If anything, he's going to be the DeSantis of 2022. The guy everybody expects to lose but ends up winning.
People conveniently forget now, but DeSantis was similarly cast as unelectable, super "pro Trump" and far-right. And the vast majority of people here bought into that, including Republicans. Hell, he's still characterized like that today, it's just that Democrats have become more pessimistic in Florida so they don't think he'll lose. But it's really important to remember accurately because we're now making the same exact mistakes and assumptions today, only with more drama around election administration. Shapiro is probably a better candidate than Gillum, though, but nobody was talking as if Gillum was the bad candidate in 2018. It was all about how extreme and bad DeSantis was.
This is a bit of rewriting history. DeSantis came off like an awful candidate (and just plain dumb too), but he was never the extreme far-right candidate Mastriano is. Not really a comparison there. DeSantis was clearly right, but he was nowhere near as extreme as M is, and he definitely wasn't seen that way by many. If anything, he was just seen as more of a doofus.
