DeSantis way behind Trump in race for nomination, says aide

Steve Cortes concedes the Florida governor’s campaign faces an ‘uphill battle’ to overhaul the former president.

Ron DeSantis has launched a campaign blitz targeting the early states to vote in next year’s primary. Picture: AFP

A senior adviser to Ron DeSantis has admitted that the Florida governor remains “way behind” Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, with the former president the “runaway frontrunner”.

Steve Cortes, a former Trump adviser who works for Mr De­antis’s Never Back Down fundraising committee, gave a bleak assessment of the governor’s presidential prospects, conceding that the campaign faces an “uphill battle” to overhaul the former president.

Mr DeSantis lags a distant second to Mr Trump in the early battleground states that will define the Republican primary next year.

Speaking at a Twitter Spaces event on Sunday, Mr Cortes insisted that the Florida governor could still beat Mr Trump and remains the better prospect to defeat President Joe Biden in next year’s election.

Mr DeSantis was neck and neck with Mr Trump in polls at the start of the year, but has watched the former president build a commanding lead since the spring. The Morning Consult poll that tracks the Republican primary race last week placed Mr Trump on 57 per cent, Mr De-Santis on 19 per cent, and the rest of the field in single digits.

“Right now in national polling we are way behind, I’ll be the first to admit that,” Mr Cortes said. “I believe in being blunt and honest. It’s an uphill battle but clearly Donald Trump is the runaway frontrunner.”

Despite mounting legal troubles, including criminal indictments relating to a hush money payment to conceal an alleged affair with an adult film actor before the 2016 election and the hoard of classified documents seized at his Florida home last year, Mr Trump, 77, has extended his lead in recent weeks.

DeSantis, 44, has launched a campaign blitz targeting the early states to vote in next year’s primary, but has seen his poll numbers eroded as other Republican candidates join the field.

The DeSantis campaign was criticised at the weekend after sharing a video that attacked Trump over his past support for the LGBTQ community. A prominent Republican group that supports gay rights ­denounced the move as “divisive and desperate”.

The Times