TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — With an open presidential primary coming in 2028, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is launching an offensive to win back supporters of the Republican leader whom he dared to challenge in the last election. And he's doing so by latching onto President Donald Trump's most prominent issue — immigration.
The problem for DeSantis is his own state's Republicans think they know Trump better.
DeSantis last week ordered lawmakers into a special legislative session to pass a raft of border-related proposals he floated, including criminal charges for officers if they didn’t enforce immigration measures and restrictions on people who send money to families outside the U.S.
Within minutes of the session convening, legislators tossed out the governor’s proposals and called their own special session. They ignored many of his requests and presented their own bill that cedes much of DeSantis’ power on immigration enforcement to the state’s agriculture commissioner. Lawmakers titled it the Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy, or TRUMP, Act.
The battle has exposed the term-limited governor’s struggles to regain the power he lost in his first White House run as he prepares for a potential second try.
Having led Florida's transformation from a perennial swing state to one that votes solidly Republican, DeSantis is betting on his feel for his state's voters, who delivered a second term by a huge 19-point margin. But he has struggled to capture the unstoppable aura he had before he went against Trump — and his relative lack of relationships with lawmakers hasn't helped.
“This is a relationship business," Republican political consultant Jamie Miller said. “And he is not good at the relationship side.”
DeSantis' office did not respond to a request for comment.
A chill takes hold in the Sunshine State
Back in 2023, when DeSantis braved the frigid Iowa winter to run for president — and brought some loyal legislators to campaign for him — he sold himself to voters as a brash, bold executive, a more effective version of Trump. And he could point to the results, thanks to the Florida legislature.
For six years, DeSantis kept lawmakers in line with his veto pen. But as DeSantis’ chances faded on his way to a blowout loss in the Iowa caucuses, the presidential sheen wore off.
In a sign DeSantis was not proving a threat to Trump, the Republican Party of Florida voted in September 2023 not to require participants in the state’s 2024 presidential primary to pledge to support the eventual nominee, which ensured Trump would not have to pledge support to DeSantis when the two were locked in a bitter campaign.
DeSantis would never gain the national traction his campaign had set out to demonstrate, and would be out of the race within a week of the leadoff Iowa caucuses. Despite a year of Trump’s taunts, they reached a public rapprochement last May, when DeSantis agreed to convene his top donors to raise money for Trump.
“Ron, I love that you’re back,” Trump said during a conference call to the donors as they gathered at a Fort Lauderdale hotel, raising $3 million in a day for Trump's campaign.
By December, DeSantis had worked his way into the discussion for Trump’s defense secretary when Pete Hegseth encountered public resistance. Hegseth was ultimately confirmed.
DeSantis has never been comfortable with the backslapping and favor-trading side of politics, which some of his most influential supporters say may rub some lawmakers the wrong way. Even among his admirers, DeSantis is known for having little patience for greasing the wheels of government — shaking hands and making phone calls. Trump, meanwhile, is well-known for his personal touch, often calling lawmakers for their input and inviting current and would-be allies to his Mar-a-Lago estate or his other properties.
And now the governor's attitude is costing him, some capitol watchers say.
Last month, when DeSantis announced he was calling lawmakers into special session, House Speaker Daniel Perez told The Associated Press the legislature was “blindsided.”
“I called him immediately,” Perez said. “He didn’t answer. He didn’t call me back.”
State Sen. Randy Fine is a former ally of the governor who later endorsed Trump in the 2024 primary. The president returned the favor after his victory by endorsing Fine in a Republican primary for the U.S. House seat previously held by Mike Waltz, who was picked to be national security adviser. Last week, Fine won the contest with more than 80% of the vote and is on track to win the seat in April, despite not living in the district he hopes to represent.
Fine compared his reward to the treatment of lawmakers who were loyal to DeSantis — and are now being attacked as “Republicans in name only.”
“I was loyal. I’m going to Congress. They were loyal. They get called RINOs who want amnesty,” Fine said. “There are female members of the Legislature who went to Iowa a year ago and walked through the snow to help him and got frostbite. And now a year later they’re RINOs who want amnesty? I think it’s hard to describe the sense of betrayal.”
DeSantis and the legislature fight over who is closer to Trump
Both sides of the argument over Florida's immigration battle say they are best capturing Trump's desires.
The governor said the legislature's measure is a “betrayal” of conservative voters and naming it after the president is a “misnomer."
“President Trump has been very strong coming out of the gate on immigration enforcement. He wants to solve this problem once and for all. The bill they did is more window dressing,” DeSantis said in a video he posted on X. Transferring his power to the agriculture commissioner, he said, would be like putting the “fox in charge of the hen house,” implying farmers want to continue to hire immigrants who are in the country illegally.
But legislators say they have Trump’s blessing. The bill sponsor, the Florida House speaker and the state senator expected to be sent to Congress visited the White House on Monday to celebrate NHL’s defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers.
“The whole goal of this bill is to help President Trump do his job,” said Republican state Sen. Joe Gruters, a bill sponsor and Trump ally. He said Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to the president and immigration hard-liner, gave lawmakers “technical guidance” and they made changes to the bill “to make sure we’re doing everything that the president’s team wants.”
DeSantis has picked up some support along the way. U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, a key Trump ally who might run to replace the term-limited DeSantis next year, said his own relationship with the governor “got frayed” when Donalds backed Trump two years ago. But last week, Donalds said in a podcast the governor was “correct” that he needed to have enforcement powers over immigration.
Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, chimed in on social media to highlight DeSantis' proposals. The think tank Roberts leads drafted Project 2025, the blueprint for a hard-right turn in American government and society that has inspired a number of Trump actions.
“Now is not the time for watered-down proposals,” Roberts posted on X, giving DeSantis a “bravo.”
Neither the president nor the White House has publicly expressed an opinion. The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
For now, DeSantis appears to be winning the war on social media and conservative airwaves, said Miller, the political consultant.
“But we all know that that microphone can be taken away with one tweet,” he said.
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Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.
Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Kate Payne And Adriana Gomez Licon, The Associated Press
