Directionless DeSantis

By BRUCE LOWITT

Gov. Ron DeSantis, wrecking what he had hoped to be the resurrection of his moribund presidential campaign, inadvertently flew thousands of his supporters from Florida to New York, Los Angeles, and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, instead of the Iowa caucuses.

“We read that when George W. Bush was running in 2000 he sent busloads of Texans wearing Bush buttons and hats and carrying Bush signs and banners to Iowa to campaign for him,” Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, said, “and he ran away with it.

“If a halfwit like W won there like that,” she said, “I figured my hubby could make Iowans forget all about the lifts in his dumb cowboy boots and his stupid-looking smile. So I told him to start loading up the planes. But sometimes I have to be very specific with my directions to Ronnie.”

Instead of taking a few minutes to have aides draw up flight plans to Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Sioux City, and Iowa’s other airports, DeSantis reportedly grabbed a bunch of papers from his desk, told his campaign people to deliver them to pilots in a fleet of chartered planes and sent them on their way.

The unexpected arrivals in Martha’s Vineyard, where DeSantis had sent a planeload of Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas in September 2022, were warmly welcomed by local hoteliers, restaurants and shops whose businesses usually face midwinter slowdowns.

“Hey, I gotta say, with all these people running around wearing Ron buttons and stuff, I feel like the most popular guy in town and I’m a shoo-in when I’m up for reelection,” said Ron Mariano, D-Quincy, Speaker of the Massachusetts House. “I’d thank DeSantis but I don’t want to be seen within 10 miles of that loser.”

In Los Angeles and New York, his button-wearing and balloon-carrying supporters were barely noticed – except by police rounding them up for creating a disturbance without a permit.

Meanwhile, in Iowa, DeSantis, seated alone at a table in the Wagon Wheel Cafe in Tingley, pop.: 135, was trying to get the attention of the waiter and the only other diners in the place, an elderly couple wearing McCain-Palin buttons.

“Fuck,” he muttered.