Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign appears to be undergoing another reboot with the hire of former Florida Speaker of the House Jose Oliva as a senior advisor and spokesman. The hire may indicate a significant departure from DeSantis’s strategy to defeat Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary by running to the former President’s political right.
Oliva, a self-described libertarian, worked closely with former Governor Jeb Bush and the Charles Koch’s pro-corporate lobby group Americans for Prosperity. In 2015, Oliva backedJeb Bush during the Republican presidential primary and served on the failed campaign’s National Hispanic Leadership Committee. During the 2020-21 Florida budget fight, former Governor Bush praised Oliva’s ‘leadership in the legislature in securing raises for Florida’s public school teachers.
The former Florida lawmaker also has close ties to the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, serving on their advisory council. Sharing in billionaire libertarian Charles Koch’s disdain for Donald Trump, Oliva declined to attend the 2016 Republican National Convention, calling it, “…just a formality and I’m not much for ceremony.” Oliva said he’d begrudgingly vote for Trump, but that it was a decision that didn’t please him.
When Governor DeSantis backed the Florida Senate ‘E-Verify’ legislation – granting the governor the power to ensure businesses were not hiring illegal immigrants – Oliva brokewith his Republican colleagues calling the legislation un-American:
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