Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who’s working for the Republican presidential nomination, took his marketing campaign into the yard of his most vocal Democratic critic on Monday, courting donors at an occasion close to the house of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California weeks after sending two planeloads of migrants to California’s capital.
The $3,300-a-plate fund-raiser, hosted by a Republican actual property developer at a suburban nation membership in Sacramento, was closed to the press, and Mr. DeSantis didn’t make a public assertion. But the placement itself underscored the tit-for-tat that has escalated for greater than a 12 months between the 2 governors, who’ve more and more used one another as political foils.
Florida officers acknowledged this month that the state had orchestrated the abrupt relocation of some three dozen Latin American asylum seekers from Texas to Sacramento. Mr. DeSantis, who for months has been transferring migrants, largely from Texas, into Democratic-run cities and cities, has stated the initiative is meant to equalize the burden of the Biden administration’s immigration insurance policies.
Mr. Newsom instructed the strikes had been tantamount to “kidnapping” and denounced them as callous political stunts, noting that California, too, shares a stretch of the Mexican border. An investigation by the California lawyer basic’s workplace is underway.
Days after the migrants’ flights, Mr. Newsom made a uncommon look on Fox News, the conservative community, assertively defending California insurance policies and assailing these of governors comparable to Mr. DeSantis. He instructed the Fox News host Sean Hannity that he can be “all in — count on it” for a debate in regards to the points with Florida’s governor.
Mr. DeSantis later retorted at a news convention that Mr. Newsom ought to “stop pussyfooting around” and run for president if he wished to air their variations on a debate stage.
“Are you going to get in and do it?” he demanded. “Or are you just going to sit on the sidelines and chirp?”
“So … debate challenge accepted? Or do you need your notes for that, too?” California’s governor retorted, posting a video of Mr. DeSantis at a podium apparently glancing down at a crib sheet earlier than making the “pussyfooting” problem.
Although Mr. Newsom has stated he has “subzero” curiosity in working for president and has energetically supported President Biden’s re-election, he’s broadly seen as a possible contender for the White House after the 2024 election.
Mr. DeSantis has been thought to be Donald J. Trump’s main rival for the Republican nomination in 2024, however whilst the previous president faces a federal indictment, nationwide polls have constantly proven Mr. DeSantis working some 30 factors behind Mr. Trump.
“Look, DeSantis needs to poke Gavin the Bear,” stated Mike Madrid, a Republican political advisor in California. “He needs to keep that fire going — it’s the main thing that gives him oxygen.”
But, he added, the feud additionally elevates Mr. Newsom’s profile.
“This fight over the cultural direction of the country is in many ways being spearheaded by Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom, and it serves both of their interests,” stated Mr. Madrid, who didn’t attend the fund-raiser.
True to type, Mr. DeSantis’s marketing campaign signaled his arrival in California on Monday by tweeting that “the debate is already settled” and posting a brand new marketing campaign advert describing California as plagued with inhabitants loss and homelessness and strewn with “needles and feces.”
“California’s liberal governance is a disaster,” the DeSantis marketing campaign declared.
The Florida governor’s look, in a county the place greater than 60 p.c of voters supported President Biden in 2020, drew no protesters and crammed the small car parking zone on the Del Paso Country Club with supporters from the capital space’s extra conservative precincts.
It was one in every of a number of stops deliberate for Mr. DeSantis in California on Monday, together with a second occasion on the Harris Ranch in Coalinga, in Fresno County. It was additionally amongst a flurry of visits to California by White House contenders as momentum gathers for the 2024 presidential race.
President Biden was in Silicon Valley on Monday — with Mr. Newsom — to announce some $600 million in federal funding for local weather resilience at a marshland protect in Palo Alto. Mr. Biden additionally was scheduled to look at two personal fund-raisers for his re-election marketing campaign.
Other Republican presidential candidates stopping in California in latest days included Nikki Haley, the previous governor of South Carolina and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Tim Scott, a U.S. senator from South Carolina.
California is probably the most populous state within the nation, with an economic system bigger than that of most international locations, and candidates in each events regard it as a serious supply of political funding.
Although President Biden carried the state by an amazing margin in 2020, greater than six million Californians additionally voted for Mr. Trump, who obtained extra votes from California than from every other state.
Source: www.nytimes.com