Republican donor retreat suggests Donald Trump is far from a coronation

NASHVILLE — Donald Trump still gets top billing at this weekend’s exclusive gathering of Republican donors.

But for a full 24 hours before the former president was scheduled to speak on Saturday evening, the Republican National Committee provided a platform for some of Trump's loudest critics.

“Voters wanted to hear about what Republicans were doing to help them fight through 40-year high inflation,” said Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, speaking to donors Saturday morning inside the luxury resort. “Not months and months of debate over whether the 2020 election was stolen.”

Without mentioning Trump’s name, Kemp pinned blame on the former president’s election loss grievances and warned that “not a single swing voter” will vote for a GOP nominee making such claims, calling 2020 “ancient history.”

Kemp, who found himself the object of Trump’s ire after declining to intervene to reverse his Georgia loss in 2020, represents a wing of the Republican Party that has sought to resist Trump’s grasp. So does New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu. So does former Vice President Mike Pence. Here — while Trump held his own private meetings out of sight — all three were given prime speaking slots.

That the Republican committee invited dissenters of Trump, even prospective challengers in next year’s presidential primary, points to the fact that even though Trump has first place in the polls, there are still many months of fighting ahead of him. His potential nomination is unlikely to come as a coronation.

The party’s donors are still weighing whether there is a viable alternative to Trump, though there is still no clear consensus on the matter, several said in interviews this weekend.

Standing in the lobby of the Four Seasons on Saturday, Sununu talked about Trump like this: “I don’t think he can win in 2024,” the governor said in an interview. “You don’t have to be angry about it. You don't have to be negative about it. I think you just have to be willing to talk about it and bring real solutions to the table.”

Over breakfast, according to a person in the room and a copy of his speech obtained by POLITICO, Kemp told the donors the Republican nominee “must” be able to win Georgia’s 16 electoral college votes in order to win the White House.

“We have to be able to win a general election,” Kemp said. His comments could apply not only to Trump, but also to the defeat this fall of Trump-backed and scandal-plagued candidates like Herschel Walker, who lost his race even as Kemp defeated a well-funded Democratic challenger by nearly 8 points.

So far, a solution to stopping Trump has proved elusive to donors and operatives who have claimed for years they were trying to do just that.

Other likely primary opponents of Trump, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), were also invited to the RNC gathering, but declined due to scheduling conflicts. Former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson, who called for Trump to drop out of the race post-indictment, and a sunglasses-clad Perry Johnson, a Michigan businessman running for president, also received invitations. Hutchinson and Johnson buzzed around the retreat, but did not have speaking slots.

“They’re sorting through it,” Hutchinson said, referring to how donors here and party activists elsewhere have responded to officials like Kemp, Sununu, himself and others who say the party must avoid a repeat of the 2020 general election. “But they’ve got to hear that message, and it's like realism is coming to the party. And it takes people actually having the courage to say it before people will face that reality.”

Sheltered from the party-tractors circling a honky-tonk district just beyond the doors, some of the GOP’s deepest pocketed supporters gathered inside the luxury hotel Friday and Saturday. There, they hoped to be reassured of the party’s upcoming electoral prospects after a bruising midterm cycle and as an uncertain presidential election looms. Donors sipping white wine in the lobby lounge gawked at the pink-cowgirl-hat-clad bachelorette parties on the sidewalk outside. Inside the hotel Friday afternoon, a couple in town for a country music concert squealed at the sight of Kellyanne Conway, who was among the panelists at the weekend-long donor summit.

Ahead of the get-together and throughout the weekend, a slate of Republican 2024 hopefuls jetted up and down the East Coast and across the Midwest, the mad dash of candidates marking the busiest campaign week to date in the nascent presidential race. And that primary contest, of course, is a fight for what appears to be an increasingly difficult shot at dethroning Trump.

“How in God's name could Donald Trump be portrayed as a victim? But it's being done,” said one Republican donor at the event referencing Trump’s indictment, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, like others there who discussed with POLITICO the unfolding presidential primary.

