GOP candidate Ron DeSantis, who will go down in history in infamy for having used the racist code word “monkey” to describe his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, is hitting the panic button as he finds himself falling behind Gillum in the Florida race for governor.
Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum wasn’t even expected to win the Democratic nomination for Governor of Florida. But now that he has, he’s quickly found himself a few points ahead of his Republican challenger Ron DeSantis in every major poll and DeSantis is panicking.
DeSantis announced on Monday that he’s immediately resigning his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, saying he wants to focus on the race for Governor instead. That’s fine, except it’s not standard practice in these situations. For instance, in the 2008 presidential election, neither Barack Obama nor John McCain resigned from the Senate. So why is DeSantis resigning?
Could DeSantis be trying to escape from a scandal in Washington that we don’t yet know about, which he fears is going to get dredged up by the increasing attention on his career? It’s possible. However, there is no specific indication of this.
Instead, we’re more inclined to agree with Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC, who summed it up this way: “This is always a sign of a campaign in trouble. Think of Bob Dole resigning from Senate to run full time against Bill Clinton.” In other words, DeSantis is panicking because he’s losing.
Indeed. FiveThirtyEight reveals that Andrew Gillum is ahead of Ron DeSantis by an average of three points in major polls, a small but significant lead, considering that Gillum had so little name recognition as recently as two weeks ago.
Additionally, Gillum has out-fundraised DeSantis by an eight-to-one margin, The Washington Post reports.
No wonder DeSantis is scrambling for cover.
