Conservative talk-radio hosts and Republicans elected to statewide office could help DeSantis — but he must first make the race close.
Conservative talk-radio hosts and Republicans elected to statewide office could help DeSantis — but he must first make the race close.
A s Florida governor Ron DeSantis and former president Donald Trump circle each other in the early stages of the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, they are being watched by two important, risk-averse groups of powerbrokers within the Republican Party: conservative talk-radio hosts and Republican statewide elected officials.
Talk radio, is, potentially, one of the most powerful forces in the nominating contest. It is more trusted among Republican-leaning voters than the mainstream media. Collectively, it even has wider reach than Rupert Murdoch’s empire of conservative news outlets (the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Fox News).
This is easy to forget because, to most non-conservatives, it is harder to determine where talk radio stands at any given moment than it is to determine where the Murdoch press stands. You can find out what the New York Post and Wall Street Journal are talking about by clicking on their websites, and there is only one Fox News to keep track of. By contrast, talk radio’s audience is scattered between both syndicated shows and local programs — but if a clear consensus 2024 candidate emerged among conservative talk-radio hosts, it could make a vast difference to their millions of listeners.
At the moment, Trump would surely love to be that consensus candidate — or at least for talk radio to coalesce around an anti-DeSantis position. The Murdoch press is now opposed to Trump and can be counted upon to produce a steady stream of anti-Trump content. Trump has loyal proxies such as Sebastian Gorka and Representative Matt Gaetz (Fla.), but they have neither the credibility nor the reach of the Murdoch press. As long as Murdoch’s outlets stay hostile, the anti-Trump proxies can do more damage to Trump than Trump’s proxies can do to DeSantis.
Trump himself has greater reach and credibility with Republican voters than the Murdoch empire (as he proved in both 2016 and 2020), but he is constrained by circumstances in his ability to attack DeSantis. Most Republicans like both Trump and DeSantis and don’t want to see them attacking each other this early in the process. So Trump risks doing more damage to himself than to DeSantis by attacking the Florida governor.
That’s where talk radio could help. Its personalities could be Trump’s attack dogs, damaging DeSantis while keeping Trump safe from any blowback, just as the Murdoch press is attacking Trump while keeping DeSantis safe from any blowback. The problem with this plan from Trump’s perspective is talk radio’s economic incentives. Whatever their alleged principles or ideology, conservative talk-show hosts are terrified of alienating their audiences. That kept them in line during the Trump era, but it could work against Trump now. It is one thing to attack a candidate on behalf of Trump when that candidate is polling in the 20s. It is another thing entirely to attack a candidate on behalf of Trump when that candidate is polling in the 30s or 40s, and thus likely has many supporters among the host’s listeners.
In other words, as long as DeSantis is broadly liked by conservatives, talk-radio hosts will be limited in their willingness to attack him. The good news for Trump is that the same dynamic cuts both ways: Hosts can’t afford to alienate the pro-Trump or the pro-DeSantis segments of their audiences. So if DeSantis can stay close to Trump in the opinion polls and avoid any major mistakes, most talk-radio hosts can be counted on to stay relatively neutral between Trump and DeSantis.
What about the second group of risk-averse party powerbrokers, though? What role are popular statewide elected Republicans such as Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, and Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia likely to play in the 2024 contest? They have some influence over their local Republican electorates but, in most cases, Donald Trump is at least as popular among Republicans in their states as they are. (Kemp is one notable exception, having just crushed a primary challenge from a Trump-backed opponent.)
Sununu is a case in point. In 2022, New Hampshire’s junior senator, Democrat Maggie Hassan, was up for reelection and considered beatable. In the primary race between Trump-backed Don Bolduc and state senate president Chuck Morse, Sununu endorsed Morse, correctly sensing that Bolduc would have a much lower chance of defeating Hassan. His endorsement did have an impact on the race, but it wasn’t enough to stave off Bolduc’s nomination: It helped Morse, who was ten points behind Bolduc, close the gap in the lead-up to Election Day, which saw Bolduc win by 1.4 points.
A similar story played out in Arizona, where you had a proxy battle between Trump and Governor Doug Ducey over the who should be the next governor. Ducey backed Karrin Taylor Robson, while Trump backed Kari Lake. As happened in New Hampshire, the Trump-favored candidate faded late in the primary race but still won.
These examples indicate the limits of what statewide elected Republicans can do to weaken Trump: They might be able to help a candidate make up a five- or six-point deficit in a primary, but they can’t decisively help a candidate close a ten- or 20-point gap. This, in turn, could make it harder for statewide elected officials (whether Sununu in New Hampshire or the Republican governors and senators in Iowa, South Carolina, and other states) to coalesce around a single Trump alternative. If DeSantis or some other Trump alternative is five or six points behind the former president, the intervention of the state’s elected Republicans might swing the contest. But if the same alternative is 15 or 20 points behind Trump, then all the statewide Republican officeholders can do is help him lose to Trump by somewhat fewer votes. And no politician wants to upset his party’s once and future presidential nominee — and that nominee’s voters —while humiliating himself on his own home turf.
The bottom line, then, is that much will depend on how Ron DeSantis does in the polls going forward. If DeSantis stays competitive with Trump in the polls and well ahead of any other potential challengers, he can reasonably hope for a fair shake from conservative talk radio and a cascade of endorsements from Republican officeholders who are tired of Trump’s chaos. If, however, Trump builds a decisive polling lead, DeSantis won’t be able to count on either group to help his cause. In politics as in many other endeavors, success begets success. For DeSantis to win over party powerbrokers, he — on his own merits — will have to make the nominating contest close and keep it that way.