She is, they say, in the middle of good decisions of his, but bad ones, too. “The tip of the spear,” said a Republican consultant. “She’s the power behind the throne,” a Republican lobbyist told me. Especially forthright are the people who are granted anonymity on account of their fear of retribution given their power - not just his but hers. The DeSantis inner circle is too small and remains so, they say, not only because he constitutionally doesn’t trust people but because she doesn’t either. She is and always has been by far his most important adviser, they say, because she is hesitant to cede that space to nearly anybody else. “Unlike any first lady in my extended memory,” added Tallahassee fixture Mac Stipanovich.įor nearly as long, too, though, others who have worked with her or around her have nodded more quietly to the downsides of the starring part that she plays. “In shaping him, in driving him … it’s different,” said a veteran Republican lobbyist. “She is every bit as involved in Ron’s rise as Ron is himself,” David Jolly, the ex-GOP Florida congressperson who’s now an MSNBC analyst, told me. In the DeSantis political project, she is unusually important and uncommonly involved, according to hundreds of interviews over the last few years and more than 60 more over the last few weeks - an array of former staffers, current supporters and donors, state and federal lawmakers and Florida lobbyists and political professionals. A telegenic former television personality, a breast cancer survivor and a mother of three young kids, Casey, 42, has a sort of policy portfolio of her own that ranges from hurricane recovery to issues of mental health. Here, then, in eastern Iowa and in concentrated form, was a preview of what is to come in the about-to-be-announced presidential candidacy of DeSantis - not just his run but also the often stage-dominating prominence of her role.įor some time now she’s been seen mostly and by many as an absolute superstar of a political spouse, a not so “secret weapon,” even something like his saving grace - an antidote for her sometimes awkward husband, social in a way that he is not, charismatic in a way that he is not, generally and seemingly at ease in the spotlight in a way that he so often and so evidently is not.
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