The donor charged that Trump as the 2024 nominee “would lose even against Biden, which is tragic in its own sense,” but raised doubts about whether the candidates he did like — Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo — had the charisma or ability to push through.

Just minutes after the donor floated Pompeo’s name as a candidate of interest, the former secretary of state announced Friday evening he wouldn’t seek the nomination after all. Pompeo’s decision came after the GOP primary field has gradually swollen — and as Trump has surged in public polling.

But it didn’t stop Trump’s detractors from taking a swing in front of the audience of donors.

In his Friday night address and as donors dined on filet mignon and mashed potatoes, Pence decried “the politics of personality” and “lure of populism unmoored to timeless conservative values,” according to a copy of his prepared remarks. And Trump’s former running-mate described the presidential primary as not just a contest between the candidates involved, but a “conflict of visions” with existential implications.

Pence went after Trump directly on a number of policy areas, from defense and intervention in Ukraine to a ballooning national debt and Trump’s opposition to reforming entitlement programs, referring to him as “our former president.” He criticized Republicans’ waning interest in waging war against marriage equality, and the reticence some now appear to have about further restricting abortion rights — two areas where he finds himself at odds with his former boss.

The uncertain political atmosphere this weekend is much different from the RNC’s donor retreat a year ago, when an optimistic set of top party benefactors in New Orleans were expecting to see a red wave in the 2022 midterm elections. President Joe Biden and Democratic incumbents had approval numbers in the tank, and the GOP had just given Virginia Democrats an unexpected shellacking months earlier.

But the anticipated Republican Senate takeover this fall never materialized — in fact, the party lost a seat in the chamber — and the GOP only narrowly took over House control (or, as Kemp put it Saturday, “barely won the House majority back.”). Republicans lost gubernatorial races in Arizona and Pennsylvania that were widely believed to be winnable, if not for nominating candidates who espoused Trump’s stolen-election claims and other conspiracy theories that proved unpopular with the general electorate.

As the party elite gathered this time, any sense of optimism about Republicans’ electoral prospects was much less palpable.

Another donor, who said he was no diehard Trump fan, questioned not just DeSantis’ ability to break through in the primary but whether he could win in a general election. Calling the recent indictment against Trump “jet fuel” in the primary, the donor — like others here — said he was nearly resolved to the fact that Trump will be the party’s 2024 nominee.

Kemp in his speech outlined the policies he ran on to cruise to reelection as governor, a race he won against one of the Democratic Party’s top stars. Rather than moving to the middle on policy, Kemp in his campaign still touted deeply conservative measures like a six-week abortion ban, approving the permitless carry of handguns and banning certain lessons in schools about racism.

But throughout his speech, Kemp chided Republicans who have become “distracted” by claims about stolen elections and, more recently, Trump’s current and pending legal cases in New York and Georgia, asserting that such conversations only help Democrats.

Johnson, the Michigan candidate not currently registering in presidential polls, carried a stack of his book, “Two Cents to Save America,” around the hotel lobby restaurant on Saturday. He laughed recounting his takeaways from conversations with donors this weekend, as well as from a panel of RNC advisory council members Friday evening.

“Obviously, they know Trump lost,” Johnson said. “Even though we may have had an irregular situation in elections, they're saying right on stage, it hasn't changed. We're going to continue to have mass mail ballots. And if the Republicans want to win, they have to live under the new reality.”

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Here’s what the leaked US war files tell us about Europe

Special forces on the ground. Undisclosed arms transfers. The documents offer a snapshot of Europe’s involvement in the war.

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As Joe Biden roams Ireland, Hunter stays by his side

For four days, a Biden traveled across Northern Ireland and Ireland, meeting with the nations’ top dignitaries, waving to the crowds, and sentimentally retracing his family’s lineage throughout the Emerald Isle.

His father, Joe, was also there.

If ever there were a question as to Hunter Biden’s whereabouts, the answer this week was obvious: He was overseas, glued to President Joe Biden’s side during the entirety of a whirlwind trip that mixed global diplomacy with a sprawling exploration of his ancestral roots.

