As the date for the first presidential primary debate for the 2024 race dawns, more and more candidates are stepping forward with bids. This upcoming race will model the current political climate of the United States and focus on many issues such as abortion, firearms, LGBTQIA+ rights and economic and healthcare regulations. One of the contenders is Florida’s current Republican governor Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis has been involved in the US government since 2012, when he was first elected to the House of Representatives and has been popular amongst Florida voters, winning last year’s re-election in a landslide. DeSantis is well-known in the media for his ideologies. During his time as governor, he has signed bills related to expanding the death penalty, diminishing time for abortions, allowing concealed carry without permits, and limiting LGBTQIA+ education in Florida public schools.
On Wednesday, May 24, DeSantis kicked off his campaign with a short video posted to Twitter titled “Our Great American Comeback” and planned to host a Twitter space along with Elon Musk, tech entrepreneur and previous Twitter CEO. The ideation behind choosing Twitter seems to be two-fold. DeSantis’s biggest competitor is Donald Trump, who has a notoriously bad relationship with Twitter, having been banned from the platform in 2021 until Musk restored his account. DeSantis’ choice to use the platform was an obvious jab at his competitor and an attempt to announce his bid in a revolutionary way. Musk even stated, “it will be the first time that something like this is happening on social media and with real-time questions and answers, unscripted.”
The campaign video garnered over 27 million views as of today, and depicts DeSantis encouraging people to value “facts over fear, education over indoctrination, law and order over rioting and disorder.” He maintains that he has held the line in Florida and that he can extend that strength to the rest of the United States as well.
The Twitter spaces interview, got off to a rocky start. Around 21 minutes into the conversation, DeSantis could no longer be heard by viewers. The live audio feature crashed and continued to do so repeatedly for around 20 minutes. The interview had to be restarted and moved to a new space to curtail the technical glitches. Musk claimed that the glitch was from the sheer number of people trying to tune in, causing the servers to overload since around 600,000 people had tuned in.
Critics of DeSantis called the statement to question, noting that many spaces had hosted more concurrent listeners before and had not faced such problems, but Musk confirmed that the numbers were the source of the technical difficulties. Once the space was restarted and a lesser number of viewers were attending, the live stream ran much more smoothly.
Harshada Seelam, third-year BIOS, watched the live stream along with her family and witnessed the glitch first-hand. “My family likes to keep up with the political climate of America, especially because the elections have been getting more and more important. DeSantis launching a campaign wasn’t the biggest surprise to us, but we were confused by his choice of platform, so we decided to tune in and see how he was going to proceed.”
When asked about how the experience was, Seelam mentioned, “the sound was cutting in and out for so long and we had to wait for about half an hour to hear DeSantis or [David] Sacks. I don’t know why Twitter had to be used. I don’t think that was an appropriate choice of platform for announcing something as important as a candidacy. It kind of takes away from the importance of what was being done and it made him [DeSantis] look a little ridiculous at the moment.”
The Florida governor managed to keep face in light of the fiasco and bounced back with media appearances and continued to fundraise money. Viewers of the Twitter space learned some essential news about the campaign. His policies lean heavily right, even more so than his contender Donald Trump. He also has some of the best backing a candidate has seen for the upcoming race. The super Political Action Committee (PAC) supporting him – “Never Back Down” – has raised over $30 million for his campaign. He also has funding leftover from his campaign when he got re-elected and has received the support of at least 50 House members so far.
As 2024 nears, it is important to keep up with the many different candidates and potential candidates for president and vice president and the policies they stand for. To do so, one may visit their campaign websites and read articles from media outlets on both political sides. The same applies to other candidates, including incumbent president Biden, former president Donald Trump and former vice president Mike Pence.