To hear Ron DeSantis tell it, his message hasn’t changed. “I think we were viewed, really from Day One, as the candidate that had the strong record on the issues important to parents,” he tells me, sitting at a table in a shaded pavilion on the sidelines of the Iowa State Fair. “It has been an issue, really, from the beginning,” he says of the “parents’ rights” agenda that has been central to his struggling presidential candidacy. “And so I do think we’ve tapped into that, and we’ll continue to do it.”
That may be the case, but something has clearly changed, starting with the fact that I’m interviewing DeSantis at all. For years, he has cast his opposition to the mainstream media in ideological terms, arguing that conservatives shouldn’t contribute to its legitimacy and shutting out any outlet this side of Fox News. But now, as he struggles to gain traction in the Republican primary against former President Donald Trump, DeSantis wants to talk to me about why he believes being the “parents’ candidate” will boost his political prospects.
