(NewsNation) — There’s been no official word yet, but many around the Republican Party are expecting a major presidential primary showdown could take shape between former President Donald Trump and Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis ahead of 2024.
DeSantis will be holding a fundraising event in Utah the week of July 18, causing rumors of his potential presidential run to heat up further.
Trump remains an intensely popular figure in the Republican Party, as evidenced by a handful of wins by candidates he has backed in Senate and House races this year.
But there is a growing feeling the former president’s grip on the party could be weakening as troves of stunning new information continue to come out during the Jan. 6 investigative committee hearings.
DeSantis, no stranger to controversy himself, could emerge as a potent challenger to Trump’s grip on the party in the 2024 presidential primary. DeSantis’ popularity in the party has grown as he has taken public stands against COVID-19 lockdowns in his state and boasted of his ardent support for Trump over the years.
Julia Manchester, a political reporter for The Hill, said on NewsNation’s “Rush Hour” that some within the Republican Party are beginning to turn their attention toward DeSantis.
“I think Ron DeSantis is seen as a presidential hopeful on the Republican side just because of the star power he has really amassed since the beginning of the global COVID-19 pandemic,” Manchester said. “You see a lot of Republican donors starting to come around to him. They were coming around to him before, but I think they’re looking at him as a potential future leader of the party and they see the future in him.”
The tight relationship between DeSantis and Trump, which was once highlighted by a DeSantis campaign commercial that did nothing but brag about the Florida governor’s love for Trump, could be devolving into a political rivalry.
While neither man has spoken ill of the other, and DeSantis still has not declared he is running for president, Trump was sure to remind the world he helped get DeSantis to where he is, according to CNN.
“Ron DeSantis has absolutely benefitted in many ways from the Trump brand,” Manchester said, “although during the pandemic, especially, they were seen very much in lockstep with each other, we saw them together a lot, they were seen as sort of two peas in a pod, if you will.”
For the record, DeSantis claims any rivalry with Trump is “total bunk” and insisted in an interview with Fox News Trump is a friend of his.
Trump even went so far as to tell NewsMax he thought DeSantis would make a good choice for vice president in 2024. But Politico reported that Trump has been souring on DeSantis because the governor has not yet declared he will not run for president in 2024.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance in October, Trump declared if DeSantis did run in 2024, he would “beat him like I would beat everyone else.”
If DeSantis were to run, how the race would actually shake out remains unclear if recent projections and polls are any indication.
A Conservative Political Action Committee poll taken in February showed Trump would lead a primary showdown against DeSantis by a margin of 59% to 28%, a commanding lead for the former president.
But a University of New Hampshire study conducted in June showed DeSantis would actually have an edge on Trump in that state by a thin margin of 39% to 37%.
And a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll shared exclusively with The Hill showed that DeSantis would be the leading Republican candidate in a presidential primary if Trump were not to run. He was followed by former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Ted Cruz, and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley.