You can see the slogans all over Florida. On T-shirts, flags, hats. At the grocery store, on car bumper stickers.
“From Santisland. Land of freedom”.
“DeSantis Airlines: We bring you the border!”
These sleek designs and their pithy slogans echo some of the most seismic news events of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ tenure as Florida’s top elected official: his ongoing dispute with The Walt Disney Co.; his administration’s decision to move dozens of migrants from the US-Mexico border to Massachusetts.
But much of the swag seen in public is not being sold by DeSantis or those in his political orbit. Rather, a network of small businesses specializing in political T-shirts and accessories have rushed to meet the demand for the goods. Some suppliers are fans of DeSantis. Others function primarily as Donald Trump merchandise stores, but have added DeSantis clothing in recent months. Some are run by people who seem totally apolitical.
Whatever the marketer’s motivations, not every politician becomes the subject of a grassroots clothing line.
“Only a few rise to that merchandising status,” said Brandon Vallorani, who runs Conservative Stores. Flag and Cross i Patriot Depot. “The vast majority of them just see themselves as politicians like everyone else.”
This brand of conservative merchandise reflects the appeal of the candidate it is promoting. Supporters of DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, both running for the Republican presidential nomination, often say they like the men’s authenticity. What they see is what they get. For a certain kind of voter, DeSantis talking about how “Florida is where the woke go to die” is just the kind of warmongering that works perfectly to a tee.
So now, it’s a shirt.
When judging a candidate’s viability for the 2024 nomination, there are worse metrics than merchandise sales. Like the polls, Trump is dominating DeSantis there, retailers say.
Ronald Solomon is a Trump supporter who runs the MAGA Mall store, named after Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. He sells dozens of Trump-themed products and started dabbling in them DeSantis merchandise last year. Like the former president, Solomon is frequently in Florida, but he also wholesales merchandise to Republican clubs around the country.
Solomon said that even after DeSantis’ re-election in 2022, and the relatively weak showing of Trump-endorsed candidates across the country, products promoting DeSantis still outsold Trump products by 10 to 1 Now, with the Republican primaries in full swing, it’s more like 100 to 1 in Trump’s favor, Solomon said.
In many stores, the most prominent DeSantis swag appears to be material promoting a Trump-DeSantis ticket.
Vallorani, a libertarian-leaning Republican for whom conservative stores are just one of several businesses, estimated that Trump’s products outsell DeSantis’s by 50 to 1.
Of course, decked-out passion isn’t everything in politics. President Joe Biden doesn’t seem to have much of the commercial appeal of Trump or DeSantis, but he still got 81.2 million votes in 2020, about 7 million more than Trump.
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Solomon said it’s no coincidence that Democratic voters don’t have the same penchant for commodities as Republican voters.
“Have you ever seen a person wearing a ‘Build Back Better’ hat or a Joe Biden hat? Never. Because guess what? Trump has real grassroots support. These candidates that the Democrats put up don’t,” Solomon said .
At politicalstickers.net, consumers of all political stripes can find merchandise to promote their favorite candidates. One hat reads, “Don or Ron, not just Biden,” while another proclaims, “Biden for President.”
“We are all Trump supporters at our company, but we have many customers who are not,” reads a disclaimer on that site. “We respect your right to choose (and) we can do anything you want, regardless of your opinions!”
Some of the pro-DeSantis shirts available online offer a relatively simple message. Many are simply campaign-style T-shirts promoting DeSantis’ 2024 run for president, most of which were made before DeSantis declared his candidacy in May. Others dream of a Trump-DeSantis ticket. (The two men have been at odds for months. This chairman-VP combination probably won’t happen.)
But much of DeSantis’ merchandise emulates the governor’s brand of confrontational politics. Etsy shops sell troll t-shirts with DeSantis’ name written in a Disney-style font. Some retailers are offering a design that emulates the “Top Gun”-themed “Top Gov” merchandise he bought during his 2022 re-election campaign.
Now that DeSantis is officially a 2024 candidate, his campaign has begun announcing his own line of t-shirts and hats. But the pieces lack some of the irreverence of merchandise sold in independent stores. The campaign shirts tout DeSantis’ “Great American Comeback” slogan and put a positive spin on the candidate’s online campaign launch: “DeSantis Breaks Systems.”
DeSantis has become a commodity, products bearing his name can veer into strange capitalist territory. A design sold for Sri Lanka Shop on Redbubble depicts a couple walking towards a group of blank street signs. In the top right corner of the shirt is a giant green umbrella. Underneath all this is the word “Desantisland”. (This seller did not respond to requests for comment made through Redbubble’s messaging platform.)
There are also plenty of DeSantis t-shirt designs available for purchase online. Etsy is full of shops offering merchandise with vulgar slogans aimed at the governor, or t-shirts supporting the LGBTQ+ community that say “DeSantis is a drag.”
But even anti-DeSantis shirts demonstrate the governor’s stature in American politics.
“There’s an old slogan: ‘If you don’t repel, you can’t sell,'” Vallorani said.
