DeSantis' reputation as a social misfit who doesn't like people is a 'total fabrication,' his senior campaign advisor says

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks on October 5, 2022.

Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

• Several news articles have painted DeSantis as aloof and uncaring about people.
• His senior advisor, Phil Cox, said the reports were "bullshit." 
• He instead cast the governor as a busy family man.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has for the last year received in-depth profile treatment from the media amid speculation that he'll seek the White House in 2024. And as reporters have been digging into his past, a portrait has emerged of an aloof politician lacking people skills. 

That portrait, says Phil Cox, senior advisor to the DeSantis gubernatorial campaign, is "bullshit" and "a total fabrication."

"He's busy. He's very efficient with his time. He wasn't a guy that when he was in DC worked the cocktail circuit," Cox said of DeSantis' time in the US House from 2013 to 2018. "I think that's a plus for most people."

Cox, the cofounder of P2 Public affairs, made the comments Monday during the podcast "Too Close to Call," after reporter David Catanese of Substack and McClatchy asked him about DeSantis coming across as a "social misfit" who "doesn't like people."

In a New Yorker piece, reporter Dexter Filkins quoted an anonymous political leader who interacts with DeSantis often, who said: "He's not comfortable engaging other people. He walks into the meeting and doesn't acknowledge the rest of us." 

Cox instead cast his boss, who is up for reelection in November, as a family man. 

"He's got three kids under the age of six, a wife who came through a cancer battle over the last year," Cox said. "So when he gets done with work he goes home and he does what the rest of us do: He tries to be a good dad and a good husband, and that's where he enjoys spending his time."

Cox is one of the GOP's best-known political consultants with a powerful national profile. 

DeSantis, 44, is the youngest governor in the US and his is the first family in more than five decades to have children in the Florida governor's mansion. Cox said DeSantis "has a good sense of humor and cares about people." 

Cox's comments come roughly a week after DeSantis' wife, Florida first lady Casey DeSantis, shot an emotional campaign ad in which she opened up about how her husband took care of her and their children when she was receiving chemotherapy. 

The ad attempts to show a softer side of the governor that is rarely on public display. News articles have reported that DeSantis is known among former colleagues to be aloof and a 2021 Politico article said he treated his staff as though they were expendable when he was in Congress.

The governor also has faced backlash over some of his policies, including when he flew migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, in August.  Some of the migrants have sued, arguing they were misled. 

During the "Too Close to Call" podcast, Catanese also asked Cox to address a quote from the New Yorker profile which said DeSantis also isn't warm to donors. DeSantis has been a prolific fundraiser, breaking gubernatorial records. 

"Ron's strength as a politician is that he doesn't give a fuck," the New Yorker article said. "Ron's weakness as a politician is that he doesn't give a fuck. Big donors? He doesn't give a shit. Cancels on them all the time."

Cox rejected the article's assertion, saying, "You don't raise nearly $200 million without putting the work in." 

Cox predicted his boss would win reelection though he said Florida was still a "very competitive state," so he would consider a 3- or 4-point victory to be a "landslide." 

This year's midterm is expected to test whether Florida is still a battleground state. Today, Republicans have out-registered Democrats by roughly 270,000 people.

"Republican voters love him because he says what he's going to do and he goes and does it," Cox said. "He doesn't back down, he's a fighter. I think for the time that we're in right now there's a reason he's as popular as he is."

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