Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will meet with Iowa Republican legislators in Des Moines on Friday amid rising expectations that he will run for president in 2024, according to people familiar with the matter.
(Bloomberg) — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will meet with Iowa Republican legislators in Des Moines on Friday amid rising expectations that he will run for president in 2024, according to people familiar with the matter.
DeSantis has been on a national tour to promote his recently-published book, “The Courage to Be Free,” yet his visit to a state that has typically been crucial to the nomination hopes of presidential candidates will be scrutinized by both Republicans and Democrats.
The governor will greet members of the state House and Senate at the Capitol, according to the people, engaging in the sort of retail politicking that’s expected in the Iowa caucuses. The Legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, will not be in session on Friday.
He will speak about his book at the Rhythm City Casino in Davenport on Friday morning and at the State Fairgrounds in Des Moines on Friday afternoon. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, who has said she would remain neutral before the caucuses, is scheduled to join him.
A representative for DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday night.
His trip will take place three days before former President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Iowa. Trump, who announced his candidacy last November, has been lashing out at DeSantis, whom he once considered a political protege but now may become a powerful rival.
DeSantis has, for the most part, ignored the insults, and Trump.
The former president, who has been blamed by some Republicans for the party’s disappointments in the midterm elections, has found that, for now, some Republican leaders in Iowa prefer to remain neutral in the 2024 race.
Trump, along with former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, an Ohio biotech entrepreneur, are the only declared Republican candidates, but several more are watching eagerly from the sidelines.
It’s not clear what DeSantis plans to say at the Capitol, but the Iowa Legislature has been working on a wide-ranging proposal to restructure the state government in a way that Reynolds has presented as more efficient and responsive to voters.
The Senate passed a bill that would require students in elementary and secondary schools to use school bathrooms that align with their gender assigned at birth.
And both chambers passed a bill to ban gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 18. It would ban minors from undergoing surgery to affirm their gender identity.
Those measures dovetail with legislation that DeSantis has championed in Florida. One law, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, bars instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation before the fourth grade.
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