As Gov. Ron DeSantis runs for President, he's discussing his faith more openly than ever before. The Catholic will court evangelicals at the annual conference of the Faith & Freedom Coalition this weekend.
It's a shift from a political leader who until recently kept private his church-going habits, but recently revealed he takes his family to various churches for mass in the Tallahassee area.
DeSantis more openly discussed his Catholicism last week in a Christian Broadcasting Network interview.
"God has a plan for you, I still believe that," he told interviewer David Brody at the time.
While the revelations have been dismissed by critics as cynical — "I think it's convenient timing, to be honest," former U.S. Rep. David Jolly told The Orlando Sentinel — it also shows the critical role religious voters could play in the Presidential Election.
Notably, DeSantis hopes to face another Catholic, President Joe Biden, next year. Biden is only the second Catholic to serve as President, behind President John Kennedy in 1960. DeSantis would be the third.
But he obviously has a sharply different view of governance. DeSantis has leaned in heavily on culture war issues as he runs for the Republican presidential nomination. Pew Research says more than a third of voters consider themselves evangelical, and 56% of those who do vote Republican.
Never Back Down Press Secretary David Vasquez told the Sentinel that DeSantis supporters feel confident the Governor will find success with those voters.
"Evangelicals are uniting behind Ron DeSantis because they know the Governor's policies and family values are in line with their own beliefs," Vasquez said. "We've seen Gov. DeSantis prioritize meeting, listening, and praying with church leaders across the country and they recognize him as a leader governing as a man of faith."
But Jolly said candidates like former Vice President Mike Pence, himself an evangelical Christian, better speak the language of the voting bloc.
"Evangelicals are his lane. He knows the underpinnings of the evangelical community and he reflects their language and beliefs," Jolly told the Sentinel. "Ron DeSantis doesn't. It's just never been part of his public profile."
But DeSantis is prepared to say he has the policies that evangelicals support. He signed a law banning abortion after six weeks in Florida.
Former President Donald Trump, DeSantis' chief rival for the nomination, appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and made that law possible. But Trump has criticized Florida's measure as going too far.
But DeSantis defended the law and slammed Trump's stance during his CBN interview.
"These are children with detectable heartbeats," DeSantis said. "And I think to do that was very humane and I think it was something that every pro-lifer appreciates that we were able to get that done."
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