Timing is everything, and Gov. Ron DeSantis picked the day after Lt. Gov. Jay Collins entered the race to succeed him to say something nice about a rival.
During an interview Tuesday morning with Jenna Ellis, DeSantis complimented Collins, but also pointed to the legacy of former House Speaker Paul Renner, moving away from a previous brusque dismissal of the Palm Coast Republican’s campaign as an “ill-advised decision” that he wasn’t “supporting.”
“Paul Renner was the Speaker when I was Governor, my first two years of my second term, and I think if you look at that, there’s not a single state in the history of the Republican Party that delivered more meaningful reforms during that period of time, and so he deserves credit for that,” DeSantis said.
Regarding Collins, DeSantis had this to say.
“I think the Lieutenant Governor was a Senator in Florida … had a really strong conservative record, supported us on a lot of key things that were really meaningful. Obviously, has a great history as a green beret and serving in Special Forces, which I know a lot of people in Florida really appreciate,” he said.
DeSantis didn’t sound ready to endorse either man, saying “these guys have got to get out there and make the case.”
“I get involved in primaries when I have someone I believe in, and someone that really reflects what I think the state needs and that is really bold in that and you know that’s just something people have to prove as they announce candidacies and get out there and do it,” DeSantis said.
That “someone” is not Rep. Byron Donalds, however, who DeSantis seems to link with a different brand of politics.
“I do think that there are a lot of insiders, there are a lot of people the voters would never necessarily see that they’re kind of behind the scenes. You know, a lot of them have resisted everything I’ve done at every turn. I mean, they just they haven’t had the popular support to actually win any of those fights. but I do think that there’s kind of an appetite that’s whetted in kind of the internal bowels of Tallahassee and some of the swamp of Florida politics. They want to go back to good old boys and business as usual. There’s no question about that and so I think that’s an underlying thing that the voters are going to have to sort out as this thing starts to move forward.”
