Amid a contentious government shutdown in October 2013, Rep. Ron DeSantis approached a fellow Republican freshman, Rodney Davis, and offered to do him a favor.
Days before, back in Davis’s Illinois district, a Democratic challenger had staged a protest at the shuttered National Park Service site of Abraham Lincoln’s home, where a U.S. Department of Agriculture official joined her in blasting Davis for the GOP’s hardball tactics.
Davis, a centrist who was facing a difficult reelection, had complained to DeSantis about how a political event had been allowed on federal property amid a shutdown. A few days later, the conservative DeSantis found Davis in the gym, told him the Park Service director was coming before a House committee he sat on, and asked for more information on the incident.
“Ron lit him up,” recalled Davis, who said federal officials later apologized. Now he wants DeSantis to run for president: “He didn’t have to do that for me. We did not share the same voting record at all. But that’s who Ron is.”