There was Hunter, chatting with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on the tarmac in Belfast. There he was again in Dublin, huddled in the rain with Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. He was in County Louth, absorbing the sights. In a local Dundalk market, he surveyed the menu, interrupting his dad’s conversation to suggest he may order something.

Hunter was at the Irish president’s residence, shaking hands and telling its occupant, Michael D. Higgins, that he was “a fan of your poetry.” He was in the audience at Ireland’s Parliament as Biden addressed a joint session of the legislature. Later that night, he attended a banquet thrown in his father’s honor, mingling with Irish ministers before dining with the widow of Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney.

For much of Biden’s presidency, Hunter has been at the center of controversy and the subject of heightened scrutiny. He is a fascination of the conservative mediasphere and a target of federal investigators and Republicans in Congress. But an ocean away, he was mostly just a son and close travel companion, tagging along with his aunt Valerie Biden Owen.

It was, ostensibly, a business trip for his dad. But the president himself explained that he’d decided to take family members “who hadn’t been there before.” And by all appearances, Hunter thoroughly enjoyed the jaunt.

He served as a particular point of pride for Biden, who has refused to distance himself from his son even as the attention on Hunter’s foreign business dealings, the “laptop from hell,” and his personal struggle threatened to cast a cloud over the administration's agenda.

“I’m here with my sister, Valerie, and my youngest son, Hunter Biden,” the president told residents at a pub in Dundalk. “Stand up, guys. I’m proud of you.”

It’s not unusual for a president’s family members to join trips abroad, and Hunter did not sit in on Biden's private meetings with heads of state. But his ubiquity nonetheless (and unsurprisingly) gained traction in conservative circles.

“Hunter Biden should not be on foreign trips with Joe Biden while under federal investigation,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)tweeted. “Is this really the image America wants to project to the world?”

The White House dismissed criticism of Hunter’s involvement in the trip. "Historically family members of Presidents and First Ladies have frequently joined them during international travel," a spokesperson said. "Current practices are consistent with those used by prior Administrations." The spokesperson also confirmed that Hunter, as well as Biden Owen, were paying their own way.

At times, Hunter’s presence was something of a nuisance to the media on the ground. When Biden arrived in Dundalk, Hunter hopped out of the Beast before the president, inadvertently blocking reporters’ view of his father as they greeted the crowd and leaving the pool photographers with plenty of clear shots of Hunter, but not nearly as many of Biden.

Though he may not have had any formal role in Biden's entourage, Hunter did find ways to make himself useful. He held an umbrella at one point to shield Biden from the rain. At a noisy firehouse meet-and-greet with embassy workers,he helped moderate a brief Q&A between Biden and some children. And importantly for a president with a tendency to get off schedule, he sought to gently steer things back on task, though not always with much success.

“You’re supposed to do the rope line, Dad,” Hunter reminded Biden, as he chatted away with the kids. “Just to say hi to everybody.”

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Joe Biden and Ireland: A love story

DUNDALK, Ireland — They came by the thousands, crammed several lines deep along the narrow sidewalks, clutching flags and braving rain and bitter cold in hopes of catching a glimpse of the most Irish of American presidents.

And for a moment, it seemed as if Joe Biden might greet every single one of them.

Wearing a blue cap and an ear-to-ear smile, Biden lingered in the main thoroughfare of this county town along Ireland’s eastern coast. He shook hands, posed for photos and soaked in the warm embrace that its residents had prepared for a president many refer to simply as “Joe.”

“When you’re here, you wonder why anyone would ever want to leave,” Biden marveled soon after his arrival at the Windsor Bar and Restaurant. A capacity crowd had waited for hours to see him in the rustic pub. “Coming here feels like coming home.”

When presidents travel abroad, they are traditionally tight, focused affairs calibrated with a specific goal in mind: To advance the White House’s interests and shape the place they will soon leave behind. But for three days in Ireland, as Biden roamed the countryside by motorcade with his sister Valerie and son Hunter in tow, the president seemed content to exist within it.

