DeSantis wants voters to know he is more than just Trump’s guy as he engages in a vicious fight with leftwinger Andrew Gillum in the governor’s race

Ron DeSantis, the Republican candidate for Florida governor whose campaign ad features him building a border wall of toy blocks with his toddler daughter, then reading The Art of the Deal to his baby son as a bedtime story, wants you to know he’s more than just Donald Trump’s guy in the Sunshine State.

“I’m my own man, I have a record on different things,” DeSantis insisted at a recent stump event in Doral at which he praised the president for everything from low unemployment, a booming economy and tax cuts to fighting terrorism in the Middle East, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and standing up to dictators such as Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.

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Yet DeSantis bristles when pressed about being “his own guy”, specifically his rejection of Trump’s recent false claim that thousands were not killed in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

With hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans, many of them storm evacuees and all US citizens and voters, living in central Florida, and with his opponent, the Democrat Andrew Gillum, winning the endorsement of the island’s governor, Ricardo Roselló, last week, DeSantis had little choice but to publicly split from the president. It’s just that the five-year former US congressman doesn’t like talking about it.

“Here’s the thing the media does, if you do something different, then ‘Oh, DeSantis breaks with Trump’,” he said. “And they do that with the Puerto Rico thing, they’ve been playing that up. But then if you agree with him they say ‘All DeSantis does is agree with him,’ so it’s kind of a media game.”

DeSantis, 40, finds himself engaged in a vicious political fight with the Tallahassee mayor Gillum, a progressive leftwinger and Bernie Sanders disciple who is vying to make history in next month’s election as Florida’s first black governor.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Andrew Gillum, during a campaign rally on 1 October in Kissimmee, Florida. Photograph: John Raoux/AP

One of Gillum’s frequent lines of attack is that DeSantis and Trump share the same traits of rhetoric and prejudice, a claim that had resonance the day after the August primary when DeSantis urged Florida’s voters in a Fox News television interview not to “monkey this up” by voting for the Democrat.

DeSantis’s campaign team dismissed the apparently racist remark as an innocent figure of speech, but to Gillum it was not so much a dog whistle call to supporters as a “full bullhorn”.

“It’s very clear that Mr DeSantis is taking a page directly from the campaign manual of Donald Trump,” he said on Fox.

Barely a week later, DeSantis removed himself as an administrator from a Tea party Facebook group linked to racially charged posts, claiming he was unaware he had ever been added to it. It was one of a number of incidents in which the Miami New Times claimed the Republican nominee “accidentally did racist stuff”.

When the Guardian caught up with DeSantis in Doral, a small, majority Hispanic city west of Miami that boasts the Trump National Doral Golf Club as its second largest employer, Gillum had carved out a narrow advantage in opinion polling, though the race is still considered by many analysts to be a toss-up.

Ron DeSantis tells Florida voters not to 'monkey this up' by choosing Gillum Read more

“You can’t just be in a safe space when you’re running for governor, you’ve got to mix it up,” he said about a ferocious campaign in which DeSantis has accused his opponent of dodging debates, supporting antisemitism and radicalism, and corruption; while Gillum has condemned the Republican for resorting to smear tactics and character assassination instead of focusing on policies to benefit Floridians.

DeSantis continued: “In politics you get demogogued all the time, this is just a higher level. You’ve got to be ready to take a lot of slings and arrows, which just comes with the territory, particularly if you’re trying to advance conservative policy.

“It ain’t like you’re running in Oklahoma or Delaware. Florida’s a big state. You’re talking about a state with 20-plus million people, there’s going to be a minimum of six million people voting.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A campaign ad for Ron DeSantis features him building a border wall of toy blocks with his toddler daughter. Photograph: Ron DeSantis

Over the weekend both candidates continued to lob verbal grenades at each other at rallies across the state, although Gillum announced on Monday he was suspending campaigning to prepare for the possible midweek arrival of Hurricane Michael in Tallahassee.

In many respects, DeSantis, of Ponte Vedra Beach, is following a traditional path well worn by previous Republican candidates in Florida. He wooed Miami’s Cuban-Americans by kicking off his campaign in Little Havana and naming Cuban-American Jeanette Nunez as his running mate; he took an airboat ride through the Everglades to showcase his green credentials, and talks up his plans for education and keeping Florida’s economy strong at every opportunity.

More unorthodox is his friendship and allegiance with Trump. DeSantis wants Florida’s voters to see as an asset the relationship with the president, who has declared on Twitter that the former Navy Seal who served a combat tour in Iraq will make “a great governor”.

“I’m not going to be involved in the Washington food fight as governor but I do think it’s important the governor is able to work constructively with the Trump administration,” he said.

“I’ll be able to walk in to the Oval Office to talk to the president about Florida’s needs, he’s going to listen to me. Andrew Gillum wants to impeach Donald Trump so how the heck is he going to be able to work with the federal government? He won’t be able to.”

Analysts of Florida politics, however, warn that Trump’s blessing could also prove a curse.

“If Trump likes a particular candidate, that candidate generally wins [the primary],” said Darryl Paulson, professor emeritus of government at the University of South Florida St Petersburg.

“The flip side is that important as the Trump endorsement is in terms of partisan supporters in a primary election, it can become the kiss of death for a candidate in a general election. At least a third of Floridians are no-party affiliated and Trump is not overwhelmingly popular with independent voters. That creates a real dilemma for DeSantis to remain on the good side of Trump and win his continued endorsement, and at the same time create separation on certain issues, such as Puerto Rico. It’s a tough row to hoe.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrew Gillum spoke with residents in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami about gun violence and quality of life on 13 August. Photograph: Lynne Sladky/AP

Bankrolled by Republican mega-donors including Laura Perlmutter and Richard Uihlein, the DeSantis campaign has raised about $30m in contributions, large chunks of which have been spent on television advertising portraying the Republican as a strong leader, mostly steering away from the Trump connection and painting Gillum as a failed mayor. “He’s never met a tax he won’t hike and in Tallahassee Andrew has presided over the highest crime rate in Florida four straight years,” he said.

Gillum, though, has been fiercely defensive of his record as the state capital’s mayor, and insists his proposal to increase Florida’s corporate tax rate from 5.5 to 7.75% would provide money to lift the state’s lowly 40th-placed national ranking in kindergarten to high school education.

DeSantis’s fellow Republican politicians in Florida, meanwhile, acknowledge the Trump factor but believe voters need to tune out some of the noise from Washington. “They absolutely do,” Manny Diaz, a Miami state representative, told the Guardian.

“There’s multiple layers to the cake. To me it’s both the national paradigm and also the candidates themselves and what they represent. Turn your attention to Florida issues. The economy’s doing well, unemployment’s down, do we want to change those things, why would we want to change path? Ron DeSantis is a clear choice.”