Three months ago, Adam Putnam enjoyed almost every advantage over his fellow Republican, Rep. Ron DeSantis, in the Florida governor’s race. Putnam, a former U.S. House member and now state secretary of agriculture, had more cash, more name recognition, and a more capable ground game.
Less than a hundred days later, none of that seems to matter. DeSantis has hacked the cable news cycle to seize the momentum in the race, multiplying his already firebrand politics with a presidential endorsement before raising it all to the power of Fox.
“Adam Putnam’s momentum stalls in bid for governor,” Tallahassee bureau chief of the Tampa Bay Times, Steve Bousquet, recently concluded. “He sees trouble—on Fox News.” And he must see a lot of it. DeSantis wakes up with “Fox and Friends,” volunteers as one lucky guy on “Outnumbered,” and pals around during prime time on “the Sean Hannity Show.” If the three-term Republican congressman wasn’t a politician that network would have had to hire him as a contributor months ago.
Force feeding an electorate that much of oneself on television might backfire with other audiences, but DeSantis is running in Florida, where an elderly conservative population mainlines the network every day. More than just a cheap buzz, the earned media strategy has pushed DeSantis to the front of the race. New polling, conducted by Gravis Marketing and sponsored by the candidate, has him at 19 percent over Putnam’s 17 percent support.
Of course, part of the reason this works is that DeSantis has a good story to tell. He graduated from Harvard before earning his law degree from Yale, later enlisting in the Navy before joining SEAL Team One as a legal adviser in Iraq. That experience, coupled with policy knowledge, suits DeSantis well for television. If he can stay on air ahead of the August primary, he looks like a strong pick to win.