He met dignitaries and townspeople. He toasted his Irish ancestors, the Irish people, Irish Americans and even the “quite a few,” he said, “who wish they were lucky enough to be Irish.”

He took a selfie with nationalist politician and alleged former Irish Republican Army member Gerry Adams, as well as with an Irish reporter and nearly anyone else who wanted one. He kissed babies and had a close encounter with a sliotar.

He butchered the name of New Zealand's famed rugby team — badly. At one point he tried, unsuccessfully, to make friends with the Irish president’s dog. In a surprise to nobody, he quoted at least three different Irish poets but may have quoted his Grandpa Finnegan even more.

And all that came before Friday evening, when Biden traveled west across the country to County Mayo, where he was slated to recall “the history and hope and the heartbreak” of his ancestors in front of an estimated 20,000 gathered at a 19th-century cathedral along the River Moy.

Just hours before his remarks, Biden visited the Knock Shrine, a pilgrimage site for Catholics made all the more significant by a chance meeting with the priest who administered last rites to his late son, Beau, reportedly bringing Biden to tears.

Biden had come to Ireland to reaffirm its close relationship with the U.S. — and to reaffirm his own personal relationship with a place he credits for shaping him. It was here that the criticisms he faces at home seemed to fade away: His age didn’t make him old, it provided him wisdom. His gaffes didn’t make him shaky, they gave him charm.

Biden has made no secret of his deep fascination with his ancestral origins. And since visiting Ireland as vice president to trace his lineage, he'd eagerly sought a reason to come back. The White House found its justification in the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement that largely ended sectarian violence in Northern Ireland — a U.S. brokered deal that’s served as an integral element of the island’s tight relationship with America.

Yet Biden spent only a handful of hours in Northern Ireland before jetting off to his ancestral homeland. Combined with the dearth of policy announcements or apparent progress on political priorities, the move raised questions over whether the trip was, as one reporter put it, “a taxpayer-funded family reunion.”

The White House rejected the characterization, pointing to his speeches and meetings with Irish and U.K. leaders. Biden, though, appeared otherwise determined not to let thorny political demands intrude too much on his mutual lovefest with the people of Ireland.

The president has answered only a single question unrelated to his visit, on the search for the Pentagon document leaker. The most substantive answer he gave all week to any query came in response to the child who had asked about the key to success — prompting Biden to launch into a winding and often-told anecdote about the late conservative Sen. Jesse Helms and the importance of not judging people’s motives.

"That's a long answer to a real quick question," he conceded, well after the child had lost interest.

At times, it was tough to tell where Biden as president ended and Biden as tourist began. His tour through the country was sentimental and joyful. During a visit to Carlingford Castle, he peered across the water through gathering fog, chatting quietly with a local guide enlisted to bring him through the last Irish landmark Biden’s great-great-grandfather saw before embarking for America over 170 years ago.

“It feels wonderful,” Biden said of his emotions upon visiting the site, as a bagpipe and drum ensemble prepared to strike up an original piece entitled: “A Biden Return.”

In Dundalk, a short ride from the castle through the County Louth where his Finnegan ancestors once lived, Biden bantered with workers at a local market, debating which food and souvenirs to buy. (He left, the town paper later reported, with a bounty: Lemon meringue, chocolate eclairs, bread and butter pudding, pear and almond cake, and a mug with an image of a dog on it.)

And on Thursday, as he became the fourth U.S. president to address a joint session of Ireland’s Parliament, Biden paused to recognize the familial significance of what he would term “one of the great honors of my career.”

“Well mom,” he said, looking skyward, “you said it would happen.”

In between speeches and state dinners, the scenes at times bordered on chaos. Throngs of well-wishers lined Biden’s routes, some stationing themselves mere inches off the road as the motorcade whipped by. Others gathered on highway overpasses in the driving rain, waving Irish and American flags.

As Biden stopped in local towns and businesses, the tight spaces and swelling crowds caused visible alarm among his Secret Service detail. “A security nightmare,” one agent muttered at one point.

