Florida governor Ron DeSantis is hitting the campaign trail and headlining rallies to promote a slate of “America First” GOP candidates competing in key elections this November.
Hosted by Turning Point Action, the lobbying arm of the organization founded by Charlie Kirk, the “Unite and Win” events will feature DeSantis as the keynote speaker alongside Kari Lake, Blake Masters, J.D. Vance, Doug Mastriano, Mark Ronchetti, and Yvette Herrell.
The MAGA devotees each won their primaries in a field of conventional Republicans and will now face their Democratic counterparts “in some of this election cycle’s most consequential elections,” a press release reads. The rallies will take place in New Mexico and Arizona on August 14 and Pennsylvania and Ohio on August 19.
“Gov. DeSantis is America’s governor and one of the most popular leaders in America,” Charlie Kirk told Fox News. “He has become the model for a new conservative movement that is willing to stand on principle and to actually fight on behalf of the values of his voters.”
“That he is willing to throw the full weight of his support behind Kari, Blake, and JD tells you everything you need to know about these incredible candidates who I endorse and support 100%,” he added.
The trio recently triumphed in their respective primary elections, with Lake securing the Republican nomination for governor and Masters for the Senate in Arizona, and Vance securing the Republican nomination for the Senate in Ohio. All three landed the endorsement of former president Trump before their primaries and have embraced his populist platform and some of his 2020 election-denial rhetoric.
Trump-approved and “Stop the Steal” candidate Doug Mastriano, for whom DeSantis will also campaign, benefited from Democratic financial interference in his primary contest, a scenario similar to that which played out in the GOP primary for Michigan’s third congressional district.
Trump-backed John Gibbs received nearly half-a-million dollars from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and went on last week to defeat incumbent Peter Meijer, one of ten Republican Congress members who voted to impeach Trump, for the House nomination.
While he hasn’t explicitly criticized Trump for sewing doubt about the election, DeSantis has been reticent to embrace claims of widespread fraud in 2020, focusing instead on wielding his executive authority to combat progressive overreach on cultural issues. He has presided over the enactment of a state mask mandate ban for public places, a 15-week abortion restriction, a K-12 and corporate critical race theory ban, and most notably the Parental Rights in Education law, which prohibits the teaching of sexual matters to kindergartners through third graders in public schools.