‘Small, pathetic man’: Inside the bitter rivalry between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom

It’s been more than two decades since a state governor was elected to the White House, but you wouldn’t know it looking at the 2024 presidential race.

Six current or former governors have entered the 2024 GOP primary so far.

But no statehouse rivalry is more pronounced in US politics than the one between Florida governor and 2024 Republican candidate Ron DeSantis, and his Democratic counterpart from California, governor Gavin Newsom.

The two, both seen as serious presidential prospects, if not now then someday, have been trading barbs for years, and things have only heated up as a presidential election season approaches.

Most recently, Mr Newsom lashed out at Mr DeSantis this, calling him a “small, pathetic man,” after Florida officials facilitated a large group of South American migrants being dropped off without warning at a Sacramento church, a repeat of the Florida governor’s highly controversial move to do the same in Martha’s Vineyard last year.

The California governor said Florida officials could face kidnapping charges.

It’s far from the first time the two men – each the leader of a large, economically important state, whose policies typify each party – have locked horns. Their battles have much to say about where each party is going, and the political fate of these two men could suggest which vision of politics and leadership the American people want more.

In March, during a visit to California to speak at the Reagan Presidential Library, the Florida Republican blasted Mr Newsom for following the advice of public health experts at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, accusing him of “subcontract[ing] ... leadership to health bureaucrats,” and claimed that Californians were flocking to Florida.

“When the world went mad, when common sense suddenly became an uncommon virtue, Florida stood as a refuge of sanity, a citadel of freedom for people throughout the United States and indeed, throughout the world. We refused to let our state descend into some type of Faucian dystopia, where people’s rights were curtailed, and their livelihoods were destroyed. We made sure people had a right to work and we got people back to work and businesses back open,” he said.

The Florida governor also said the Californian’s leadership showed how Democrats “coddle the criminals and put the rights of the criminals over the safety of the public and the rights of victims.”

Mr Newsom, for his part, has made a point of showing how on issues like Covid and gun crime, California is empirically a safer place to be.

"Just look at the data – California residents are safer, healthier and more prosperous than those unfortunate enough to have you as their Governor," Mr Newsom told CBS News during the Florida governor’s visit. "Oh by the way, you’re going to get smoked by Trump."

Mr Newsom has made his own high-profile incursions into his rival’s state, including donating thousands to Mr DeSantis’s rivals.

In April, the California Democrat met with students of Florida’s New College, a public liberal arts college that has recently become a target in Mr DeSantis’s wide-ranging campaign to bend Florida’s education system in a hyper-conservative direction by limiting access to materials concerning gender and sexuality, as well as the history of racism.

“I can’t believe what you’re dealing with. It’s just an unbelievable assault,” Mr Newsom said at an appearance at a library near campus. “It’s common with everything he’s doing, bullying and intimidating vulnerable communities. Weakness, Ron DeSantis, weakness masquerading as strength across the board.”

Last summer, Mr Newsom had an even bigger provocation for Mr DeSantis, using extra campaign cash to release a 30-second ad in Florida urging residents of the Sunshine State to move to California.

"Freedom, it’s under attack in your state,” the spot claimed.

“Republican leaders, they’re banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors," the governor said in a voiceover narration accompanying images of Mr DeSantis and former president Donald Trump.

Indeed, the two states couldn’t be more different across a variety of areas, with Florida all but banning abortion, while California ceased doing business with Walgreens because the company wouldn’t sell abortion pills.

In addition to a debate over their state’s respective policies, it seems a deep dislike of the other man has fueled the back-and-forth, with the Florida governor painting Mr Newsom as an out-of-touch hypocrite, while the California leader accuses the Republican of being a spiteful bigot and a “bully.”

“As he was locking down his citizens, he would then go and have these extravagant dinners at the French Laundry to basically rub his citizens’ noses in the fact that he was treating them like peasants. You know in Florida we weren’t locking them down, we lifted our people up. We made sure to protect individuals’ freedoms,” Mr DeSantis said in July.

That same summer, Mr Newsom flatly told an interviewer, “I don’t like DeSantis, the way he talked about Fauci,” after the Florida governor joked about throwing “that little elf” Dr Anthony Fauci into the Potomac River.

“My entire life, I don’t like bullies…That’s being celebrated in American politics. DeSantis is the worst of it.”

Things escalated further in September, with Mr Newsom challenging the Florida governor to a televised debate, further cementing an idea at the time that the men were running a kind of unofficial presidential campaign against each other, even though at that time Mr DeSantis hadn’t yet declared, and even though Mr Newsom would eventually endorse Joe Biden and formally swear off a primary challenge.

The rivalry has extended outside of the presidential contest to the world of business.

In May, the Walt Disney Company announced it was pulling out of a planned $1bn development in Florida, keeping thousands of jobs in California, as the Magic Kingdom feuded with Mr DeSantis over the state’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law and its decision to dissolve Disney’s special municipal district privileges in the state.

But a political face-off between the two doesn’t seem too far away, and any contest would likely be even more intense than the shadow campaign the men have been running against each other for the previous two years.

Mr Newsom has admitted a kind of grudging respect for Republicans like Mr DeSantis, who he feels have successfully convinced the country to go along with their vision on culture war issues.

The California governor has argued Democrats have a serious “messaging problem.”

“We allow these culture wars to take shape, and we are constantly on the back end,” Mr Newsom said.

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called a presidential run from Newsom, whose term ends in 2027, a “no-brainer.”

With Mr DeSantis badly trailing Donald Trump in the polls, it seems a Newsom-DeSantis election may not be happening just yet, but may not be too far away in the future.