Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida who has built a national profile with his combative brand of cultural conservatism, is about to enter the fray for the 2024 White House race.

The Ivy League-educated former naval officer has been hailed by many on the right as a political rock star, and dismissed by the left as a right-wing extremist.

But to get to the White House, he’ll first need to get past his onetime political mentor, Donald Trump, and a crowded field of other Republican hopefuls.

At 44 years old, Mr DeSantis is still a relative newcomer to US politics, having first been elected to the House of Representatives in 2012. Just six years later in 2018 – after a short-lived bid to become a senator – he was elected governor.

Born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1978, Mr DeSantis went on to study history at Yale University – where he was captain of the baseball team – and soon after to Harvard Law School.

During his second year at Harvard, he was commissioned as an officer in the US Navy and was assigned to its legal arm, the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. His service as a JAG officer included working with detainees at Guantanamo Bay, as well as an assignment as a legal adviser for the elite US Navy Seals deployed to Iraq.

Mr DeSantis was honourably discharged from the military in 2010, although he continues to serve in the US Navy reserve. It was also around this time that he met his wife, Casey, a local TV news reporter who helped spearhead fundraising in the wake of 2022’s Hurricane Ian.

After his active duty service ended, Mr DeSantis became a federal prosecutor. Then in 2012 he entered a race for a seat in Florida’s Sixth Congressional District, one of the most conservative in the state.

During this initial foray into Florida politics, Mr DeSantis largely campaigned on a platform of “small government” and reduced taxes – as well as a pronounced opposition to the Obama administration.

He condemned what he deemed the government’s tendency to intervene on “virtually any issue, from the waistline of children to the temperature of earth”.

“My mission was largely to stop Barack Obama,” he recalled in a speech last year at a conservative conference in Texas. “Those were good fights. Important fights.”

In 2018, after five years on Capitol Hill – where he helped found the “Freedom Caucus” of hard-right conservatives – Mr DeSantis announced his intention to run for governor, with the full endorsement of then-President Donald Trump.

Mr Trump’s influence over the DeSantis campaign was quickly and abundantly clear.

In one memorable campaign ad, Mr DeSantis was seen telling one of his children to “build the wall” while playing with blocks, teaching another to read with a “Make America Great Again” sign, and reading to his son Mason: “Then Mr Trump said ‘you’re fired!’ – I love that part,” he says.

Mr DeSantis was sworn in as governor in January 2019.

DeSantis as governor

Early on in his tenure as governor, Mr DeSantis gained national recognition for his handling of Covid-19 in Florida. While he ordered a state-wide lockdown early in the pandemic, he soon began lifting the state’s restrictions. By July of 2020 – as cases skyrocketed nationally – he ordered that schools be reopened.

Since then, he has also expanded gun rights and the death penalty, harshly clamped down on illegal immigration and signed a bill banning most abortions after six weeks, vowing to “defend the dignity of human life and transform Florida into a pro-family state”.

He’s also been in a long-running row – and legal battle – with Disney, which criticised the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Florida subsequently voted to restructure the special district that had been created more than 50 years ago to oversee development of the land around Disney World, which includes four theme parks, dozens of hotels and entertainment venues.

The moves gave Mr DeSantis the power to appoint members to the district’s governing board, removing that authority from landowners in the 25,000-acre district, of which Disney is the largest.

All these policies have elevated his status among voters as a potential Republican candidate for president.

Mr DeSantis’ rising national profile has increasingly come under fire from his former political mentor Mr Trump, who has repeatedly taken credit for the governor’s 2018 election win.

Mr Trump has also increasingly turned to insults and nicknames, while at the same time attacking Mr DeSantis on some of his policies, often accusing him of aiming to “destroy” Social Security and the government-run Medicare health system for older Americans.

Recent polls have shown that Mr DeSantis still lags behind the former president as far as his popularity among US Republicans. Various surveys conducted in mid-May 2023 show him between 28 and 45 percentage points behind.

So far, Mr DeSantis has shrugged off the challenges and attempted to position himself as the Republican with the best chance of successfully returning the party to the White House.

“‘If I run, I’ll be running against Biden,” he told Piers Morgan in March.