeSantis was reelected to a third House term in 2016 and served until his resignation in September 2018 amid his race to become Florida governor.

President Donald Trump supported Ron DeSantis during his successful 2018 gubernatorial campaign.

In early 2018, DeSantis launched his campaign for governor, where he was considered an underdog but eventually secured the GOP nomination, thanks in part to support from then-President Donald Trump. The general election was contentious, with the DeSantis camp facing accusations of racism in their campaign against his Black opponent, Democrat Andrew Gillum—a charge the DeSantis campaign denied. The Trump presidency played an outsized role in the race as well, with DeSantis closely aligning himself with the president’s often controversial positions on issues like immigration, abortion, and gun rights. On election night, DeSantis narrowly defeated Gillum, winning by just 0.4 percentage points.

Accomplishments

DeSantis acted forcefully to reshape Florida as governor. He appointed several conservative justices to the state’s supreme court, lowered the state’s corporate tax rate, waded into the immigration debate by signing legislation forbidding “sanctuary cities” in Florida, and joined Republican governors from Texas and Arizona in sending newly arrived migrants on planes to northern cities. He also signed a series of laws curtailing abortion access, including a 2023 bill that banned most abortions after just six weeks.

He waded further into the culture wars, particularly in education, where he’s championed the fight against what he and his supporters have dubbed “woke” politics. He’s been a fierce supporter of the parent’s rights movement, designed to provide more parental oversight of educational issues, by supporting efforts to remove “harmful materials” from libraries and battling the College Board over Advanced Placement courses in African American history. He also signed bills banning diversity and inclusion programs in college and the teaching of “critical race theory.”

DeSantis also expanded protections for gun owners while many others have called for legal changes in the fight to curb gun violence.

DeSantis won praise for his response to Hurricane Ian in September 2022. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit Florida in nearly a century, causing an estimated $40 billion in damage and killing 144 people. DeSantis’ hands-on response and cooperation with President Joe Biden’s administration ensured the quick delivery of state and federal aid.

COVID-19 Response

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, DeSantis enacted policies aimed at protecting the elderly and vulnerable, but resisted calls to “lockdown” the state, only doing so in early April 2020, weeks after much of the rest of his fellow governors had done so.

Over the next several months, he eased many of those restrictions, arguing that limitations posed a greater threat to Florida’s economy and the liberty of its citizens. By the fall of 2020, he had lifted most restrictions, reopened schools, and supported bills that prevented local authorities from enforcing their own COVID-19 enforcements on the local level.

He was vaccinated and urged others to do so but opposed vaccine mandates that were implemented in much of the country, signing a bill that outlawed mandates for both government and private-sector businesses. As the pandemic continued, he became a more forceful critic of the medical and governmental response to the crisis. Although many criticized DeSantis measures, Florida’s death rate remained within the national average and its economy didn’t take the drastic hit seen by much of the rest of the country.

Battle with Disney

In 2022, DeSantis announced his support for a bill that severely limited discussion of sexual identity and gender in Florida’s public schools. Critics quickly dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay” law, fearing that it would prevent LGBTQ students from finding support from teachers and school staff and potentially open educators to legal liability if they discussed these topics with students.

The Walt Disney Company, one of the largest employers in Florida, initially avoided taking a position on the bill but called for its repeal after significant internal and external pressure. In response, DeSantis and the Florida legislature passed a bill that took over control of Reedy Creek Improvement District, the self-governing district that allowed Disney to control municipal services in the area surrounding its Orlando Disney World theme parks and hotels. The new law also appointed a new board of supervisors for the district. Lawsuits soon followed.

DeSantis supporters hailed his actions as reigning in a company that they viewed as “woke,” while detractors claimed the governor was trying to limit corporate free speech and had overreached his self-proclaimed position as a pro-business, small-government conservative. In 2023, Disney announced it was cancelling plans to relocate a major division of the company to Florida, in a move that would cost the state an estimated 2,000 jobs and millions in taxes and other revenue.

Reelection

Despite the resulting controversies over some of DeSantis’ positions, he easily won reelection to a second term in 2022, defeating former Governor Charlie Crist, with the largest margin of victory in the state in over 40 years.

Casey and Ron DeSantis, seen here in May 2023, have been married since 2009.

DeSantis met Casey Black at a Florida golf course in 2006, while he was serving as a Judge Advocate General at nearby Naval Station Mayport. The Ohio-born Black had moved to Florida after college in South Carolina and had worked as a television host for the Golf Channel and as a reporter for the local WJXT television station. The couple immediately hit it off, with DeSantis writing in his 2023 memoir, “There was no way I was leaving that driving range without asking her on a date.” The couple remained together during DeSantis’ deployment to Iraq and married in 2009 at Walt Disney World.

The couple’s first child, daughter Madison, was born in 2016, followed by son Mason in 2018, and a second daughter, Mamie, in 2020.

In 2021, Casey DeSantis announced she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and, treatment and surgery, declared that she was in remission in March 2022. While serving as Florida’s first lady, Casey DeSantis has supported several initiatives, including mental health and hurricane recovery efforts. A 2023 article in Politico touted her political savvy and her role as one of her husband’s most trusted advisors, highlighting the increasingly involved role she is likely to play in his 2024 presidential campaign.

Shortly after his 2020 reelection to a second term as Florida’s governor, groundwork began for a potential 2024 bid for the GOP nomination. In 2023, DeSantis published a second book, The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival. The memoir traces his upbring and political career. DeSantis began travelling the country, including visits to crucial early primary states like New Hampshire and Iowa. Considered the biggest potential challenger to Donald Trump’s campaign, the two former allies began to distance themselves, launching a series of negative attacks.

DeSantis formally announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on May 24, 2023, in a Twitter Spaces event hosted by the platform’s owner Elon Musk. Despite technical gaffes that plagued the announcement, DeSantis later boasted to Fox News, “We had a huge audience. It was the biggest they ever had. It did break the Twitter space. We’re really excited about the enthusiasm.”

• We reject woke ideology. We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die!
• I see a bright future for Florida and for America, and my [U.S. Senate] campaign will be about the ideas and principles that will help us achieve a more perfect union.
• It is not enough for us to merely continue to talk about and contribute to the echo chamber of white noise of what’s wrong with America or for candidates to spout off silly poll-tested talking points about national security or foreign policy.
• I’m defined by my accomplishments. I’m defined by leading this state, and I’m defined by having a state which is the No. 1 destination for Americans who are looking for a better way of life.

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