Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis laid out a culture war battle plan Saturday during a speech at an Iowa fundraiser ahead of a possible presidential bid in 2024.
“Truth is enduring; they can cover it up, hide it, they can try to distort it, but at the end of the day, eventually, the lies and deceit fade away, and truth is what remains,” DeSantis, a potential 2024 candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, said at the Feenstra Family Picnic near Sioux City, Iowa. “I believe that the truth will set us free. Now, this advent of woke ideology really represents a challenge to this. I think it’s a war on truth, and because it’s a war on truth, we must wage a war on woke.”
It is wrong for a teacher to instruct a student that they were born in the wrong body or that their gender is a choice,” DeSantis continued. “We should not have transgender ideology in our schools, and in Florida, we have eliminated it. It’s not there, and if that means we had to stand up to a company like Disney, here I stand, I’m not backing down from that. I’m standing for the parents and the students of the state of Florida, and we are doing what is right.”
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“It is wrong for a swimmer to compete for three years on the men’s team and then switch to the women’s team and then win the women’s national championship,” DeSantis said in reference to Lia Thomas competing in the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships. “Sorry, that is a fraud that they are trying to perpetuate on us, and we should not accept that.”
Never Back Down, a political action committee supporting the Florida governor, announced plans to send mailers to Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina voters.
The PAC, founded by former Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security to the Trump administration, Ken Cuccinelli, is tasked with recruiting DeSantis into the GOP primaries and will likely serve as the governor’s main fundraising arm.
The PAC is hiring staff in the first 18 Republican primary states to prepare for Super Tuesday on March 5 as it gears up for DeSantis to run for president, according to the AP.
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The super PAC spokesperson Erin Perrine says the moves put Never Back Down in a “dominant” position in the four early states.
“Never Back Down is building a grassroots movement that has not yet been seen in presidential primary elections,” Erin Perrine, the PAC’s communications director, said in a statement. “We already have a dominant presence in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, and we are expanding our operations outside of these first four primary states as the energy behind Gov. Ron DeSantis to run for president and defeat Joe Biden in 2024 continues to grow.”
“We are ahead of the game in expanding our operations outside of the first four primary states as the energy behind Governor Ron DeSantis to run for President and defeat Joe Biden in 2024 continues to grow,” Perrine said in a statement.
Never Back Down has been airing ads since April in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. Veteran Republican strategist Jeff Roe, who helped guide Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to winning the 2016 Iowa caucuses, is advising the leading PAC’s organizing effort.
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