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Governor Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., may be getting one step closer to running for the presidency in 2024, thanks to a new bill that was recently passed in the Florida Senate.
According to a report from the Washington Examiner, the bill, SB 7050, added an amendment to its provisions that would repeal a standing state requirement that mandates current officeholders’ resignation from their current office before they can run for president.
Per their report, then-Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist signed “resign to run” back into law in 2018. Since then, it has been the subject of much speculation, given DeSantis’s popularity among conservative voters who would like to see him run for president in 2024.
However, Gov. DeSantis has deftly dodged the question of whether he will run, opting instead to raise his national and international profile by visiting electoral battleground states on a weeks-long political tour.
Over the past week, he has even traveled internationally. RSBN revealed that DeSantis was busy visiting Japan, the U.K., and Israel to share his “Florida Blueprint” of success with world leaders – and, presumably, to forge relationships ahead of a potential presidential bid.
In Japan, he told CNN that when it came to 2024, “I’m not a candidate, so we’ll see if and when that changes.”
So far, DeSantis has trailed heavily in 2024 GOP political polling against declared frontrunner President Donald Trump. A new Emerson College poll, for example, found that Trump had earned an impressive 62 percent of GOP primary voter support, while DeSantis had netted only 16 percent, illustrating a 46-point lead for the 45th president.
President Trump recently slammed DeSantis’s world tour, calling it “an emergency Round the World tour” aimed at removing “the stain from his failing campaign.”
As reported by the Washington Examiner, if SB 7050 passes in the Florida House, with Gov. DeSantis’s signature on the bill, it may go into effect on July 1, 2023.