But Biden, basking in the middle of it all, seemed unconcerned.

“I wish our mom, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden, were here today. She’d be so damn proud,” he said in the Windsor Bar, surrounded by a mix of relatives, Irish officials and local residents. “Louth held such a special place in her heart, it really did.”

As the trip wore on and the outside world fell away, Biden appeared to feel increasingly at home — a sentiment he expressed so frequently that some reporters and aides joked he might actually stay.

“I don’t know why the hell my ancestors left here. It’s beautiful,” he said on Wednesday.

“I only wish I could stay longer,” he told Irish lawmakers on Thursday.

“I’m not going home,” he said, admiring the Irish president’s residence.

Biden, however reluctantly, would eventually have to head home, set as he was to depart the Irish coast late Friday for his family’s adopted shores of Delaware. But well before then, he made permanent his intention to return.

“Your feet will bring you to where your heart is,” Biden wrote in the guestbook at the Irish president’s residence, in reference to a line he attributed to William Butler Yeats that he said his grandfather often quoted.

It was a slightly more poetic way of reiterating a pledge that he’d already made at the Windsor Bar, before striding back into the cold, where the crowds stood eager and waiting: “The bad news for all of you is, we’ll be back,” Biden said. “There’s no way to keep us out.”

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Pence calls for quick execution of mass shooters at NRA summit

Former Vice President Mike Pence called for the quick execution of mass shooters as a solution to gun violence at the National Rifle Association’s annual leadership summit in Indianapolis Friday.

“I’m tired of the senseless violence and loss of life that could be prevented if our leaders would support law enforcement, protect our schools, institutionalize the obviously mentally ill, and enact legislation that would ensure that anyone who engages in these heinous acts of mass violence meets their fate in months, not years,” Pence said.

Pence, speaking in his home state, was met with boos from the crowd once he appeared on stage. Pence said that Democrats need to address the “very real problems of violent crime and mental health that are costing thousands of American lives every year.”

“Ignoring the motivations of the trans activist who killed three children and three adults at that Christian school in Nashville, and the ‘mental health challenges’ of the man who killed five people and injured eight others in Louisville, President Biden and the Democrats have returned to the same tired arguments about gun control and confiscation,” Pence said.

The event marks the first time both Pence and former President Donald Trump have shared a stage since they left office. Trump is expected to speak at the forum later this afternoon. Trump seemed to be the main draw, with his photo centered on a poster board at the event and plenty of MAGA hats in the audience.

In the wake of the recent mass shootings, Pence said America doesn’t need gun control but crime control.

“We don’t need lectures about the liberties of law-abiding citizens. We need solutions to protect our kids,” Pence said. “So to Joe Biden and the gun control extremists, I say: Give up on your pipe dreams of gun confiscation, stop endangering our lives with gun bans, and stop trampling on our God-given rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution!”

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‘Like an animal’: Jan. 6 defendant who pinned officer in tunnel is sentenced to 7.5 years

Few images captured the visceral violence and horror of Jan. 6 more clearly than the moment Patrick McCaughey — a 23-year-old from Connecticut — pinned a D.C. Police officer, Daniel Hodges, in a Capitol doorway as he howled in pain.

On Friday, more than two years later, McCaughey was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for his role in the riot and attempt by supporters of Donald Trump to prevent the transfer of power to Joe Biden. His sentence is among the lengthiest handed down to Jan. 6 rioters so far, though it was less than half of the nearly 16 years that the Justice Department sought.

McCaughey, who stood before U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden in an orange jumpsuit while he awaited his fate, delivered a profuse apology for his conduct, describing his behavior on Jan. 6 as “monumentally stupid.”

“I wish I had better control of myself,” he said, calling his behavior “less like a citizen and more like an animal.”

McCaughey pinned Hodges in a Capitol doorway for more than two minutes while another rioter ripped off the officer's gas mask, stole his baton and struck him with it. It became a symbol of the barbaric violence that unfolded in the Capitol’s lower West Terrace tunnel, famous before that day as the corridor through which presidents-elect emerge to take their oath of office.

