Gov. Ron DeSantis routinely bashes the media for favoring Democrats over him, but one of his challengers this year says he’s got it backwards.
In an appearance on the left-of-center Stuttering John Podcast, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried fumed about a media that “created” DeSantis just as it did former President Donald Trump.
She contended that in the event she gets the Democratic nomination, though, the money will find her campaign and buoy her prospects in the General Election.
“Look, the press has given him so much,” Fried fulminated. “They’re doing to him what they did to Trump. They created this. And so every day there’s a million and one articles about DeSantis, a million and one things about DeSantis, on TV and on whatnot.”
Fried concedes she is “behind him in the polls,” but predicted that “as soon as the independents and moderate Republicans start to wake up that there’s a November election, we know those polls are going to significantly close.”
“My name ID isn’t universal,” Fried conceded, but she expects consolidation should she win the Primary, which is still in doubt.
“All eyes are on Florida. The money comes in. Significant money is going to come into the state. He is the bogeyman of the country right now. More so than even Trump. So we know that money is going to flow into the state,” Fried predicted.
By most metrics of the race, Fried is in second place in the Democratic Primary behind U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, who is ahead of Fried and state Sen. Annette Taddeo in polls and fundraising.
Pitted against DeSantis in hypothetical one-on-one matchups, polls indeed have shown a Fried deficit against the incumbent Governor. The Real Clear Politics poll tracking shows Fried down nearly 13 points on average to DeSantis.
This article first appeared at Florida Politics.
