Governor DeSantis Wins Reelection in a Landslide, Delivers Victory Speech Addressed to Forty-Nine States That Did Not Vote

TALLAHASSEE — Governor DeSantis won a second term by a margin called within minutes of the polls closing, then told the crowd that "the people" of his state "are speaking with resounding force" and had "left no doubt." The doubt in question, The Press notes, concerned the Governor's next office, not his current one.

"You used your power," DeSantis said, adding that the results were a rejection of the president's "cruelty" and "rampant corruption," a sentence that appears on no state ballot and that he delivered facing the national cameras rather than his constituents.

Widely considered a potential presidential candidate in two years, the Governor pledged to "make life better in the years ahead," a phrase broad enough to cover a state budget or a primary calendar, and promised to "keep showing the world that tomorrow can be better than today." He did not say which world.

Aides insisted the speech was about the Governor's home state. The Press counted the number of times its name was mentioned and the number of times the country was, and will publish the ratio when it is less embarrassing.

The Press's 2028 desk applies the standard test. When a governor of the other party took a state landslide and read it as a national mandate against a sitting president, it was "a shadow campaign" and "getting ahead of his skis." Under DeSantis it is "a rising star." The skis are identical. The slope is the same slope.

At press time the Governor had returned to the business of his state, which, aides confirmed, borders several others.