McCaughey was at the “vanguard” of that violent section of the mob, McFadden noted, and arrived there only after spending 20 minutes taunting police before their line collapsed and they were forced to retreat into the tunnel. McCaughey became “a poster child of all that was dangerous and appalling” about Jan. 6, McFadden said.

McFadden found McCaughey guilty in September after a bench trial on three charges of assaulting or impeding police officers, obstructing Congress’ proceedings and participating in a civil disorder, among several other charges. He was tried alongside two other defendants who were nearby in the tunnel.

Despite the extraordinary aspects of McCaughey’s case, in some ways he cut a familiar profile for Jan. 6 defendants: He had no prior criminal record and was seen as a positive member of his Connecticut community prior to the 2020 election. Afterward, amid Trump’s false claims about the results, McCaugehy traveled down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, many amplified by Fox News and other Trump-aligned media outlets.

In McCaughey’s case, there was also the role of his father, whom family members described as a pernicious influence on him — encouraging his beliefs that the election was stolen.

McCaughey’s father accompanied his son to Washington but became separated from him before the assaults, McCaughey’s defense attorney, Dennis Boyle, said.

Hodges also addressed McFadden prior to sentencing, describing the daily trauma he still experiences as a result of the assaults he suffered on Jan. 6. He urged McFadden to reject claims by McCaughey and others of being simply “caught up in the moment.” But he also described McCaughey as a “foot soldier” in a larger effort by those seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

McCaughey’s sentence mirrors two handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson to rioters who assaulted D.C. Police officer Michael Fanone. Both men — Albuquerque Head and Kyle Young — were sentenced to just over seven years in prison for their crimes, which were also committed by the lower West Terrace tunnel. It also matches the sentence of Guy Reffitt, a Texas militia member who carried a gun at the Capitol and engaged in a lengthy standoff with police that helped rioters amass at the foot of the building.

The lengthiest Jan. 6 sentence to date belongs to Thomas Webster, a former NYPD cop who was convicted by a jury of a brutal assault against a police officer defending the line at the Capitol. U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Webster to 10 years in prison, a steep sentence but one that fell more than 90 months shy of the Justice Department’s recommendation.

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DeSantis could be walking into a general election trap on abortion

TALLAHASSEE — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is speeding toward long-term political risks as he runs to the right on abortion — and opponents are ready to pounce.

The putative presidential hopeful is poised to sign a six-week ban that the Florida state legislature passed Thursday, and Democrats, abortion-rights groups and fundraisers who oppose the measure are eager to use it to tarnish his White House ambitions.

DeSantis is banking on support in the primary from anti-abortion voters, particularly those angry at Donald Trump. The former president faced a backlash from some conservatives when he complained that the party’s far-right position on abortion hurt the GOP in last year’s midterm election.

But a six-week ban pushes the outer boundary of anti-abortion rights proposals. And it could spell trouble for DeSantis among independents and suburban voters in a general election, if he makes it that far.

“We’re going to make him own this, and his agenda, everywhere he goes,” said a national Democratic operative granted anonymity to discuss party strategy. “Goes to Michigan? Abortion ban. Goes to Ohio next week? Abortion ban. And that will take different forms but we’ll hang this incredibly toxic abortion ban and his agenda around his neck with different tactics.”

The operative added that this is one of many points on which to attack DeSantis who has taken several stances on social issues that Democrats believe won't sit well with swing voters.

A spokesman for DeSantis declined to comment for this story. But Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, told POLITICO that a six-week ban isn’t the millstone Democrats believe.

“Consensus is building across the country that once there’s a heartbeat, it’s a human being,” he said. “So the governor isn’t out of step at all. … In fact, it bolsters his standing.”

Though DeSantis has not formally entered the presidential race, the campaign to tie him to a six-week ban is already beginning, according to interviews with more than a dozen people from several battleground states.

