Miami-Dade Republicans overwhelmingly backed former President Donald Trump over Gov. Ron DeSantis in a straw poll held by the party’s executive committee on Wednesday — another devastating blow for DeSantis.
The Miami-Dade County Republicans executive committee straw poll featured 65 party members. Trump won in a landslide, garnering support from 82 percent of the party members. Specifically, 53 votes went to the former president, while DeSantis received five. Not only that, but the results were received enthusiastically.
Politico reported:
A video obtained by POLITICO of the meeting shows the crowd in the room erupting in applause then chanting, “Trump, Trump, Trump,” after state Rep. Alex Rizo, a DeSantis supporter and chair of Miami-Dade Republicans, announced the election results. The members recorded their votes on paper ballots.
Miami-Dade Commissioner Kevin Cabrera said the results prove that “Miami-Dade County is Trump country.”
One member told Politico that DeSantis “has lost support.”
“He and many of them have tried to move to the right of Trump. That’s not possible. Trump reflects the right. He is the standard,” the individual stated.
Another said the results serve as further proof that the “the grassroots have left DeSantis.”
The results, while not surprising given Trump’s consistent domination in the polls, come months after DeSantis’s May 2023 campaign launch, doing so despite the warnings from critics and allies, some of whom believed competing against Trump would be political suicide.
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And while it is true that DeSantis successfully flipped Miami-Dade in his column in the 2022 midterm elections after a year of taking on the radical left in a variety of ways — from vaccine mandates to fighting for parental rights in schools and addressing the transgender agenda — he has failed to carry that momentum into his presidential campaign. It has flopped to the point that he is now in third, behind Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in several polls. He has even dropped to fourth place in New Hampshire, despite attempting to revamp his campaign time and time again. Desperate attempts to assure donors goes as far back as July, but all of his plans to boost his status in the polls, it seems, have failed to materialize.
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Still, DeSantis is showing no signs of dropping out of the race and will face off against Haley in a CNN debate taking place January 10, five days ahead of the January 15 Iowa caucuses. Trump, however, will participate in a Fox News town hall at the same time, as both Haley and DeSantis will, essentially, battle it out for second place.