Nascent plans include attack ads, knocking on doors in swing states where polling shows abortion has become a more prominent election issue since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, and registering voters throughout the country.

“Planned Parenthood advocacy and political organizations will make sure everyone knows his dangerous and radical record on abortion rights,” Jenny Lawson, vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund said in a statement. The organization is considering door-to-door canvassing, digital ads and direct mail, Olivia Cappello, a spokesperson said in a recent interview.

The Planned Parenthood network has poured millions of dollars into voter outreach in response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last year. In the leadup to the decision, arms of the organization announced a $16 million ad campaign, and spent more than $50 million on the 2022 midterms a few months later.

The head of the much smaller Women’s Voices of Southwest Florida organization, who rallied against the ban in the state capital this week, has also promised an aggressive voter outreach effort.

“We have all vowed to go knock on doors and go to other states to let people know what DeSantis has done to Florida,” Sarah Parker of the organization said in an interview. “We don’t have a lot of money, but we’ll mobilize.”

DeSantis does not share that problem. A PAC supporting his likely candidacy boasted of raising $30 million several weeks ago, and he’s proven himself a prodigious fundraiser in the past — a benefit that’s helped him cement himself as the leading Republican alternative to Trump.

And for many on the right, particularly those miffed at Trump, DeSantis’ support of a six-week ban is proof that he is a more reliable ally in their fight to end the procedure nationwide.

“I’ve known him since he hit the ground in Congress,” Perkins said. “He, from the start, has been making very solid decisions on a host of policy issues, from religious freedom to economic issues.”

Florida’s six-week abortion ban received final legislative approval as the issue of abortion access once again dominates the headlines. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday agreed to allow the abortion pill mifepristone to remain on the market but with restrictions that will hamper access to millions of people unless the Supreme Court intervenes.

Florida now joins at least 12 other states — including Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky and Louisiana — that have approved bans on abortions after six weeks, a point at which many people don’t yet know they’re pregnant.

“This bill is atrocious,” said Ryan Stitzlein, NARAL’s senior national political director. “This issue may ignite a small part of their primary base but it’s deeply unpopular with voters in this country. … We’re activating our more than 4 million members across the country. They’ll be making calls, writing, knocking on doors.”

Democrats’ confidence is rooted in both public polling that demonstrates little bipartisan appetite for such strict abortion bans as well as recent case studies. Five months after Republicans failed to deliver widespread victories in the midterm elections, a Democratic candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court defeated her opponent by 11 points in a race centered around abortion. Even moderate Republicans crossed the aisle to donate to her winning campaign.

“You should ignore national polls because that’s not how people win a presidential nomination. They win by winning each state and if you look at the bellwether states that Trump or DeSantis need to win, they have major, major problems on the issue of abortion,” political fundraiser Patrick Guarasci — who worked on the winning campaign of Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz — said in an interview this week. “They’re being held hostage by their donors and their far-right-wing extremists.”

Guarasci said abortion ranked as the top issue in the recent election.

“Trump or DeSantis will have a hard time winning a presidential elections without some kind of answer to that question,” he added.

Several dozen opponents have been staging demonstrations in Tallahassee, even getting arrested in acts of civil disobedience. Though they knew they stood no chance of changing the course of the bill, they continued to gather as recently as Wednesday night to denounce it. State Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried warned DeSantis will "will not stop with Florida."

DeSantis isn’t the only Republican who will face pressure for his stance on abortion. Democrats are certain to note that Trump appointed the justices who overturned Roe. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), on his second day of campaigning since announcing a presidential exploratory committee, pivoted, deflected and avoided specifics when repeatedly pressed on where he stood on federal abortion restrictions.

But unlike Trump or Scott, DeSantis will have signed legislation limiting access. Democrats don’t intend to let voters forget.

“This man is clearly wrong for Michigan,” Michigan Lieutenant Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, a Democrat, said on a conference call ahead of DeSantis’ recent visit to the state. “But he is also wrong for America. He will be burdened by his anti-choice, anti-woman, anti-reproductive freedom stances.”

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